As Skip said,I go to a tab after hearing it a few times and thinking of the melody as I read it.
I find myself more able to just play along with others by ear most of the time,but I like knowing tab is usually available,should I need it.

Hi Steve,
Exactly! .....Jack

Patrick1962,

Attached below is a tablature that demonstrates a way to use tablature to allow you to answer the question you’ve asked. The tablature is for the song Red River Valley. For most people, it’s an old familiar song with a very recognizable melody.

The first half of the tablature consists only of the melody notes. The second half is an arrangement of the song that is intended to be a Scruggs-style interpretation of the melody. If you compare the first half of the tablature with the second half, measure by measure, you should be able to identify each melody note in the Scruggs-style arrangement.

If you create a tablature like this for the song arrangements you’ve learned, you should be able to identify where the melody notes are in those arrangements. It’s an approach that forces you to identify the melody notes, and just as importantly, it forces you to determine exactly when those notes are intended to be played.

Red River Valley - Melody + Arrangement.pdf

Red River Valley - Melody + Arrangement.tef

Excellent Wayne,
Very helpful and accurate and thanks a lot...Jack

quote:

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Originally posted by RB3

Patrick1962,

Attached below is a tablature that demonstrates a way to use tablature to allow you to answer the question you’ve asked. The tablature is for the song Red River Valley. For most people, it’s an old familiar song with a very recognizable melody.

The first half of the tablature consists only of the melody notes. The second half is an arrangement of the song that is intended to be a Scruggs-style interpretation of the melody. If you compare the first half of the tablature with the second half, measure by measure, you should be able to identify each melody note in the Scruggs-style arrangement.

If you create a tablature like this for the song arrangements you’ve learned, you should be able to identify where the melody notes are in those arrangements. It’s an approach that forces you to identify the melody notes, and just as importantly, it forces you to determine exactly when those notes are intended to be played.

Red River Valley - Melody + Arrangement.pdf

Red River Valley - Melody + Arrangement.tef

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Wayne's pdf reminds me very much of Bruce Stockwell's Feb. 2007 article in Gerald Jones' old online magazine Banjo Sessions (now sadly defunct): "Melodies and Rolls: Creating a Bluegrass Banjo Solo." It also uses "Red River Valley" as its example, although its focus is more on arranging than analyzing existing tab. On the other hand, both approaches start with the melody (which presupposes the user can find it). Regardless, I've always regarded this article as a gem, and never hesitate to circulate it.

“ how long the spaces are between them.” This! My experience tells me most newcomers to banjo or music in general aren’t advanced enough to capture this. However, the article isn’t for absolute beginners as he mentions learning some Scruggs tunes to get an idea how to construct solos.

Wayne-freakin' awesome bro! This along with the article posted by Rich will enable me to reverse engineer the process..thanks guys!!

quote:

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Originally posted by Joel Hooks

I cannot speak to bluegrass, but notation solved this eons ago. Many banjo pieces, where necessary, are written with two voices (see description attached below under "accompanied melody"). This could be added into tab.

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This same thing is accomplished in Jack Hatfield's tabs that put the melody notes in larger and outlined characters -- and any other tabs that distinguish the melody notes by character format. Two voices in one staff. What's not the differently formatted melody is accompaniment.

And why people just don't read notation for this, I can't say. I personally believe tablature is easier for bluegrass banjo, since the lines provide a representation of the strings. I long ago started seeing the roll patterns and fingering shapes in the numbers on the lines. All the notes on the banjo don't exist within the five lines of a notation staff. They do in the five lines of tablature, where ledger lines are never needed.

This works for me. I'm not at all making universal or absolute claims for tab. Well, except that it never needs ledger lines.

Finding the notes is very simple.
Reading the timing correctly is a bit more challenging.

I learned to read time when I began taking snare drum lessons in the 4th grade in our public school here in Tenants Harbor,Maine.
Our teacher,John Parker,taught all the band instruments and started me on a practice pad and reading time off the written page.
In drum notation the time is written in standard musical notation,but all notes are on one line.

Reading 16th,8th,1/4,1/2,whole and multi-measure "tacits" time correctly made playing tab (banjo,guitar,mandolin,etc.) later a walk in the park.

Learning to read banjo tab easily hinges on learning to read time correctly.

Leave the tab alone. Sing the melody. Find the notes on the banjo. Add roles to your melody.

I found tab a huge help in learning the melodies of Huckleberry Hornpipe,Soldier's Joy,Whiskey Before Breakfast,Red Haired Boy and Kitchen Girl (played in A w/o a capo) as played by the fiddle,
What I learned from going through that was now being able to play fiddletunes and piano bar tunes on the fly,by ear.
Tab taught me to be a more complete ear player.

My apologies if this has already been stated, but banjo rolls sometimes displace a melody note by an 1/8 note or more. Sometimes the melody note is omitted but implied by the roll/phrase. Some rolls leave reality behind entirely for a phrase or more.

I think the main thing is to be able to hum or sing the unadorned melody and then the melody note in the roll becomes more obvious.

I like to strip a song down until the melody is lost, then add one note back in :).

I feel like tab can be really good for some people and really bad for others, and you don't know who is who until you get into the learning process.

quote:

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Originally posted by JMalmsteen

Leave the tab alone. Sing the melody. Find the notes on the banjo. Add roles to your melody.

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^^ That can be a v-e-r-y  t-a-l-l order [i.e. nigh impossible] for some people.  [Don't ask how I know!  ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Owen

quote:

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Originally posted by JMalmsteen

Leave the tab alone. Sing the melody. Find the notes on the banjo. Add roles to your melody.

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^^ That can be a v-e-r-y  t-a-l-l order [i.e. nigh impossible] for some people.  [Don't ask how I know!  ]

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Too many years in the seat of a Cockshutt ..

.... oddly (?) enough a regular at one of the jams around here was just recently telling us that he works as a machinery operator for a farmer.  He mentioned that with GPS*, one of the perks is that once it's on track, he has several minutes to practice/play his mandolin/ukulele before the next turn-around.  

* an experience I've not had.  

People learn in different mixtures of ways through choice and/or circumstance.
Pretty difficult in hearing the end product how it was reached.Our choice of notes and timing are derived in many ways.
I grew up playing only by ear,but when I discovered tab in the mid-seventies it opened a whole new world for someone who felt they were isolated from what was going on with banjos.

quote:

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Originally posted by JMalmsteen

Leave the tab alone. Sing the melody. Find the notes on the banjo. Add roles to your melody.

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I'm afraid this is an over simplification.

No way you can progress by not learning note for note  from others' arrangements.

Be it from figuring out by ear, reading tab (preferably a combination of both), it doesn't matter, but just 'adding rolls to a melody' doesn't equal playing Bluegrass Banjo.

Hi Bruno,
Yes exactly....Jack

When I lucked into getting a lesson from Bela (when he taught at The Music Emporium) I had been reading and playing tablature from BNL and Oak books for a couple of years.
Bela asked why I had wanted to take my first lesson with him and I said a certain player from the Northern Lights bluegrass band advised me to learn Dixie Hoedown (the tune I heard him play and asked him to show me how to play it) from Bela who had taught it to him.

He asked if I knew how to read tab I said Yes.
He then took a blank sheet of staff paper and in about 2 minutes wrote out the tab for Dixie Hoedown and asked me to play what he had written.
I played it back to him exactly as written at a slow enough speed to play the notes and timing correctly the first time through.

He said "You read that stuff pretty good."I told him about learning to do that from BNL and Oak books.

I play Dixie Hoedown my own way each time I play it,now.There is no danger in needing to play it exactly as written the first time.Tab doesn't lock you into playing something one way,only unless you choose to play it the same every time.

I would find that very boring.

I don't believe I'd be able to play anything the same way,twice (thank God).

^^ "you" .... specifically or generally?  

Couple of thoughts here about tab as sometimes it gets maligned. Imo it is a wonderful life giving tool as an end to the means of playing banjo.

The great Kenny Ingram told me that "your ear is your most valuable tool." That, and seeing what other top players can hear so easily and accurately, has led me to postulate that an extension of Kenny's thought is that the reason so many really good players are really good is because they have a great ear.

Now my musical ear is not good. When I listen to music/banjo, I am like a hard of hearing man in a conversation. I constantly am saying: "what did you say...what did you say? Two tools have really helped me here. 1. Amazing slow-downer. It slows the speech down and lets me constantly repeat it. 2. Tab. It puts exactly what was said in black and white in front of me and shows me. That is why, when a Flatt and Scruggs song is played, I would like to have the exact transcription. It is not because I am trying to play exactly like Earl ( I have no chance in God's green earth to to that). It is because I want to know EXACTLY what that sound I heard was. That is my chance to improve my hearing.

2. Sonny Osborne when talking about the learning process often said: " Learn how to play exactly what some player, who you like and who does not make errors, plays. Then you will have developed the necessary finger dexterity to play what you want. After that go look to different musical sources and inspirations and then you can play it like you want to.

Left to my own abilities/inclinations, I would play everything mostly with a forward roll and pauses. Not good. Not smooth. Not accurate with the melody like Scruggs when he plays the syllables (don't you love how he does it..how he NAILS it!) But when I get to look at tab and play with tab (small segment over and over for 10 minutes as Geoff Hohwald advocates and also Earl.. */* 1000), I get my fingers used to moving in different patterns while also noting of a better way to get a note and get it in the best place possible.

When you are a low talent person like myself, you have to look for all the ways possible to learn and improve.

Ken

Tab is simply a way to learn how a tune goes.
No different than listening to a person play the tune.

Thanks guys...I truly wish I could be like and am envious of those people that can just listen to a song and in short order reproduce what they heard. ..and yes, I do understand that to some degree it is an acquired skill but alas, for me, its one I am unable to do..and yes, I have tried..but as I said earlier in most everything I set out to learn I tend to be hyper-analytical, especially after my accident...except with music..seems that with music that part of my brain just shuts off and I get caught up in the song like it was magic or something. For me, tab, just like mathematics, makes sense.. ya know? I have been working with the suggestions you all have given but am still having a difficult time figuring out where the melody notes are when implied or absent...Im hoping that there is some type of pattern that I will be able to recognize eventually..although a little frustrating I kinda like the challenge, like solving an equation or breaking a code..crap! rambling on again like an old fool..anyways, thanks everybody

Patrick, can you recognize the melody in a Scruggs-style arrangement when someone ELSE plays it?