Tablature or Tab' is an easy short-cut to playing and novices are impressed with their apparent rapid 'progress'. Whilst tablature is useful for indicating where to execute sounds or in copying something for which the sound is already known; the names of the notes (and strings) may remain completely unknown, and the fingering may be ambiguous. On the other hand, Music notation requires more effort to learn but yields greater rewards since it has intrinsic value as a foundation for building real musical KNOWLEDGE. For example, knowing the names of the notes you are playing, understanding note durations and rhythms, keys or tonalities used in music, knowing the notes contained in chords, how to create and name 'new' chord shapes, understanding harmony and tonality shifts. These skills are useful if you are writing your own compositions, and for those with creative talent, knowledge of tonalities can provide a framework or structure to use when improvising (in any style).
Musical knowledge also helps when we write arrangements for other (transposing) instruments or vocalists, and assists in our understanding of permutations of notes so that we can play the same thing in different ways on the guitar. This in turn helps us to experiment with the voicing of chords or the tonal quality (timbre) of notes or simply the ease of playing on the fingerboard, which is important because every individual has different hands and finger-span. What might be easy for one person will be difficult for the next. The reasons go on and on - that's why musicians who are dedicated to learning their craft spend time studying music notation.
The joy of the art of music for musicians lies in the fact that something new is learned every time we listen to music, perform music or contemplate why something sounds the way it does. Hence,
MUSIC IS A LIFE-LONG LEARNING EXPERIENCE.
When you consider the vast array of musical sounds that could be written down, it should become apparent that the study of music notation is something that requires effort, motivation, and dedication. However, there is a system for helping us find notes on the guitar fingerboard when we read music notation. This reading aid is very precise because the finger and hand position is given and not simply the fret number. Also, this reading aid is superimposed on top of the actual music notation, which itself indicates the pitch, note-names, and rhythm of the notes to be played. This aid makes reading notation much easier, which in turn leads to the acquisition of KNOWLEDGE. To my own students, I usually refer to this widely used system as the POSITIONAL FINGERING SYSTEM or simply the fingering. Not only does the positional fingering system help with reading notation, it also helps in learning the guitar fingerboard as well. It is a very simple system and easy to learn for beginners of all ages.
Personally, I have not found tablature used in the professional world of music (e.g. theatre or orchestral/jazz ensembles) nor at music college. However, it has to be said that tab' is very widely used, mainly by beginners who do not have the privilege of being able to receive lessons from a qualified professional teacher. There is apparently a lot of tab' material available on the Internet, and anything that gets novices interested in playing the guitar (for musical reasons) is a good thing. It also has the 'advantage' of not requiring a teacher, and so the students could learn to make sounds themselves - but they should be aware of the limitations.
From a personal teaching perspective, I have never found the need to use tab' because even young children are capable of learning notation and fingering, as shown by many young students on the guitar as well as on all the other musical instruments, and of course, students are also encouraged to play 'by ear'. There is little that I could actually teach on the subject of tablature itself as it is purely a 'play by numbers' system. All I could teach would be to say...
"tablature is a pictorial representation of the strings upon which are numbers that indicate the frets where the strings are depressed in order to make the required sounds", and so...
TABLATURE REQUIRES NO LEARNING OF MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE.
Whilst we all want to overcome difficulties when learning anything, we should always endeavour to advance in our knowledge, and try as much as possible to avoid the process of dumbing down, otherwise (especially for Guitar players) musicianship may not be fully attained. Of course, the art of music is not just about being able to read and write the dots. However, music is a language of human emotion, and just as happens in other (spoken) languages, the ability to read and write (musical literacy) helps us to understand what we are doing when we use this language.
This is particularly important in the language of Music since it is a Universal language, albeit with regional 'variations'.
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Copyright (c) 2009 by Dr Bill Mann, Scotland