Do you recommend tabs for a learner?

[kiwlm]

Ah - so you're talking about practising a line you know rather than getting the original transcription down?

Yeah, to me they are a two parts process,
1. trascribing - figure out what is played
2. practicing - make my hands in shape to play it, and remember the arragenments

MIDI does make it easy to mute the bass line while keeping the other parts but you've got to be confident that those other parts have got the right feel. I prefer playing along with the recording - when I'm playing, it will generally cover the other bass part and it also lets me hear the vocals and work my cues off that.

As I have mentioned previously, the thing I liked about MIDI is that it allows you to do looping at the exact beat, so let say there's this part in the song that have fast running basslines (while all the other parts are slow and boring), I will just loop over this particular 2 bars over and over again until I can do it accurately. Playing the whole song in this case will be of no use because I can already play the 90% of the song which is bass-easy-boring, so I need to work on the 10%.

And midi also allow some simple editing so that I can modify it to go according to our band's arragenment instead of the original version.

 

[jenderfazz]

I like learning a song by ear and checking the tab to see how my results compare to them. I'll play some parts indicated by tab and realize that they are in fact right, and that mine are wrong. However, I might play some that are totally wrong and use my own transcription. My ear isn't amazing yet and it's hard to learn some stuff by ear, so tab simply corrects me if I'm wrong. Obviously tab is not sacred, there are many mistakes and I can listen to the song to see who's at fault.

 

[quallabone]

Learning by ear only works when what you finally learned is correct!

That is correct. Repetition is the only way to train your ear. You can't wave a magic want and suddenly be able to transcribe 16th note trumpet passages. It takes time and practice. Making mistakes is the only way to learn. Sightreading will never happen if you don't learn how to read.

Well, my point is that, if a TAB is wrong, and after you have played it, and you did not realise it, I guess you won't go to far with learning by ear also.

Again you can't shake your fist and have amazing ears or relative pitch. The more you work on your ears the better they become.

But I understand that what you have mentioned is better in long term, but sometimes, when we are alone, with no teachers, and no bass-playing friends to cross check our transcriptions... it will kill off motivation to keep on transcribing and transcribing without getting it.

REPETITION. Your transcriptions will always be better than a tab no matter who you are. Everytime you transcribe a piece of music you will get better and faster at it. I just transcribed the horn parts for "Spinning Wheel" by Blood Sweat and Tears. It took a good 45 minutes to get everything on paper. Could I have done it in that time 5 years ago? No! Could I have done it in that amount of time a month ago? No! Keep stretching your ears and writing skills and everything gets easier, especially playing.

Music is an easy language to learn if you take the time.

 

[maxy]

Hey,

Taking out by ear for beginners is tedious job. I mean when you first cant play it right with the tabs i mean....like blah...

definately try somethign like inst or song books of what you like and maybe ...and you can move to the ear...

tho...the best thing is get the chords from the internet and take out by ear and by the way, playing the gt and drums is a really good + point.

From the chords you know the key and chords(which you have to figure out if it is right) and go on and the good thing is you see the gt and bass relation which is even more important than the ear.

Please comment.

 

[wulf]

You're assuming that the tabs are accurate! Also, where are you finding tabs that show guitar, bass (and drum?) parts on the Internet?

I think there are many circumstances where tabs can give a head start on grasping a tune but the bottom line is that, to become a musician, you're going to put time and effort into music; if you put a lot of time and effort into finding tabs you'll be an Internet search guru but not necessarily much of a bass player!

Wulf

 

[Basspolizei]

Maiden Rules!

Meaning you and I will probably never perfectly emulate it!

But keep trying..........Steve Harris, Yes..........