If the subject of this diatribe still eludes you, let me say, we don't need no stinkin' tabs. The music should flow from the ear through the heart to the fingers. Like it says in the old Pete Seeger book, Hell, there ain't not notes on a banjo, you just play it.
Get your right hand right and let left hand follow. Not everyone was born to be a clawhammer curmdudgeon. You must earn the right. So get out there and play several hours each day, or give it up. It is the love of playing that makes you a clawhammer player, there is certainly no money it. it is an advanced level of life experience that makes you a curmudgeion.
That's the facts, live up to them.
24 Comments |
 | captbanjo says:
7/12/2011 4:23:32 PM
Funny you reference the Pete Seeger book; a book that used tabs. In fact, I remember Pete saying one time (Tennesse Banjo Camp) how he faxed a tab to Tony Trischka one time.
Surely, in spite of this deep flaw, Pete is worthy of Curmudgeonidity?
|
 | Amy Buck says:
7/12/2011 4:39:10 PM
Hmmm. I'll tell The Curmudgeon about this. He is right this second playing banjo with a friend... Heavens, there are 2 banjos, both playing D tunes in C.
|
 | Bob Buckingham says:
7/12/2011 5:08:41 PM
Curmudgeons know what tabs are but we should all refrain from having too much of a relationship with them as soon as they can. They are like the books you get with devices that tell you almost how to set up the said device and almost how to work it once it is set up. Tabs tell you almost how to play a tune. They have a place as a reference as every curmudgeon worth their salt can't remember everything...they have been around too long for that!
|
 | clawhammerer says:
7/12/2011 5:27:50 PM
I reckon Tab are about the same thing as training wheels for clawhammer. Either that or the old diet drink in the pink can.
|
 | Pluckin Mutha says:
7/12/2011 5:48:45 PM
I'm with you Curmudgeon.
I've bought books with Tabs, (as recently as 1974), but I don't have the discipline to learn a whole song from a tab. I look at them enough to get the shape, but learn the song from what I listen to, or what I've heard.
The only full songs I learned was when I started, with Pete Seeger's book and learned "Cripple Creek" and "Old Joe Clark"
Mutha
|
| captbanjo says:
7/12/2011 6:05:15 PM
If using ears only works for you, I think that's fantastic. On the other hand, I DO know many people who have used tablature with great results as a guide to learning. I continue to do so and I can play in a jam or on stage along with people just fine without any tab or other aids. It's simply another tool that may or may not be used, depending upon the person who is learning. There is certainly no 'right or wrong' way. When I use tab I take the advice of several teachers I had years ago, "learn it from the paper as quickly as possible and then get rid of the paper". From there, the only limits are in my musical abilities.
|
| Bob Buckingham says:
7/12/2011 7:56:02 PM
Xactly Capt, that is what I tell my students, then I don't give them anymore tabs and show how to hear with their eyes and see with their ears...it works.
|
| Amy Buck says:
7/12/2011 7:57:27 PM
Hmmm. I'll tell The Curmudgeon about this. He is right this second playing banjo with a friend... Heavens, there are 2 banjos, both playing D tunes in C.
|
| Amy Buck says:
7/12/2011 8:25:58 PM
I don't know how that got posted twice.
|
| captbanjo says:
7/13/2011 5:14:59 AM
Gosh, I thought he'd just gone back to picking the same tune with a friend!
|
 | Jim Yates says:
7/18/2011 7:55:10 PM
Not another thread on the value/lack of value of Tabs. This is like the "What is folk music?" discussions that used to appear in Sing Out! magazine in the sixties. They ran for years and never came to a conclusion. They still pop up now and again, but most folks avoid them. Let's just agree to disagree on whether or not tabs (or capos or playing covers...) are useful. If you'd really like to argue/discuss this, I've linked one of the dozens of threads on BHO that have discussed Tabs. This one is still active, so knock yourselves out.
|
| Bob Buckingham says:
7/18/2011 8:15:41 PM
Thanks Jim. Insanity reigns or is that rains!
|
 | ElGringorio says:
7/18/2011 9:36:16 PM
Gather round and let me tell you about that tab. It will form as a habit and seep in your soul, til the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal. So you just walk on by and let that tab be.
|
 | GSCarson says:
7/19/2011 8:18:01 AM
Never worked for me, but then I guess you know that pretty well chief curmudgeon and assistant chief & pie baker.
Just got this neat fiddle tune book Walt & Clare wrote that someone gifted me with, it has about a million fiddle tunes in it that I can't read yet, I've been scared learning to read might mess up my banjo picking and fiddlin. Someday I want to learn how but it ain't happened yet so far. See ya at Clifftop..
|
 | Tim Sander says:
7/19/2011 1:54:03 PM
Maybe I'm in the wrong group. I thought a curmudgeon was an old fart like me and that if one of those happened to like to frail, that this would be the group to belong to. But...I'm still in the novice stages of learning and may never have the musical skills to learn by ear, so I'm still dependent on tabs for at least figuring out the basic melody and chord structures....of course I'm collecting tabs a hell of a lot faster than I can learn them all, but can't find quite a few that I really want to learn on the other hand.
|
| Bob Buckingham says:
7/19/2011 4:14:38 PM
Tabs are ok you just don't want to get married to them.
|
 | black flag says:
10/15/2011 6:44:13 PM
What are tabs?
|
| Bob Buckingham says:
10/15/2011 8:15:57 PM
Tabs are the doohickies that you lift to open a can of beer.
|
 | AlpacaLips says:
10/19/2011 4:56:28 PM
I play songs I know by ear and memory. I don't need tabs for that. But for a song I never heard before I can get to know it faster using tabs and ears than with ears alone.
|
 | Common Tater says:
10/30/2011 4:42:05 PM
An old blues man I knew in Brazos County, Texas tol' me: "Hell, boy, you don't read notes; you play 'em".
|
| Bob Buckingham says:
10/30/2011 6:31:56 PM
Sounds right.
|
 | Crusty says:
3/3/2013 8:12:30 AM
In my youth I played trombone for 4 years and eventually developed a semi-professional clear and sweet intonation, but I always played from sheet music and I was lost if it wasn't available. I considered myself a technician and not a musician, and the same thing can happen with the banjo if you place too much reliance on tabs. I eventually lost interest in the trombone once I advanced to the point that I could play anything I saw on a score sheet (though girls was big factor too). I'm learning clawhammer now and I'm going to do it differently this time.
|
| Bob Buckingham says:
3/3/2013 9:58:31 AM
Crusty, don't look for girls while playing banjo but your statement rings true with me otherwise.
|
| Crusty says:
3/3/2013 5:26:06 PM
I'm familiar with that effect - trombone players didn't attract them either. ;-)
|
Post a Comment
|
You must be logged in and a member of this group to post a comment.
|
