Guitarists are notorious for musical illiteracy, this is pretty strange considering the appeal of scale and arpeggio exercises and other theoretical knowledge to many young guitarists.
Stranger still, so many guitarists favour tablature so much that they become reliant on it to the point of hindering their ability to play by ear. Rather than repeating musical phrases by hearing them in their purest form they opt for tablature - what this article proves to be a very ineffective and detrimental method of interpreting music.
There are so many great ways to introduce and encourage ever-growing abilities in notation. To facilitate such an introduction, this article as part one of four aims to compare the benefits of notation versus the flaws of tablature.
Some key benefits of notation are as follows:
Rhythm.
In standard music notation, rhythmic values are explicitly dictated. This means that a musician that reads notation is able to correctly perform the rhythmic structures of a piece of music in written form without any previous listening. A musician that reads music well can accurately play a piece that has never been heard before.
Pattern recognition.
Skills in pattern recognition make you learn, play and create music with greater ease and connection to the music. Chords, intervals, phrases and rhythms become much easier and more natural to quickly recognise, perform and recreate. This also helps develop contextual understanding of the various elements that make a piece of music.
Intention.
Notating your own compositions (covered in future articles!) gives you a greater sense of "knowing what you're doing". The music you like (whether creating or listening) has greater clarity, memorability and personal association.
With experience, improvisation also benefits from this.
Professionalism.
It's easy for young guitarists to fall in the trap of wanting to make a career in music without putting in the effort. Many of us in the past, present or future have relied on our gut feelings, charisma and insistence that we have what it takes to be a star. We can look at classic rock stars and assume that reading music is unnecessary and will detract from our "feel" or artistic integrity.
I could go on about why living a humble life is more fulfilling than being famous but let's just focus on the practical aspect: A music career in performance or teaching requires the ability to quickly and accurately learn any piece of music. This skill can only be utilised through the means of notation.
In contrast, here are some key flaws of tablature:
No rhythm.
Tablature offers no indication of rhythm. It is impossible to accurately learn a song by tab without already listening to the song and various sections of the song multiple times to fill in the missing information regarding rhythm. This wastes a lot of time, effort and can make you hate the song from hearing it so many times.
Sabotaging aural skills.
As tablature encourages the guitarist to repeatedly listen to the track for rhythmic cues and then add it to the tablature's cues of finger positioning, pitch recognition is no longer an aural skill as it becomes a visual one. A guitarist that relies on tab no longer hears a major third interval on the subdominant in C major and knows how to play it, instead they must read a chart that says "put your middle finger on the third fret of the D string and your index finger on the second fret of the G string". It reduces musical information in favour of deciphering ambiguous numbers rather than audible or logical cues.
One may argue the same for notation but in fact the reverse is true. Performing notated music processes the written notes into music, in other words the process is transforming visual cues into what is audible music. On the other hand, performing tablature requires listening to music and then aligning it with written fingering positions, this process is turning the audible music into visual cues - it's completely reversed! This effectively makes tablature a counter-intuitive way to learn music as the logical process is not directed at creating audible and informed music, it's directed at aligning your fingers to the fretboard.
It's harder than notation.
Yes, you read that correctly. One may assume that tablature is easier because notation doesn't explicitly dictate finger positions and it requires reading symbols. These are very weak arguments.
Firstly, notation does provide information on fingering but it is done implicitly rather than explicitly. With practice, experience and perhaps a good teacher it is only natural to find the ergonomic options for all sorts of passages.
Secondly, tablature requires reading symbols too. Just because they're numbers it doesn't mean they're any easier. Tablature erases every shred of musical context, effectively making interpretation more difficult as abilities in learning and recognition in any field are dependant on context.
Using tablature over notation is analogous to listening to ten strangers speaking about nothing substantial as opposed to engaging in a meaningful dialogue with one person. On one hand there is an overwhelming abundance of useless information, whereas a thoughtful conversation is enriching to say the least.
Amateur is an understatement.
Tabs aren't mere training wheels, they will inhibit and regress your learning. Relying on an unorganised, ambiguous and ultimately illogical method to learn music will only develop rigid technique and bad musicianship. I understand I may sound like a zealot or a charlatan in saying that but I guarantee that anybody who has witnessed increases in dexterity through tab would have gained greater dexterity had they not learned by tab.
Conclusion and summary:Since its conception, standard musical notation by its very design has remained the simplest, most rich in context, and logical way of written instruction in music.
Tablature is vague, unorganised, void of context and jeapordises a musician's technique by fostering a myriad of illogical and impractical habits.Tablature offers nothing more than a negligent method of dexterity..
This is part one of a four-part series on immersing yourself in notation. I hope that this article may have clarified or even challenged your ideas on notation and tablature. As this series continues we will explore pattern recognition, sight-reading, composition, exercises in visualisation, interpretation and more.