So I spent a little time at the piano yesterday, trying to learn a new song by ear. Unless it’s a really basic rock, blues or hymn I’m never too sure what to do with the left hand. So, I google’d for some help. Sure enough, the guitar chords for the song were on-line. I applied them to the keyboard, paired them with the melody line I had worked out and I had my song. But it reminded me of something that has always confused me.
I read music. I’m not a gifted sightreader, but I read music. I play several instruments, none well, but I can play each while reading music. I do not play any string instruments. Why do guitar players, and no one else, require pictures of where they need to place their fingers, rather than music? In other words, why is tabulature always printed for guitar players when everyone else can see a note or chord and remember where they are supposed to put their fingers without a visual image jarring their memory?
When I first start learning a standard song on piano (not a rag or classical) I work on the melody and play basic chords from the chord hints written above the staff. Then, when my right hand is comfortable I start reading the bass clef and working on the actual, real, as written left hand. But I can “play” the song by reading the right and plugging in chords based solely on the chord notation. Why can’t guitar players do that? I don’t need to see a big picture of a keyboard with little dots where my fingers are supposed to go. If I’m supposed to play a diminised A seventh all you have to do is write Adim7 above the staff and my fingers know where to go (most of the time).
All guitar players ever do is play chords! Why can’t they memorize the tabulature? Why do they, and only them, require visual imagery of where to place their digits? When I play a brass instrument the composer doesn’t draw me a picture of pursed lips along with valves or a slide. It’s up to my lips, fingers and muscle memory to remember what to do when they see a note written on the staff. C’mon guitar players. Join the rest of the world.
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Three chords and let ‘er rip, Rufus. Worked well for the Ramones, continues to work for AC/DC, so why mess with perfection? The world needs fewer Yngwie Malmsteens.
Chords on the keyboard are very standard in formation: a root and a third and a fifth or whatever. The theory part still works on the guitar, but it’s not so easy to just count up the right number of keys etc. hence the diagams. That’s the beauty of the piano and the pain of the guitar.
But then you learn barre chords and forget all about those little diagrams anyway.
It goes back to people wanting to learn quickly. It’s much easier to grab a tab, which shows you where every finger is supposed to go, versus having to learn to read music, as well as every note on every string and fret. It’s all about usability.
I used to read music playing the trumpet in school. Been playing the guitar 14 years since, and haven’t read music once since then. It’s just easier to use tab.
O.K., but why didn’t your trumpet book show pictures of the three valves with dots over the ones you depress to make a note? Every other instrument uses the same, staff based notation to represent music, and that same notation works swimmingly for the chords on the guitar. Images like tabulature would make life easier for trumpet players and pianists, flautists and violinists. Why don’t they get the visual crutch of tabulature, but guitarists do?
Because, Rufus, in our modern world unlike trumpets, pianos, flutes and violins everyone can play guitar. Everyone does play guitar or has in the past or is learning(I’m lumping Bass guitar in here as well). It’s a market thing. Nobody (cool anyway) plays trumpet (except in highs school bands), same goes for flutes, and pianos and violins are something you are forced to learn to play as a child.
Now guitar on the the other hand has a rockstar image….and everybody wants to be a rockstar. Or James Taylor.
Tabs help facilitate and expedite that process. Rockstar by numbers if you will.
So it’s not that the guitarists are dummies, it’s that the non-guitarists are elitists? Well, maybe with Chopin you’ve got a point, but Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis?
I think it’s because the same note can be played in four or maybe more different places or positions on the guitar whereas on the piano and brass/wind instruments there is one best or only place to play a given note. Other string instruments like the violin have more limited range so generally there is one or at most two places to play a given note. I guess a chord can be in several different positions on a piano but if the notes of the chord are shown in the music then it is explicitly placed in one position only. The second reason for tab vs music has already been hinted and that is that the guitar is the one instrument that almost everybody has played around with at one time or another and a lot of these people won’t or can’t learn to read music.
Not elitists…just not rockstars. Little Richard is no rockstar. Jerry Lee Lewis was, I guess, but not no mo.
cqness nailed it, saying much better and more eloquently what I have been trying to explain to Rufus old boy for lo these many years. Bless you.
I am willing to believe there is something I’m missing, but when I play trombone there are quite a few notes I can play in different positions, as long as I vary my lip vibration speed. When I’m playing a song I choose the combination that best suits the note I’m coming from and going to. Wouldn’t guitarists just do the same thing?
Yes they could. But to put it in economic terms rather than what’s just, guitar players buy a lot more sheet music than trombone players. So if the chord diagrams (not tab, that’s a different animal) make it easier for them and that moves more music, well you of all people know the rest.
Both my younger and older brothers learned to play guitar by ear. Neither can read sheet music, nor ever bothered with the tabulature books. They can just listen to a song and play it. My best friend is like that too, with his acoustic picking style of playing.
I can play the bass if I look at the tabs, but I got the visual arts end of the talent stick in our family. I’m best seen and not heard.