The problem with relying too much on written transcriptions.

[Toby Walker]

Purely from a subjective standpoint.

As guitar players, we certainly live in interesting times, especially when it comes to learning new pieces and styles of music. With all the technological advances in transcription software and the plethora of available instructional material, the question is how much do we really benefit from them?

Back in the Jurassic period when I was learning how to play the guitar, there was very little instructional books that had anything to do with what I was interested in, which was rock, blues, country, old jazz, and bluegrass music. The materials that did exist had only a handful of examples that were written out, and even those were quite limited in content and accuracy. More often than not, I was left to figure out the music using my ear, and in the cases of sitting down with other musicians, my eyes as well. One well-known instructor, despite his best efforts to accurately transcribe music that was originally recorded in less than optimum conditions from the 20’s and early 30’s - could only come so close.

Yet, looking back I feel that I benefited so much more as a musician from that time period than had I been using the note-for-note transcriptions that abound today. By relying on my ear, which was FAR from perfect, I wound up creating my own musical phrases that were WITHIN the styles of music that I was learning, rather than imitating them note for note. Eventually, I was able to accurately figure out the music as my ear improved, but that only augmented my playing, rather than dominating it.

Surprisingly enough, this also applies to classical music, which for the most part is always written out. When I was studying this style, my teacher would always tell me that the transcription was only the place to start… it was what couldn’t be written out that I needed to practice, which was following my own feelings and coming up with my interpretation within the piece.

If I could express one piece of advice to those use transcriptions it would be this: By all means use them if you feel it helps, but don’t strictly rely on them to give you your end product, unless of course you simply want to mimic the recording exactly. However, if you go the extra mile by limiting your use of those transcriptions as guidelines, rather than a piece of music written in stone, your musicianship - ear, technique, creativity - will improve by leaps and bounds.

[HHP]

One benefit of the time before TAB, instructional videos, and accessible transcriptions was that it fueled the supply of mint condition used instruments available later. People who didn't have the inherent ability, were unwilling to engage in the laborious process of "just figuring it out", or lacked access to musicians to help them cased up those old Martins and Gibsons and stuck them under the bed.

Don't much care if you learn by ear, by notation, by TAB, or by Vulcan Mind Meld. Important thing is to quickly and easily get to a point where you can play something pleasing to you. You can build on that, not be discouraged by it.

If you keep playing and listening, the nuances will work themselves out eventually. We may screw the next generation out of some mint condition instruments, but so be it.

Originally Posted by Toby Walker

if you go the extra mile by limiting your use of those transcriptions as guidelines, rather than a piece of music written in stone, your musicianship - ear, technique, creativity - will improve by leaps and bounds.

Exactly.

There are multiple facets to learning to make music, and number one on my list is ear training.

[Silly Moustache]

Like Toby, there was little or no appropriate "learning materials" when I was getting into it all.

Somewhere I got hold of a booklet of Robert Johnson songs - with keys like Eb, Ab etc., obviously written by a pianist with no thought about the guitar.

It was all about that need on the gramophone disc, and the guitar tuned to whatever sounded near.

I never sought to emulate , I sought to get the "feel" of stuff I was learning.

Somewhere , I have a recording , on a cassette, of two friends and me playing a blues in E for most of a late drunken Saturday night.
Not great music, but each "go-round" encouraged me to try something a bit more way out - up the neck, etc.

Same thing when I got into bluegrass. I was welcomed into a weekly pub session which comprised mainly fiddles and banjos and (I wonder why?) few guitarists, (who probably avoided it) and so round and round we'd go, mainly in D -whilst IU unknowingly honed my flat-picking rhythm style.


For some years, I've attended a week-long bluegrass camp. I've studied guitar with John Lowell, Dobro with Sally Van Meter, Mando with Joe Walsh, and many more.

All dished out tablature. I does not suit me - it is simply not how my brain /fingers work. Show me, play it. Let me "copy" you, ask a question or two, then play it together. I'll have it , or more importantly - my version.

There is no "right" or wrong" - I'm not interested in playing like any of them - that it THEIR style. I will play mine, but there are many in those classes that consider it has to be identical to whatever is written down.

Notation is fine for classical stuff (up to a point) tablature can be enslavement.

[Arthur Blake]

Originally Posted by Toby Walker

I wound up creating my own musical phrases that were WITHIN the styles of music that I was learning, rather than imitating them note for note.

I agree. As one's skill level advances, you've got to put your own mark on the music.

I was listening to Victory Rag played by Wayne Henderson recently, as he was discussing how his daughter got started building guitars.

Liked the tune and started to learn the way he was playing it - exactly. The interesting part is that by listening to his music, I got a feeling about him. You cannot keep your personality from coming through.

Then yesterday, I was playing the piece and just took the basic chord progression framework and added my own style, and branching off into related musical phrases - found it far more natural and satisfying than simply trying to replicate what someone else has done.

[Toby Walker]

Originally Posted by Arthur Blake

I agree. As one's skill level advances, you've got to put your own mark on the music.

I was listening to Victory Rag played by Wayne Henderson recently, as he was discussing how his daughter got started building guitars.

Liked the tune and started to learn the way he was playing it - exactly. The interesting part is that by listening to his music, I got a feeling about him. You cannot keep your personality from coming through.

Then yesterday, I was playing the piece and just took the basic chord progression framework and added my own style, and branching off into related musical phrases - found it far more natural and satisfying than simply trying to replicate what someone else has done.

Bingo. That pretty much sums up what I was talking about. I find it incredibly satisfying to come up with something on my own.

Not that it's the be all end all. In the end, it's up to the player as to how far they wish to go.

[TBman]

I remember when I was a kid wearing out Neil Young's Harvest album trying to figure out the songs. But for non-musicians like myself, its kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle with 10% of the pieces missing. It's better in the long run for people like me to learn it exactly as tabbed, then once the song is under our fingers, put our own interpretations into the music. If I was 30 again, I might wing it more as I would have many years ahead of me to learn, but being 62 I'm better off sticking to learning the tab and go from there.

[rick-slo]

There is legitimacy and value in various ways or combination of ways of learning pieces of music and of having the goal being the playing with note for note accuracy
or for learning to play a general interpretation with one's own stamp in place from the start.

Perhaps the most valuable thing about learning a piece (at least somewhat involved ones) by ear is that it forces you to listen to the piece over and over. You may pick
up details and nuances you could have otherwise missed or glossed over. Learning by your own ears the total package of the tuning used, the individual notes, the note
intervals, where to play those on the fretboard, timing, accents, etc. has value.

However there is no guarantee that the learning of a piece measure by measure (by any method) will give you a good handle of how to express larger musical phrases
and sections with feeling and musicality. Many people get to the point of figuring out how that last little bit of the piece goes and then that's it – they are pooped out with
the piece and they are ready to move on. They don't invest much time or thought into synthesizing the measure by measure method they had been using into the cohesion
desirable for playing broader phrases and the piece as a whole.

One of the advantages of using notation (standard scores, tabs) is that you will likely learn the pieces faster and thus being able to tie larger parts of the piece together
more quickly. Less energy learning the bits and pieces with more energy left over for expressive musicality. Another advantage of being able to readily use notation is that
there is vast amount of it out there of pieces you can browse through and then spend time learning the ones you like.

Immediately making most every piece you are working “your own” rather than that of the original composer is that you may miss new ideas and ways of playing things you
could have benefited from and are thus less likely to move out of and beyond the short comings of the ruts you are currently in.

[dkstott]

I wholeheartedly agree with Derek!!!!!

Sure, for pop songs and simple I,IV,V type blues songs it might be easy to determine things by ear.

But playing fingerstyle Jazz or Classical pieces involves much more than figuring out the standard fare chords or fingerstyle picking pattern.

By working with arrangements from a variety of composers, I have learned quite a bit about each arrangers chord preferences for the desired voicings. Most of which I probably wouldn't have learned simply by listening to a song.

Having the arrangement or chord sheet in front of me eliminates hours & hours of trying to figure where to achieve the appropriate note voicings.

It frees me up to spend much more time on making it my own.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Toby Walker

Purely from a subjective standpoint.

As guitar players, we certainly live in interesting times, especially when it comes to learning new pieces and styles of music. With all the technological advances in transcription software and the plethora of available instructional material, the question is how much do we really benefit from them?sicianship - ear, technique, creativity - will improve by leaps and bounds.

Hi Toby
I'm classically trained, and read notation, scores, chord charts, hands (watch other players), and play by ear…I've been involved with performing for more than 58 years.


Starting as an 8 year old accordionist, by the second week I had a piece of music - be it a score, solo for my trumpet or other instruments, choir etc - it was memorized. I memorized my lesson materials, and all songs I was expected/assigned to learn (and those I learned on my own).

After memorization I was listening to the music and responding/reacting to it, and any other musicians involved, and shaping it to communicate with audiences.

That's been how I approach music for the past 58 years.

To my way of thinking, reliance on charts, tab, scores etc has little to do with current technology, and as has always been the case, has to do with confusing playing correct notes with playing music.

[Toby Walker]

Reading and appreciating all the responses. There are many different ways to skin the same cat, but in the end I think we all can agree on what Larry stated, that it's the musicality of the piece which makes the music, rather than just the correct notes.

[Wyllys]

I'd rather listen to music than read it.

[SprintBob]

As someone who started playing 4+ years ago in my mid-50's, I really appreciate the tools I have available. I feel like I am in catch up mode some times and that is where the tabs, transcriptions, and the wealth of online and multi-media tools seem to be a blessing. But I do feel like I am mature enough to recognize where Toby and others are coming from. I am now at a point where I go back to many songs I have mastered more from a mechanical standpoint than a musical standpoint and I focus on playing them for an audience (a recorder is a powerful tool).

I played the first two years as a self learner but take a lesson every three weeks and listening and playing with my guitar being the vocalist is a common topic.

[MC5C]

Something I learned just recently was that Louis Armstrong learned to read in the riverboat bands in the 1920's, and credited that for his early success. I learned to read almost before I learned to play, certainly I could read music before I got a guitar for the first time. My first guitar lessons were in a classical style, single note tunes, simple chords, all read from notation. I credit this (or discredit it) with never learning how to learn music by ear from records. Never had to, so I never did it. Virtually everything has been transcribed, you could buy a Neil Young song book for an album almost as soon as you could buy the album. Fast forward to learning jazz, and it was heavily theory based so reading and knowing theory helped a lot. I learned how to listen a bit - our lessons would be jotting down an A section/B section of chords and learning the head by ear, and iteratively playing head while teacher comped, comping while teacher played, then playing/improvising while teacher comped. But at that point I was playing mostly by ear. Now, I learn tunes from notation, ear, listen for the center of it, and make it my own. I can confess that I have never, not once, not even close even tried to learn a tune that someone else played note for note, except when I transcribed some Santana solos as part of jazz lessons. I don't seem to have any interest in recreating someone else's innovation.

[LSemmens]

Originally Posted by TBman

I remember when I was a kid wearing out Neil Young's Harvest album trying to figure out the songs. But for non-musicians like myself, its kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle with 10% of the pieces missing. It's better in the long run for people like me to learn it exactly as tabbed, then once the song is under our fingers, put our own interpretations into the music. If I was 30 again, I might wing it more as I would have many years ahead of me to learn, but being 62 I'm better off sticking to learning the tab and go from there.

+1 I've been playing for 50 odd years and have never moved beyond reading charts. However, once I am familiar with a song usually after a couple of good run throughs with the band, I can then play it as I feel it. I never did develop an 'ear but once a song is familiar, I can then "have fun". Especially if I'm playing Bass (sorry, it's electric - please don't shoot me - I'm not even a piano player )