As far as guitar tab goes, I actually had to Google what guitar tab IS. After that I vaguely remembered seeing it early along my music path but when I started guitar I was in a different place in the journey than most. I took up guitar at 11 but I had already been studying music for 6 years, and played first the accordion and then piano. My teacher beat theory into my head, and until I could tell him that the second space from the bottom was called A and it's this key on the keyboard I was not allowed to touch an instrument. But at that time I was 4 yrs and 10 months old. I could read words up to maybe 5 letters long so I knew that those things called A through G were the first 7 letters of the alphabet, and wow, how convenient that these piano keys were the same as those first 7 letters. Everything for the first few weeks of actually playing was in C, so no black keys. Then came the sharps and flats. He gave me such a strong foundation that I was fortunate to have gone to that guy for lessons. Now here's where it turns toward "but that's just me". That all happened in 1956. My exposure in the home was Slovenian ethnic music (polka and waltz) and big band music, some showtune type stuff. In other words, pre-Beatles. Once I heard The Beatles, the accordion went into the case and I only took it out when I wanted to play to remember how or amuse myself.

Now I said all that to say this. In 1963, when I was 12, I wanted a guitar, because I had recently started hearing this thing called rock and roll. I got a very cheap acoustic guitar for Christmas in 1963, and because I knew so much about the nuts and bolts of music, I figured out from my Mel Bay book #1 how to tune it, which incidentally I did by ear as I had perfect pitch then. (That has waned. I now have relative pitch, so if you play a C, I can then identify other tones by hearing how they relate to C in my head.) By the time I went to sleep that night I was playing chords that fairly recently became that thing called CAGED. I got that guitar at 7pm and by the time I went to bed at midnight I had finished book #1. Just after Jan 1st I started lessons with a guy who was about 10 years older than, so 22-ish, who I found via referral from the old man who taught me initially. He was a student of the old man before me, so he taught the same way. I took lessons from him twice a week. After 12 weeks he said he wanted to meet with my parents so he drove me the 2 blocks from his teaching studio to my house. We sat at the kitchen table and he told my parents that while he would be happy to keep taking their money that he really didn't have anything more he could teach me, that I was at a point where it was now a matter of how much time I wanted to put into it. And how that was due to my coming in with such a strong base in fundamentals and theory. He asked if I would go get my guitar, which I did, and then told me "Play that song you played for me right at the end of your lesson." It was a 3 minute "nothing" thing, with lyrics about a similar "nothing". When I finished he told my folks "He wrote that himself, and for his age it's rather complex."

And again, I said all that to say this. That is just the way I did it. I went right past guitar tab because I didn't need it. I knew that seeing an F on the page meant to press this string on that fret and could work out chord inversions and neck positions by myself. Which leads me to reiterate what I have said several times here. Learn your neck in a "planar" way, at a diagonal across all 6 strings, rather than from nut to body. Pick a note in your mind and find every instance of that note on every string with no regard to octave. Know that F is 1-1, 2-6, 3-10, 4-3 and 4-15, etc. Do that with all 12 notes. You won't learn that from tab.

/soapbox mode on

I HATE HATE HATE that guitar lesson have devolved into a teacher teaching songs and not teaching MUSIC. I also don't get why people think it's a good thing to marvel that so many old school musicians don't know chord formations, key structures, etc. But I think that because I WAS taught all of that, and being the only way I know, to me that is the "right" way to learn. In a convoluted way it brings me the the Eagles lyric "A man can use his back or use his brain." Also a funny poster that used to hang in every Army motor pool of a guy hanging a poster that says "The right tool for the job" and the guy was driving nails with a rock instead of a hammer. Sure you CAN become an outstanding player by stumbling around frets or keys or buttons and levers on wind instruments, but the road map that solid basis in theory provides can eliminate a lot of that stumbling.

//soapbox mode off

A guy on Youtube told the story about when he was recently called to be in the house band at Willie Nelson's 90th birthday party concert. Booker T was there. He went to Booker during a break in rehearsals and asked him "Can you show me the voicing you play on that Bm7b5?" And Booker T, one of the best ever, had no idea what he was asking for. He can play it in his sleep, but he can't show it because he doesn't know what it is. One of the best players ever doesn't consciously know any theory. He KNOWS theory. He just doesn't know he knows.

So, sure it can happen. But who here plays 14 hours a day to do all that experimenting that leads to subliminal knowledge of theory?

Which brings me to the tools. BIAB, with "song demo mode" (which I have never used), allows people who know zero about music to "write" songs. Pick a key, pick a style, use demo mode, save that demo creation, and call it your own. What did YOU write? You didn't enter a chord progression, right? You didn't do any production, like regenerating a section because you didn't like the fit of what was originally generated, right? What did YOU actually do? And when it's instrumental, you didn't even write lyrics, which compounds the felony.

There is no satisfaction in the world like writing a song with lyrics that tell a story of your life and then seeing that song get positive response from the listeners. At Herbstock, as we got started, I did a couple of songs that were remakes done in different grooves from a concept album I started and never finished. Songs like I Wish It Would Rain done in reggae, and 6345789 done in a boogie piano groove. Then I popped in a few I wrote. When we finished the first one, Herb, standing closest to me asked "Is that yours?". I said "Yep. One of my 'girl done dun me wrong' songs." And he said "That's really good." Those 3 words made all the driving and the physical toll that the trip took on me worth it. You won't know that feeling until you write something from your soul and people like it.

Songs are nothing more than stories set to music. Tell your story. Use your tools AS tools, not as creators. In other words, be a musician. The carpenter drives the nails, not the hammer.

EDIT: Here's a +++LINK+++ to the song I mentioned with a local guy, Bobby Lee, singing it.

Last edited by eddie1261; 06/16/23 05:06 AM.