90%+ of orchestral music!?!?
Man, you must’ve lived in a music library all your life to have accomplished that.
Also, that’s why orchestras have conductors to help guide them in precision and phrasing to be unified as a large group.
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Just curious... Can anyone here sight-read tab?
- Thread starter vindibona1
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Man, you must’ve lived in a music library all your life to have accomplished that.
Also, that’s why orchestras have conductors to help guide them in precision and phrasing to be unified as a large group.
There was one place where there needed to be a rest in that example, and it wasn't there. That was the point I was making, which you can't deny.Only slightly less missing than with sheet music
yea, I know right? I've worked in multiple orchestras simultaneously for years - and have scratched the top off the box of orchestral music that is in existence. I've listened to classical music my entire life (53 years now), and been to thousands of orchestra concerts. 90% is amazing. I'm sure I'm around 30%. W.A.Mozart alone wrote 50 symphonies. Many are very rarely performed or listened to, but it does happen once in a blue moon. That is ONE composer - one superhuman composer, but still, one composer.
Hey, look... YYZ!
I didn't even need the title at the top of the page of sheet music to tell me that.
But, being fair... I have heard and played the song before, so my joke is somewhat off-kilter with respect to the OP.
love itHey, look... YYZ!
I didn't even need the title at the top of the page of sheet music to tell me that.
But, being fair... I have heard and played the song before, so my joke is somewhat off-kilter with respect to the OP.
You don't have any actual experience in any sort of ensemble that requires reading music, do you?
I just love that example....
that chart is YYZ in the same way that canned salmon is caviar. It's in there somewhere, but your guess is as good as mine as to which parts are actually there, and what you have to guess about to fill in the missing bits.
If you didn't know yyz really well already, you couldn't decipher it from that. Classic old school tab, the kind that gave it that bad rep.
[QUOTE="J Stutheit, post: 26457918, member: 355705"And of course there were normal band, orchestra, and piano lab classes at the school where music was taught and performed the traditional ways.[/QUOTE]
I'm sorry, but this smacks of a teacher providing standard notation to budding musicians and tab to guitarists. I believe I'll agree that it sounds like this teacher did a disservice to students wanting to learn guitar, particularly students wanting group performance experience. Reading standard notation really helps guitarists and bassist talk to other band members that don't play guitar or bass.
I'm sorry, but this smacks of a teacher providing standard notation to budding musicians and tab to guitarists. I believe I'll agree that it sounds like this teacher did a disservice to students wanting to learn guitar, particularly students wanting group performance experience. Reading standard notation really helps guitarists and bassist talk to other band members that don't play guitar or bass.
This is where it all went south for me. I'm willing to listen but when someone makes such a claim, well, I am no walking library of classical music but I know that there are many, many compositions out there that are only known or recognized by aficionados, classical students, academics, or others who make it their business to dig deep into the weeds.
I would also argue that there are a lot of notations that some folks aren't aware of, things for loudness, note duration shorter than a beat, etc., in standard that convey a good bit of information that some folks think is missing - because those folks never learned enough to know those notations exist.
That comment is blatantly incorrect. Sheet music, professionally transcribed or written by the composer, contains all of the necessary phrasing, relative volume between notes, exact note durations, and a whole lot of other stuff that you hear in the recording.crazyBassClown said:
Just a couple weeks ago I filled in for one rehearsal only as bassist with a jazz big band that I've worked with on rare occasions over the years. I was sight reading (never played these arrangements of these charts before), and one of the charts everyone was sight reading. Everybody in a group like that is reading exactly what is on the page and doesn't need to discuss it to get it right. They can discuss it if someone gets it wrong, and they can discuss it if they want to change something, and they can discuss it if player B is better suited to that high lip part than player A. But the charts are (aside from some publisher's typos) perfect, complete, and contain all of the information required to create the performance the composer had in mind.
Good musicians experienced in a certain genre and ensemble size will know exactly how to read the music to play it how it was intended by the composer.
Ah wait... maybe I'm getting into that "African rhythms" thing ... jazz.
Maybe, but I think you have to be careful making this judgment here. Bad transcription, whether it be in standard notation or tab, is bad transcription. Much as there are tons of incomplete and just plain bad tabs all over the internet, there are tons of books of sheet music out there written in standard notation that are just awful. I know, I have a bookshelf containing many examples lol. And don't even get me started on fakebooks.
As a long-time user of both, I have found that accurate and complete transcriptions in tab and standard notation are equally usable and convey the same information.
Hmm, that is so weird. It uses portions of standard notation!!?? You need to understand what the rests and flags/beams mean. I can see how it could be sight read, but for someone like me who already can read notation I'd have to teach myself to sight read Songster tab
It seems pretty intuitive to me, combining the rhythmic cues from standard notation with the tab part.
Can you please describe which part of that is so offensive to you? It literally shows you note for note what Geddy is playing, with the timing and correct positions. Sure, there are probably some inflections that could be added like some subtle slides but it's really not that different from the accuracy of standard notation. If I showed you the exact same notes and rhythym in standard notation, would that also be "what canned salmon is to caviar"? I have no issues with standard notation or tab. Both have examples of poorly transcribed work. But you appear to have some sort of bias against tab even if it is well done.
I'm sorry, but this smacks of a teacher providing standard notation to budding musicians and tab to guitarists. I believe I'll agree that it sounds like this teacher did a disservice to students wanting to learn guitar, particularly students wanting group performance experience. Reading standard notation really helps guitarists and bassist talk to other band members that don't play guitar or bass.[/QUOTE]
I learned the guitar, performed in a group and became a far better musician during my 3 years in the group... Since then I've played in bands of several genres, continued to be a musician, and have learned several new instruments. I don't think I was cheated out of anything.
My only original point was that if tab is done correctly, it works just fine for learning music. It seems like many people in this thread really want notation to be the best (which it probably is) but also contend that tabs are just stupid and pointless, which I won't agree with due to my experiences with it.
I learned the guitar, performed in a group and became a far better musician during my 3 years in the group... Since then I've played in bands of several genres, continued to be a musician, and have learned several new instruments. I don't think I was cheated out of anything.
My only original point was that if tab is done correctly, it works just fine for learning music. It seems like many people in this thread really want notation to be the best (which it probably is) but also contend that tabs are just stupid and pointless, which I won't agree with due to my experiences with it.[/QUOTE]
Personally, I wouldn't argue that tab is best simply because it has been made to not only be simply to use, but mainly, easy to make. And being easy to make allows people that maybe aren't necessarily adequate to tab out some tunes. I've seen so many bad tabs on the internet that could very well put a new player in a bad place if they were trying to learn a tune.
That being said, there are plenty of great tabs that are near perfect transcriptions which are very useful. In my experience as a fan of more progressive music, I find the tabs for the bands that I enjoy tend to be pretty close to 100% accuracy because they have been tabbed by people who are profficient musicians. Stuff like Rush, Yes, Dream Theater, Symphony X, etc.
Not sure about the current state of transcriptions packaged in book form, but from past experience transcription books usually include both standard notation and tab on parallel staves and they don't necessarily put much effort into the tab part - sometimes excellent and very clearly correct, sometimes somewhat dodgy.
But a few of the top ("top" being my opinion) YouTube bass transcription channels that have them as on-screen play-alongs do make their transcriptions available in PDF form, in some cases includimg more songs than they put up on YouTube. Not for free though. But obviously PDFs can be printed.
Of course it's intuitive if you already read notation
If you have to learn notation symbols in order to read the tab, then you might as well read the notation (assuming it exists).That was in response to the statement that a recording reflects "the intent of the composer".
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Yea, you're right that I was extreme about my reaction. It does describe the notes and placement in rhythm. It doesn't describe the fact that there are 16th beat rests after many of the notes in the intro, the tempo changes, several notes are staccato versus legato (short versus held until the next note).
When I see YYZ transcriptions, and we've all seen many, you normally see standard notation and tab along with it. The tab is not necessary for someone who reads music fully since string and finger info is part of the standard notation toolset.... as long as the person who transcribed it wrote the standard notation correctly and fully...., but much of music written for electric bass and electric guitar assumes the player isn't a good reader of standard notation, and that is just fine. It's smart to know the best toolset for your target audience.
So this is incomplete - on it's own, as it is shown in this example, and will not teach you how to play it like geddy. Full transcriptions all over the web do include that information, normally by including standard notation along with the tab.
This tab example IS useful, and does work well to tell you what notes to play and the rhythms of the notes within the speed set at the start of the song. So yes it is a helpful learning tool.
But it is a great example of tab that is missing information, which is included in standard notation normally.
Maybe the example was just an example of it that is over simplified (IE: missing information) for the sake of this discussion?
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Has anyone here who is arguing that tab is capable of being sight read ever actually done it in a performance or recording session setting? Or even a rehearsal?
I've played 2+ hour shows of music that I've never seen or heard before on many occasions. @JimmyM has given examples in the past of where he's done the same. @dkelley gave an example of a rehearsal where he sight-read big band charts earlier in the thread and he's also described playing orchestral works by sight-reading charts without the benefit of a record.
Does anyone have any concrete examples of instances where you've shown up to a performance, recording session or rehearsal and played through a significant amount of music that you'd never heard before using tabs?
It's one thing to argue in the abstract that one is theoretically capable of sight-reading tab, but does it ever actually happen in the real world? Because sight-reading standard notation charts happens all the time in a wide variety of real-world settings.
I've played 2+ hour shows of music that I've never seen or heard before on many occasions. @JimmyM has given examples in the past of where he's done the same. @dkelley gave an example of a rehearsal where he sight-read big band charts earlier in the thread and he's also described playing orchestral works by sight-reading charts without the benefit of a record.
Does anyone have any concrete examples of instances where you've shown up to a performance, recording session or rehearsal and played through a significant amount of music that you'd never heard before using tabs?
It's one thing to argue in the abstract that one is theoretically capable of sight-reading tab, but does it ever actually happen in the real world? Because sight-reading standard notation charts happens all the time in a wide variety of real-world settings.
That's a pretty simple bass line from a very popular song. The tab notation was clearer than most. It didn't have the annoying hyphens between the notes that to me are visual distractions. I was able to hunt-and-peck my way through it at a reduced tempo. And because of the simplicity and knowing the tune THAT was possible. However, had you given me standard notation I'd be able to play it up to tempo out of the gate. Even without the title I would know how it sounds by looking at it.
