Ensemble Guitar music and tablature
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Hampshire Guitar Orchestra » Fun Stuff » Free Music » tablature
Why isn't tablature a good idea?
The free music on this site is in score and tab, but ....
the free music on our Musical Director's other sites (derek-hasted and guitar-workshop),
and all our music to buy is in conventional notation, not tablature.
Tab is about what you do, not what it should sound like.
Here are some things that tab has problems with in an ensemble :
- It constrains you to play in the one position on the neck that the arranger decreed - notation doesn't
- It conceals from you the chance of finding an alternative, possibly easier, fingering - notation doesn't
- It prevents you adding your own interpretation, like taking a repeat in a different position - notation doesn't
- It conceals the harmony's structure so you can't recognise patterns and progressions - notation doesn't
- You can't see where on the page your ensemble partners are by what you hear them play - easy with notation
- Tablature is specific to guitar - with our free score you can make music with flautists, recorder players, violinists and more, because our music can be read by other instrumentalists.
Tablature is like stabilisers on a kiddie's bike - it gets you started, but it really has no street cred!
So if you're an avid TAB reader, download our score too, and study the ups and downs of the notes - they map exactly to what you hear.
- You KNOW it makes sense
- What you might not know is that with 6 months' study you'll be able to read notation faster than tab.
And that's a step worth taking!
If you came to this page via a Search Engine, you're probably a bit disappointed, but our site has a habit of doing well in Google searches!