It's more than just the tablature. If I said something about the "bottom string", which E would you assume I'm referring to? As Zen says, it's about your POV.
zenguitar wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 3:37 pm
TAB is designed to look like the guitar neck as if you are looking at it while playing.
It is literally showing you where to put your fingers.
Andy
That's okay for someone with scoliosis or a lap steel but generally you look along the neck so the low E is at the top. Also if you're following an instruction video it's the opposite way up to what you're watching. Maybe I'll go with Drew's solution.
I feel I’m in a pretty good position to answer this question because for years I played the guitar “upside down”, i.e. a right-handed guitar played in a left-handed stance.
A couple of years ago I decided to go straight and play conventional left-handed.
When I was playing “upside down” I could construct a direct link in my mind between TAB and finger position by imagining a perspective from behind the guitar, looking through a transparent neck.
Posts:10110Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:00 amLocation: Manchester, UK
“…I can tell you I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career” - (folk musician, Manchester).
zenguitar wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 4:54 pmFor me it has always seemed completely natural that I am looking over the neck and not along it.
I've always seen it like that too. Rather like when you poke your head over some rack gear to see the I/O, it's nice when the designers have thought to put upside down labels there because that's the right orientation for that view. (Though they put it both ways up there — and that would get hella messy with tablature!)
I was never much of a guitarists but I learned the chords for the songs of my day, Beatles, Shads, Dave Clark 5...from piano copies and had no idea that tab existed until fairly recently!
It seems to me to be a bit pointless? OK I learned melodies by ear supported by the chords but I remembered enough notation from school to work out the notes if I had to. Better I think to have some idea of which note is where on the neck?
ef37a wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 12:44 am
I was never much of a guitarists but I learned the chords for the songs of my day, Beatles, Shads, Dave Clark 5...from piano copies and had no idea that tab existed until fairly recently!
It seems to me to be a bit pointless? OK I learned melodies by ear supported by the chords but I remembered enough notation from school to work out the notes if I had to. Better I think to have some idea of which note is where on the neck?
Dave.
I think the value of tab is that there are multiple incidences of the same note on a fretboard, as opposed to just the one position on a keyboard, so tab helps to keep you in the right area for what's to follow.
Like you I remember buying sheet music in my teens but many of these were printed in piano friendly keys & unplayable on guitar. My first exposure to tab was from a guy called (I think) Phil Hilbourne who transcribed solos for Guitarist magazine. The first one I saw was Living On A Prayer, so probably mid 1980's.
Dynamic Mike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 1:11 am
I think the value of tab is that there are multiple incidences of the same note on a fretboard, as opposed to just the one position on a keyboard, so tab helps to keep you in the right area for what's to follow.
Yes, keyboard players sometimes forget this. There is an established means of indicating position in notation as well, but tab seems easier / faster to most folks, I guess. I like tab, but hate seeing it by itself, and even more so in ASCII form.
Yes Mike! I remember piano copies being in the "wrong" key, very often not the one on the 45! I worked out fairly quickly that I could transpose from E flat (a piano favourite IIRC) to C quite easily. I dare say my results were not strictly in line with music theory but twas only R&R!
Got caught out mind. First run through of the Searchers "Needles and Pins" the singer was going great guns until the second verse then everything went pear shaped. We teens did not know about key shifts! AND it was not marked on the piano copy.
zenguitar wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 4:54 pmFor me it has always seemed completely natural that I am looking over the neck and not along it.
I've always seen it like that too. Rather like when you poke your head over some rack gear to see the I/O, it's nice when the designers have thought to put upside down labels there because that's the right orientation for that view. (Though they put it both ways up there — and that would get hella messy with tablature!)
I’m in this camp. Seems to make sense to me the way it is
I think maybe the reason we don't question it is that we've got used to it that way. But if you plot a chord on tab it just seems to me to look like an upstroke because you tend read down the page, so the top E string appears first.
Dynamic Mike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 9:57 am
But if you plot a chord on tab it just seems to me to look like an upstroke because you tend read down the page, so the top E string appears first.
Posts:10110Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:00 amLocation: Manchester, UK
“…I can tell you I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career” - (folk musician, Manchester).
Having the high E at the top is a convention. It could be the other way. But ... we do use 'higher' and 'lower' for pitch. Maybe some languages use 'tighter' and 'looser'. I have no idea. Given that a more trebly pitch is called 'higher', the convention makes sense. Tab is often seen next to notation, and tab and notation (roughly) track together.
Believe it or not, the more difficult part of reading music is the rhythm. The notes are the easy part. Here, tab uses conventional notational symbols for rhythm, and if you can read that, you're more than halfway to reading music.
Tab pretty much mirrors notation for scales played across the fingerboard. Play the same scale on one string and it's dead flat. Play chords or a melody and it can go well out of sync.
