h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wah... Make another Entry entitled 'Bass tablatures'

HELL

I don;t see the need for a separate bass entry, as all the special bass tricks can also be put in guitar tab.

If this article is really intended to replace the current edited entry on tabs, and even if it's not, I recommend that such a guide entry should have *some* historical info in it, such as:

Tablature was first used for keyboard music over 650 years ago. For fretted instruments it is greatly preferable to staff notation, since it gives all the information in much fewer symbols. The first fretted-instrument tablatures were invented over 500 years ago, for the lute. They use the same signs for time-values as were already established in staff notation, written above the tab lines. For contrapuntal music (fantasias and fugues and the like) the system works particularly well, giving the player a single line of time values to read. This contrasts with staff notation where concurrent time-systems try to keep the different voices visually separate (like a vocal score reduced to one stave) which is always problematic, often inaccurate, and utterly unnecessary.

Well, the last 2 sentences of the intro are somewhat historical...

Can I use that paragraph then?

Be my guest!

Recumbentman, I don't understand what you saying in this sentence:

"For contrapuntal music (fantasias and fugues and the like) the system works particularly well, giving the player a single line of time values to read. This contrasts with staff notation where concurrent time-systems try to keep the different voices visually separate (like a vocal score reduced to one stave) which is always problematic, often inaccurate, and utterly unnecessary. "

In what way does the tablature differ from the standard staff notation? Is it not important for the player to be aware of each of the individual voices within a contrapuntal piece? Are you talking about the instrument providing one voice of the counterpoint or a number of different voices simultaneously?

Thank you for the question, Gnomon. I am referring to music where many voices run through a piece, entering at different moments: counterpoint. In tablature all the voices are hidden in one time-system which shows only their starting moment, and it is up to the player to determine how long to hold a note while others come and go around it. Staff notation attempts to show this, tab doesn't; but from my experience as a lute player and guitar teacher the question of duration is (a) redundant -- it's always obvious -- and (b) in any case impossible to show accurately all the time, even in staff notation. Unsuccessful and unnecessary.

What I'm talking about is the idea that people have, that staff notation is *real notation* and tablature is a short-cut . Both teachers and musicians can be caught subscribing to this notion all the time.

My point is that it is a load of guff. Both staff notation and tablature are short cuts. Staff notation looks like a more virtuous path simply because it's harder to learn. Both give the essential information, only tablture uses fewer symbols, and is therefore more efficient.

It is absolutely unnecessary to show the separate lines of a fugal piece. If a player fails to extract them intelligently in playing, then that player would also make a bags of the staff notation version. There is a phrase for this: "missing the point" -- the "point" being an old technical term for the musical theme.

A person who is used to reading tablature can not only spot the points of imitation in a piece without hearing it, but can equally well *sing* tunes from tablature. It is a complete system, and you get fluent at it.

As you will have gathered, I feel strongly about this. It was part of the reason I wrote A1921114 "The Three Ages of Music": the persistence of the ignorant pretence that staff notation has some k value in itself; that the *copy* is in some Platonic way superior to the performance.

I understand conductors worshipping the classic scores, but that is an act of humility on their part; they are in Erich Leinsdorf's wonderful phrase "The Composer's Advocate".

Anyway, my message is: Tab users of the world, stop apologising!!!!

Sure tab has it's own merit. It's full-fledged notation (except for a somewhat shortcomming when it comes to tempo... but what the hey, there is also tempo-notation for tabs) And guitarists must certainly not apologize for using it.

*However* This happened yesterday during band practise (I can read staff notation, but I am a bit slow with it - lack of practise): We got new notes (staff) with a complicated riff (in which saxophone and guitar do opposite things but get together in the end...wah, doesn't matter). Anyways, it was very useful for everyone involved to give the notes to the piano player to understand how that part of the tune works. If I was given tab notes the piano player would not have been able to play the tune for me. Hence, I think staff notation has a 'higher' rank than tab on the basis that it is more a 'lingua france' understood by all musicians.

In my personal opinion staff notation is the most conventional notation used by 90% of musicians. Whereas guitar tabs can only be used by guitarists.

Another aspect that makes staff notation superior (IMO) than tab is that you have absolute notes and not positions on frets. If I tune the strings differently I'd have to re-write the whole tab. Staff doesn't care for tuning of the strings.

HELL

>>Staff notation looks like a more virtuous path simply because it's harder to learn.

Surely the advantage of staff notation is that it is more divorced from the instrument in question. I can play tunes written for clarinet on my saxophone or on my guitar. This would be difficult to do if the clarinet music was written in terms of fingering patterns rather than the notes that are supposed to come out of the instrument.

You both make good points for the superior convenience of staff notation, on account of its more general use. Staff notation was invented for singers, and that's where it works best. There are problems they had to overcome to make it work for instruments that play more than a single line, and they solved them over the centuries, largely by borrowing from tablature (the idea of barlines for one).

The problem of retuning the guitar and having to rewrite the tab cuts both ways. In the 17th century a huge genre of music was created for viols playing from tablature ("lyra viol"; more peices were writen for this instrument in 17th century England than for lute). The tunings varied quite a lot, but whatever the tuning, a player could read a new piece straight off the tab!

Superior convenience does not mean superior design, though. The qwerty keyboard is a ghastly abberation, and its unquestionable convenience derives solely from its having cornered the market at a crucial moment.

I didn't mean superior in the sense of 'better' but in the sense of 'higher above in a hierarchy'.

H

Ah. You mean "superior in a Pickwickian sense".

[Note for the gentle lurker: the eqanimity of the Pickwick Club was once threatened when a member called its founder a humbug. Peace was restored when he explained that he didn't mean to say Mr Pickwick was a humbug with the usual connotation of the term, but in a purely Pickwickian sense.]

I read all that twice and still don't get half of what you guys are trying to say...

Anyway...

I'm saying "Tab is good" and Hell is saying "Staff is better" and I'm saying "Oh no it isn't".

It's all painting by numbers at the best.

Ahhh...that's what I thought. Sorry, but I agree with Hell completely.

Interesting. Is it because it's harder to learn, or because it is made to fit all comers like Procrustes' bed?

[google it yourself gentle lurker]

Definitely because it's a lot more compatible. Tabs have way too many shortcomings but are good for their primary use (learning guitar songs, etc.).

I'm truly fascinated. Nobody ever complains about the shortcomings of staff notation; we just put up with what it can't show.

But OK, I do admit it is the universal standard.

You Humbuck!

Sure staff notation has its shortcommings, and so does the latin alphabet and metal coins. The point is just that for the general (in the sense of universal) purpose, nothing better has yet been developped.

What I am saying is: "Staff notation is more general, and for that reason better." You are saying: "Staff notation has shortcommings, for that reason it can't be better than tab"

HELL

I think staff notation is woeful for writing Guitar music. I'd prefer to see G7 | Am7b5 than all those little black dots. But I can read staff notation reasonably well for clarinet or singing.