Comments on: Why Most Guitar Players Don’t Need to Read Music, Ever!

By: Charles H.

Charles H. — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 06:45:22 +0000

Your wrong.
Here is why.

Point #1.

Point # 1. Standard notation is just that “Standard” it dosen’t matter what instrument you play it on. It dosent’ matter what key your in. The E is the top space and the bottom line is an octove lower. A G7 chord looks the same regardless of the instrument playing it. G,B,D,F is a G7. If you don’t know the notes in a chord then your only playing positions and paterns. If you can’t recognize a chord then your only reading the letters above the staff.

Point #2. Changing instruments does not change the notation. Your finger paterns may change, but thats the point of learning a new instrument. If you don’t want to take the time to really learn what you are playing, then you only play for your own enjoyment. If you want to get paid, you better learn the language.

And I will add to this. Those that think guys like Edie VanHalen, Jimmy Page, Clapton, etc. got where they are without reading and thats the key to their success are mistaken. They got where they are with practice and long hours in the woodshed. If they learned to understand the theory behind what they were doing they would have become masters at a much earlier age.

By: Charles H.

Charles H. — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:19:49 +0000

Beau,

You’re wrong. Not learning to read music is just being lazy. I don’t care what excuse you come up with. Any musician that can read and also learn to play by ear. Those who cannot read can only play by ear and thats a problem.

You say it limits your “creativity” how does reading something limit you? Do you find your language skills limited by being able to read a book? Or are they enhanced? Can you learn something from reading it or do you need to have someone tell you before you understand it?

When I call a players up for a gig and they want to know what songs we are going to play I send them a list of about 600 tunes and tell them the music will be there when they arrive. If they are not up to the challenge, I call the next guy. BTW, every gig I pay the players who play. Those that do well get called again and again. Those that don’t, well they can go back to being creative.

By: Charles Bradford

Charles Bradford — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 23:20:19 +0000

A lot of publishers have stopped printing standard notation along side tablature. I hope it makes a comeback. I sightread at a lower level than I play because I just don’t do it enough. I can figure it out by ear faster than I can find the notation. I think young guitarists should learn to read as much as possible because it occasionally comes in handy if you want to learn vocal harmonies or take up the piano.

By: Beau

Beau — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:41:00 +0000

I think it's also better to don't read sheet music. If you just play something from a piece of paper it won't help your creativity I think. I learns songs by tabs but I try to avoid them as much as I can because I think it's better to learn it by ear. If you do that more and more it will help you to figure out the next song you gonna play much easier. If you learn it by ear you'll not play the song 100% as how the artist plays it and you will give your own twist on the song. Most famous guitar playes can't even read music.I hope my english is good.

By: Charles Harris

Charles Harris — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:17:58 +0000

The one problem here for any guitar player that says they should not learn to read is that "You can just listen to the CD". Thats fine… If a CD exist and you have the time.
As a professional working musician I have to be able to play with any group that calls. Sometimes we don't know what song we are going to play until we get to the gig. Big problem if you don't know the tune. All you have is the notation. And sometimes the guitar player has to look at a copy of a piano score. Sometimes you have chords sometimes you dont.
If your not willing to learn the language of other musicians then your only limiting yourself and the oppertunities you have to play.

By: Yannick

Yannick — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 07:08:46 +0000

Hi there,

I do like your blog but that article is just not true. Do not get me wrong. I get your point but I do think a lot of what you said is incorrect.

"Tablature existed before standard notation for stringed instruments and it is easier to learn and read. There's no guessing. Typically standard notation leaves you guessing which notes you should finger because all you get is a note, not the specific string and fret to play. You have to memorize what each of those black dots means, and then do it in multiple keys! This might be okay for piano, but it's unnecessary for guitar."

Do you have any facts that tabs came first? What is your source for that?
And yes you do not get a string and fret to play but if you have proper techniques, it is pretty clear which string and which fret you have to play the notes.
Ever heard of scales? I do not mean to sound arrogant but the scales have a "box" pattern (also in tabs) in which you should USUALLY play. I do say USUALLY because it is not here to limit you but to teach you the discipline of the instrument.

"Tablature is more robust, and communicates more about how to play a guitar than standard notation. For example standard notation has no provisions for notating slides, note bends, or artificial harmonics. Nor is it very good at displaying muted notes, whammy bar effects, or the exact location your fingers should be on the fret board (as mentioned)."

I do not mean to sound condescending but you are talking out of ignorance. Standard notation was designed for classical music and is there to improve consistency of music communication.
It does have something for notating slides by the way. Just out of curiosity, what standard notation have you actually read? There are notation for harmonic, slides, harmonics, muted notes (okay maybe not whammy bar). You do not do artificial harmonics on a classical guitar, at least not for the same reason you would do it on an electric guitar.

Tabs are far from being robust. Take out a tab in front of 10 guitarists and let us see if they all play the same thing. Yes they are easier to learn but they are not more robust and do not communicate more than standard notation.

"One common method to help display time is to space the notation fingerings farther or closer apart depending on how long they are to ring out."

Is that your definition of being robust? There is no way this is reliable. Timing is everything in music. That is where tabs fail and will always fail because of that.
If someone gives you a tab of a song that you never heard, I would like to see you play the song.

I did my theory exams. I agree with you that you can be a guitarist without knowing standard notation and music theory. You can be soulful while you play. I do not use my classical guitar theory at all because it is just a hobby for me. If you think about adding time value on tabs, then it becomes the same thing as standard notation.

Bottom line I agree with your conclusion but not with your reasons. For me, you are very far from the truth.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 18:36:02 +0000

With out tabs many would never have pick up a guitar. But Tabs alone do become a road block. For you begginers out there using tabs please move forward and learn sheet music. If more people of our generation had not got stuck on tabs, who knows we could have had a more memerable decade of music, instead of just a handfull.

By: Steel

Steel — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 04:52:10 +0000

I have been playing guitar for about 15 years and had a classical background in the trumpet many years prior to this as a child. I can make good sense of classical notation given enough time to examine it but feel most at home with Guitar Pro's hybrid notation.
A lot of emphasis seems to have been put here about the portability of the classical notation between guitarists and other instrumentalists as it is agnostic of the instrument in question.
This is a good point, but I think the fact that a guitar is a 2 dimensional polyphonic instrument that frequently plays all strings in chords should definitely rate a mention.
On a piano, if I were to ask you to play an E4, there would be only one possible key you could press on the whole keyboard that would produce that note. On a trumpet, you would press down the 1st and 2nd keys, or if you are feeling odd, the 3rd key only although that might put you a few cents out, and produce the right amount of lip tension / air flow. (At least you would *think* you are playing E4, but you would in fact be playing D4 (Ebb4) if you are playing a Bb trumpet.) I think standard notation is designed around the piano – one key per note, you hit it hard or you hit it soft (piano/forte!), you sustain it for x length, or even possibly infinitely with the sustain pedal. You don't control the expression of the sounding of the note – no palm muting, no bends, no natural harmonics, no artificial harmonics, no positioning of the fretting hand at a certain point of the string, no hammer-ons, no pull-offs, no sweeps, no pick slides, no raking, no finger picking versus plectrum picking, etc etc etc.
This is an extreme example, but on a standard tuned 6 string guitar, if I ask you to play an E4, if you have 24 frets, you have 6 possible locations on the fretboard to choose from, but the best one for the occasion will depend entirely on the context of that note – what comes before it and what comes after it.
Another issue is that guitars generally being tuned with most strings a perfect 4th apart makes certain chord voicings which are a cinch on a piano etc impossible to play (unless you have 30cm long fingers). Certain note combinations themselves might be a physical impossibility, in contrast to brass and woodwind etc instruments that have a fixed range (although the masters seem to be able to stretch the top end way up) and a limited number of fingerings, where the second dimension, if you will, of the note comes from lip tension etc to form the base resonant overtone of the tube whose length is modified by the valves put in place by the fingering.
I am sure that you can run into similar issues even more often on bowed stringed instruments, which I believe are tuned a 5th apart but which seem customarily to have parts written for them that only usually play 1 or 2 strings at a time, as the sonic spectrum is filled up by the desks of colleagues around them in the orchestral environment, also playing 1 or 2 strings at a time.
What I am trying to say here is that if you give standard notation to a pianist or a monophonic instrument player and they are competent, they could in theory play exactly what you want on the first attempt as that notation suits their instruments, as long as you have not asked them to step outside the range of their instrument (bagpipes, 9 notes FTW!)
Give a competent guitarist the same thing and he would probably need to make several passes over the material to add the extra dimensions of the contextuality, work out which particular chord shape etc will work for which part, as well as pull you up on whatever intervals you had asked for that are physically unplayable etc. In such a situation, he might be able to play an arpeggiated lick the writer had in mind, but the voicing might have to lose the nice sustain afforded by having preceding strings ringing out while the new notes are sounded (which can be hacked around with the use of reverb or possibly a capo, sure).
If people want to write for unfamiliar instruments, they should be prepared to have peculiarities of the instruments pointed out to them by those more familiar.
So yeah, add a time element to guitar tab and as long as the guitarist understands the theory behind what he is doing, I think we have a winner for the guitar.

By: Michael Jae

Michael Jae — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:24:15 +0000

My first guitar was a classical too. I don't regret it for a moment. Congrats and welcome! If you're just starting out I recommend learning to play the basic chord shapes. They will let you add music to your songs very quickly. You can checkout the chord book I have in the right column of this site, I recommend that. If you want a super quick start, start by learning the following chords: C,A,G,D. And checkout my beginners guitar guide here.

By: Michael Jae

Michael Jae — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:19:15 +0000

Hey John, those are two good points, and advantages of tab. Thanks for your insight.

By: John Mcleod

John Mcleod — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:47:25 +0000

Two big advantages to me of tab are :
1. If the piece is in a different tuning, you will have to learn to sight read notation over again
2. Moving to a new fretted instrument means you have to re-learn sight reading for the instrument due to the new tuning and string numbers, not so with tab.
Having said that, I would love to be able to sight-read music for the fiddle and mandolin, as there is so much notation available !

By: TaniaTheNoob

TaniaTheNoob — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:24:17 +0000

I got a guitar (6 string Classical) for a birthday gift, don't ask me what the person who gave it to me was thinking, he maybe thought since I love rock music it would be a good idea. I have never even held a guitar and I have no idea how to read music either. The only thing I have successfully done with it is tune it, with a tuner!!!! I am very excited to learn and play it since I have been writing songs for some years now and would love to put music to it. I feel the whole get a "Guitar for Dummies" book won't help at all, except to maybe confuse me. Any idea where to start. I feel like smashing it!!! Which I would preferably like to do years from now when I'm famous!!!

By: Michael Jae

Michael Jae — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:14:51 +0000

Hey Matt, thanks for your thoughts!

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 28 May 2011 00:18:23 +0000

I recently came across a paid site called Songsterr that includes rhythm underneath the standard tablature. I've found it pretty useful, and it addresses the glaring area where standard notation still trumps TAB…so hopefully soon enough TAB will include robust ways of defining and communicating complex rhythms.
I will say, though, that I'm extremely grateful I pushed through and learned how to read music. Being able to move from TAB to notation and back feels very freeing. It may not be for every guitarist, but if you're up for the challenging, reading notation for the guitar opens up plenty of doors to classical guitar pieces as well as other pieces in other genres.
Thanks for stoking all this controversy!

By: Michael Jae

Michael Jae — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 20:40:05 +0000

Thanks Sandy, I think you get my point

By: Sandy

Sandy — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:46:34 +0000

I think that we can all come to a compromise on this point. I think that it is much easier to learn how to play guitar by using tabs. It is essentially a shortcut for many people. However, if you then choose to take guitar seriously and want to become a professional musician, then you should absolutely learn music theory. For the guitar hobbyist, it is totally unnecessary.

By: Chris Downing

Chris Downing — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:53:10 +0000

Yep – I agree completely

By: Michael Jae

Michael Jae — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 21:49:30 +0000

Hey Beatriz, thanks for your comment. I think with the situation you’re in you should definitely take theory. I love music theory personally and you’ll definitely get something out of it. It will be challenging. I took theory in school too. I also recommend you look on Amazon or online for some theory books that are particular to whatever style you’re learning. You’ll find that when you study music theory within the context of the genre you’re most interested in you’ll be able to apply it much more quickly, easily and have more fun with it. Learning theory just in a class setting can be limiting. Good luck!

By: Chris Downing

Chris Downing — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 07:04:57 +0000

Saying that TAB is older than notation, and better, because it can do things that standard notation can't doesn't really move us forward and inform. People used to send letter to each other before email, text, the phone, cell phones, and the telegraph - but it doesn't make letter writing better or worse - it's just different. I was told in my previous business life that you can only manage things by the facts. So... Standard notation is how all instruments have a common language. Not understanding the language of communication by everyone else in the music community, not being able to write down your ideas, instructions and compositions for others players is a problem. Not being able to understand other player's notes and ideas will also be a problem. In a musical setting with other players you will be handed standard notation to play - not TAB. TAB is unique to the guitar or bass. Nobody else out there uses it. So is it a good idea to learn top read and write music? Depends on what you want to do. If all you want to do is play with your band of guitar and bass players - probably not. If all you want to do is solo or accompany yourself with chords, probably not. If you want to play with a variety of other musician or earn a living playing, you'll find it mighty tough to survive if you don't read. Like an actor who can't read and write, why would you hire them when there are so many who can? Why will someone hire you as a musician when you import your problems of musical illiteracy into their project? There are too many players out there who can read, so why chance it when you could learn it? As Kenny Werner says in his book 'Effortless Mastery', "Not difficult, just unfamiliar." Nobody would suggest that an actor spends more time on technique and save time by not learning to read and write. When someone tells you don’t have to learn to read music, they are probably telling you more about their own hang ups than helping you. If you want to be a pro, or go to music college, or join a non-guitar band, or work with other musicians – you need to learn.

By: Beatriz

Beatriz — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 03:47:14 +0000

Wow, i see all these comments and its mostly back and forth. im here trying to figure out if its best for me to take music theory in my senior year next year. And i have been playing guitar for almost 3 years now, self taught( and i am good id say), but it was very hard. I see where he's coming from, saying tabs are easier, because thats how i started learning to play too. But now, i want to become a professional musician in a band for my future, and i have felt REALLY limited lately to what i can do. i used to think that its easy to make your own songs and all by ear, and at times it is for me since i sing as well, but i have found it very hard lately and ive felt so lost and confused when it comes to reading music because i dont know how. and i feel that something is missing, its not just about reading tabs and doing it on your own, i feel i dont know anything at all about it even if i do know how to play well. i play both acoustic and electric guitar and i think its best for me to learn it all. tabs help yes, but sometimes i get so frustrated when i try to learn a song with tabs because some are not even accurate. whoever made them, didnt get it exact or whatever the case may be but it also is very frustrating when there isnt a song i want to learn. i dont know, and dont understand it, so maybe it is better off to learn. ?