PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Hey Peter Gannon. I've got a question.

Tab was not around when most of us started, as Mario pointed out. We learned from the ground up. By that I mean what the notes on a scale are, what the intervals were, which leads to why chords are related. All the tab in the world won't teach you what a 4th is, or why the 6th is minor.

WHY do people resist learning theory?

Someone (maybe Thumper?) posted a link to Russian guitarist Viktor Verkholashin playing Mozart's Turkish March, a great piece by my favorite composer ever. The context of that post was that tab would help him play it. Well, okay. Here's where old training and experience kicks in. Thump, this is in NO WAY meant to be a shot at you.

As I listened to this rendition, all I could think was "He needs tab to play THAT? Sheet music would be WAY better." The bass line on that piece is mainly root and 5th, with a few chromatic scales tossed in there. As soon as the piece started, I said "Okay. He is in E major now, soon to move to A minor after the into line." (I have heard this piece many times in music classes in college.) Did you know that was E just by listening? (Ear training. Also from college.) Then in the second motive it changed to A major, which incorporates the "A chord family) D major (the 4th) and F# minor (the 6th). You won't learn what the 4th and 6th of a scale are by reading tab.

Each section contained nothing exotic. It was all chords within the "chord family" of the root.

Everybody uses SOME form of tab, especially guitar players who prep for a session or a rehearsal where the itinerary calls for learning a new song. Billy posted "Twinkle Twinkle" on this thread. If I landed here from Mars and had to play that song tonight, I would have a paper in front of me that looks like this:

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
C C C C F F C / F F C C G G C /

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
C C F F C C G / C C F F C C G /

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
C C C C F F C / F F C C G G C /

When I chart, the / key means to tie it to the chord before and not strum it.

Now, that simple chart is the first few courses of bricks as you build your firepit. The next course is where you think about embellishing. Do you want to do something a little off piste and maybe incorporate air vents? If so you allow for that variation from the blueprint and leave out one brick on all 4 sides of the next row. They you lay the course above it without mortar, step back, look at it, walk around it, assess it, and decide if you keep the vents or not. To relate that to the chord chart, in that middle row, should I play G major or G 7th? Let's do it once with a major and then with a 7th and then decide.

BUT, through all of that, you have to know how to use a trowel and concrete! You have to know what a 7th is. (Oh no! Not THEORY!!)

I see a similarity between learning music at an advanced age to how I saw how many people of a certain age were scared to death of computers. I once had to add a stick of RAM to a computer for a customer. The guy looked inside the case when I took the cover off (and vacuumed 2 years of dust out of it) and just shook his head when he saw all the parts. I said "Let me show you how really simple this is." I pulled off the power cable from a hard drive and showed him how it only goes on one way. I showed him the memory slot and how the RAM was slotted so it could only go in the right way. I showed him the card slots, explained what everything did. I then told him that when he wanted a second computer I would guide him in buying the parts and we'd build it from scratch together. 6 months later he did that. We sat at a table for 2 hours and then booted his new computer. (It would have taken me 20 minutes had I not also been teaching and letting him do everything.) When we finished, as I was loading Windows, he said "That was really not all that difficult."

Music theory is the same way. It is NOT like climbing all 765 steps to the top of The Great Pyramid of Giza. It's more like the 91 steps of Chichen Itza in Mexico. And whichever you choose to walk up, you walk up those steps one at a time, and when you get there you feel a sense of accomplishment. I walked up the 284 spiral stairs in the Arc de Triomphe rather than take the elevator. The elevator is faster, but do you get a deep sense for the majesty of the place that way?

Apply that logic to music. Invest 6 weeks taking theory lessons 2 nights a week. You will feel the majesty of your musical accomplishments much more deeply. Every time I sit down at a keyboard or strum a guitar I am taken back to my young youth and smile a prayer of thanks to the old man who made me learn theory before I could touch an instrument. Take those lessons and all of this will come clear to you. Aging is not an excuse to stop learning. I am learning to speak some Hindi so I can mess with the scammers better. I am 72. Do I plan to go to India where Hindi is the common language? Of course not. (I mean, it's INDIA!) But if I can speak 45-50 phrases that apply to scammer baiting, it will allow me to do it better, so I am learning the linguistic equivalent of music theory.

I'm not sure how this discussion became a TAB vs standard notation thread. And I definitely disagree with the idea that TAB discourages learning music theory.

I learned to play the same way you guys did with stacks of Mel Bay books. That was my first experience with standard notation.

All I'm asking is if Peter Gannon would consider paying the fees and creating BIAB arrangements for copyrighted songs. I would gladly pay extra for song packs with professionally done arrangements done by the good folks at PG.

+1

They won't even pay for newer samples by relevant people. Pick up a pencil and do your own manuscripts, since you know music so well. Bluegrass strummer...

Jesus Eddie. You really are a miserable sonofab*tch aren't you? LOL

But it ain't my fault, nor is it anyone else's fault. Lighten up dude.

I agree

+1

Yes, but as with all stringed instruments where you play those notes can make a huge difference. I read as well as use tab. I can do both with ease actually. Johnny Smith used to write the guitar parts as they actually sound in standard notation, so you had to read bass clef as well if you wanted to read his arrangements. Tab shows it all on one staff which does make it easier in many situations.

There is a place for both obviously. Hal Leonard has made a small fortune with all the note for note tab they have created over the years, which also includes the standard notation in almost every case.

For the people that want to learn the "real" arrangement of guitar centric songs, then tab is ideal. It is no slight to anyone as far as I am concerned if they want tab vice notation. There is certainly a place for it all.

There are also plenty of theory books that use tab as well. The theory doesn't care how you read it. Most people who have played a while know more theory than they think they do. They don't realize it, they just know this chord goes well with this one and this one seems to lead to that one etc.


All fun.

I highly doubt Peter Gannon would be interested in reading this thread.

First, BiaB already has this feature, you search a copyrighted song, and the style picker gives you a list of similiar styles to choose from.

Second, chord progressions are not copyright protected, so PG doesn't have to pay anything.

Third, only melody notations are subject to copyright, but a user can just do a google search and find the notes in seconds.

Fourth, if a user doesn't know how to use google, he can still use BiaB's ACW feature to figure out the chords of a song.

Fifth, BiaB is chord based, different from Guitar Pro, which is note based. BiaB serves a different purpose.

Villain,

Methinks you are taking yourself way too seriously. I know being a "professional guitarist" must be really demanding. I know several "professional guitarist's" but I've never heard a single one of them refer to themselves as a "professional guitarist". If asked they say something like "I pick a little guitar" or if they're being serious they say "I'm a session player on guitar".

Also, as a side tip, numbering your reasons for or against an issue doesn't add weight to your point. In this case it just shows that you still don't understand the discussion.

Therefore, for clarification, let me quote myself;

"All I'm asking is if Peter Gannon would consider paying the fees and creating BIAB arrangements for copyrighted songs. I would gladly pay extra for song packs with professionally done arrangements done by the good folks at PG."

Optionally, why doesn't Bob Chapman pay the fees to have a professional transcriber and studio musicians to do professionally done arrangements? Why should he pay for something one guy wants?

If you get what you want, will you finally post something to show us all how great of a player you are?

Eddie,

If you're waiting on me to prove I'm a "great player" then I'm afraid you're just going to have to keep on waiting. Even at my best I was just a pretty decent flatpicker.

I did get to meet a lot of great players during the time I competed in flatpicking contests. I earned some "cred" among those guys by winning or placing in several contests. But I never had any delusions about being "great".

I don't see how any of that relates to the topic at hand.

That doesn't make you a better player or a better person. It just means you met some people. I used to drink beer with Joe Walsh when he was at Kent State. That doesn't make me a better person or a better player.

PS He rarely bought.



Then there should be recordings you can post, right? Nobody here knows if you can play at all because you have never posted any work. Play us something from your professional charts written in 2/4 time. Post some of your work. Shut me up!

LOL. Eddie, even if I believed in god then I don't think even he/she could shut you up. There's a live radio program posted in my tag line that's an hour long. Feel free to listen to it if you're so inclined. Or don't. It's just me and a couple of really good friends.

Flatpicking contests typically aren't recorded unless done so by a friend or family member. My wife was packing our son around on her hip so she wasn't doing any filming.

I still don't understand your infatuation with me proving I'm "great" since I've never said I was. I'm just your current target for you to try to spread your misery on. I ain't buying into it. Spread your self loathing elsewhere.

I listened to that radio show twice. It was many minutes of music that all sounded the same and it was just so so.

Now write us something.

I can almost say with certainty that Eddie is not a bluegrass fan.

I'm not playing your game Eddie. I've written 40 plus songs but none of them are posted online since they were done years before being online was a thing.

Why are you high jacking this thread? What do you gain by being a pain in the a*s?

Bluegrass, green grass, mowing grass...

None of it. An endless stream of 16th note scales.

That's the funny thing. Most of those songs on that broadcast weren't bluegrass. LOL

Since eddie1261 has high jacked this thread, I'm going to start a new one with nothing but a simple question. That's all this one was supposed to be.