Do players need help with music?

[John Cadd]

When you talk to players do you find they need help with music or different keys at all? Or are they all fully trained in every key.Is there room to help them to help themselves.
This is a question not only about classical playing.
Do players wish they could escape the TABS system.TABS is good if you can`t read music.
If you had a system to convert from TABS to music would it be welcome? TABS is good. Music is good Both is better. Is there a demand? I could help them.

[Ned Knepp]

In my experience, people who read musical notation like to have musical notation and people that read tabs like tabs. (There are also those of us that subscribe to the "hear the song, play the song" school of music.)

I suppose that being able to convert one to the other would be handy for people that have one and want the other and it might be interesting to see.

[FRANK]

this is available for a free down load called guitar pro 5

[Tom Krebs]

Back when I taught. I found that Tab junkies had poor timing and no real sense of chord theory, or any theory. Its more like paint by numbers.

[Ned Knepp]

Not that I disagree with you, Tom, but I also know people just like this that read music just fine. Some of them are good musicians that can't play anything with out written music. There is a lot of variation in music players out there. A lot of tab users are people with very little or no musical training. One of the strengths of tablature is that it gives access to music to people that are not musicians.

I've known a LOT of people that started taking guitar lessons and stopped because they wanted to "play songs, not practice scales". Many of these people gave up all together. I think that learning to read music is a good thing but some of us just want to make music for ourselves and need some help getting there.

In some cases, we are able to bypass the issue by applying a good ear and a willingness to experiment but tablature can be a good starting place for more complex tunes. The form has become very sophisticated and, I believe, can rival musical notation in recording music to be played by a single fretted instrument. I have a lot of respect for people that can sight read musical notation but I think there is plenty of room for both and have found that many tab users are good musicians despite the inability to read music.

[Antonio Cotichini]

In my opinion, people who goes to buy a new car do not appreciate advices on how to drive.
I don't build guitars, just repair them, but the only advice I feel I can give to my customers is about the way they should care about them.

[FRANK]

good tom i agree the black dot and flag is the only way to go it is international language a German speaking only German can read the same stuff i can read in American .any one can play tabs, not everyone can read music ,it would be cool if you could help john but i dont really see a lot of people flocking toward reading real music. i see 7% of the population willing to learn at first then it goes to 3 %

[Ron Frazier]

What is the Nashville tuning I hear about?

Ron

[Ned Knepp]

Ron,
You replace the low E, A, D, G strings with smaller gauge strings and tune them an octave higher. The cording is the same but the guitar is pitched higher. It helps separate the sound of two guitars in the same band plus the higher pitch sound cuts across the other instruments a bit better. Some people break 12 string set into two sets of 6 and use one for "nashville" tuning but D' Addario sells sets specifically built for this too.

[Rick Gentry]

What a great topic.

I have the opportunity to play with a lot of small church groups, and the notation is as varied as the players. Most worship leaders will email mp3s and charts. Some of us will just give our cd out to the band, and everybody just needs to learn it by ear for the show. In my experience, few band leaders will write out lead sheets, because we want the band to have their own voice. All one really needs is the chords, and the chemistry of the individual members to make awesome and moving music. Also, not everyone can count bars, repeat signs and al segnos.

On Christmas eve, we led worship with about ten songs, and had little time to run through before (10:00PM service). So, that bit of butterflies opened up the creativity and we stretched solo sections, and had accidental rhythmic changes we didn't practice, and basically let the spirit of the music take over. It was hypnotic and very real for everybody, instead of like a machine. You cannot do this with every group, but when the vibe and the chemistry is right, look out!

Merry Christmas friends.

[John Cadd]

I think a magazine would be able to use this idea of mine best.I have a copyright on it as far as I know. I have looked for a while . The best test is it worked for me.I started from scratch.To pinpoint the main difficulty, a player needs to know where a note is on the guitar.If he,/she/or it needs a chord he needs to know where to put his fingers.If you throw all the keys at a player he needs to understand hundreds of things suddenly.That is a scary situation. You can use this without practicing keys and you will see straight away where to put your fingers .You can easily learn how a flat or sharp works. That`s not too much to learn. Major and Minor keys work the same way with this.
So---what magazine would you recommend to contact ? Every type of guitar would be able to use this. The best thing is it would be very cheap and would replace large chord books and music theory books. Even Paul McCartney would get it. Drop me a line Paul.

[FRANK]

I AM RIGHT HERE JOHN

[FRANK]

O PLEASE DO TELL JOHN