Activebass.com lessons?

[lermgalieu]

There's a lot of garbage in there, but also some interesting stuff. I think in general I am really impressed with the tool, and the ability to slow down and speed up, etc. My only knock on it is that it is in tab only, which kind of sucks for those of us who try to steer clear of tab. But that said, I still find it useful....

On a side note, although I know this topic always starts a fire, I think the primary thing WRONG with tab is not that it is an alternate way of conveying musical ideas, but that it tells you *where* to play each note. With traditional notation, you have to figure out fingerings from just the notation of the pure note (where it is in the octave, which octave), but with tab, you are being told too much and don't have to put enough thought into it to really learn the concepts behind it. But there are some lessons on activebass (such as "Giant Steps demystified") that just offer up chords and don't give you any tab at all. Anyway, just ponderin.

[olivier]

Actually, tabs aren't that bad, and have been around for centuries, for luth or keyboard in particular. Their main problem are for transposing, or switching to another instrument. Quite often, we play cello studies on DB (e.g. De Falla's Canciones Populares), and just imagine the lead sheet of a symphony in tablature !

[lermgalieu]

But my point about tabs holds true - they limit your learning because they do some of the thinking for you. However, being pretty new to tab, I was impressed that it is much more robust in terms of representing rhythm than I had previously thought.

[Joe Taylor]

Tabs are a good starting place because the student can play something fast and keep hes or her motovated to learn. At the same time regular music notation has to be introduced. I like it where the tab and the notation are both displayed. It does not take too long to toss the tab when introduced that way.

Which brings up all the cleff signs should be introduced somewhere at the start of the learning process.

Joe