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Super cool, great job. Looks like a really fun project. This really highlights why sheet notation is so much better at describing music than tablature. The adva

Super cool, great job. Looks like a really fun project. This really highlights why sheet notation is so much better at describing music than tablature. The advantage of tabs is that they tell you which version of the same note to play (You can play the same note in up to 6 places in the guitar). However, sheet notation tells you precisely the duration of each note, and can often include the intended articulation. Writing music is fascinating, here is an excellent breakdown of different systems which have been developed, and how they came to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4

kjkjadksj 2y ago
The biggest advantage of guitar tabs is you don't need to be able to read music. You just need to know how to count. The timing is a non issue as most people will try and learn the song with a tab and a recording of the song.
- javier123454321 2y ago
  Which is funny if you presume it is true that tabs precede standard notation (and therefore recording techniques). Tabs make quite a bit of sense in a post recorded music culture. However, the information density you can get in standard sheet notation is far greater. There's tradeoffs.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    Powertabs or guitar pro files fix the tradeoffs at least. You get the sheet music for all instruments, tab, and midi instrument backing tracks to listen to in one view. And a metronome.
  - bossyTeacher 2y ago
    For most people using tabs, the additional information is not needed as you are most of the time not aiming for an identical replica of the song. You might play it slower or faster, different key, remove sections, etc
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      On the other hand I think tabs actually do strive to be an actual replica of a song. That's why there are so many versions of the same tab that broadly sound the same, from people trying to get as close as they can by ear to the recording.
  - nickserv 2y ago
    Tablature does precede standard notation, by hundreds of years. In fact tabs are older than guitars and were heavily used for lute music.
zbidi 2y ago
some tab viewers do have the rhythm shown as well, just connected to a tab number. Though it might get confusing a bit but more than sheet music imo.
hoytech 2y ago
While I agree that sheet notation is superior, it actually is fairly common to indicate duration and articulation in tablature, especially classical. See many of the tabs on classtab.org: https://www.classtab.org/tabbing.htm#key https://www.classtab.org/tabbing.htm#key Surprisingly (to me), tablature is apparently older than sheet music. Tabs are also pretty nice when you're dealing with non-standard tunings. Lastly, even with standard notation, guitar music is often "unnecessarily" annotated with numbers for left hand fingering, roman numerals for barres, "pima" for the right hand, diamonds for harmonics, etc.
- bluGill 2y ago
  There are often several strings that could be usedeto play the same note. However getting the right one is important as they are not substitutable. Thus standard notation isn't enough.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
I think that neither notation is wholly superior, and your comment perfectly illustrates why. Sheet music notation tells you the tempo of the notes but gives no guidance on which way you should play them. Tabs tell you exactly how to finger the notes but don't (usually) tell you anything about tempo. Both notations are leaving out crucial info, and so neither is really superior to the other. It's a matter of which defect you are more willing to live with.
- javier123454321 2y ago
  Agreed, the video goes into depth in those tradeoffs.
- dbalatero 2y ago
  Sheet music often gives fingering suggestions which make it clear which string to play it on. With fingerings though, there's no correct answer, and often you want to bias towards the best sound (to your taste) vs. the easiest finger execution.
- nickserv 2y ago
  Sheet music often has fingering suggestions when adapted for a particular instrument. I say "suggestions" because on some instruments, like the guitar, there are multiple fingerings possible for the same note. Which leads to something you didn't mention, that sheet music can be used with any instrument, whereas tablature is limited to not only a single instrument, but the specific combination of an instrument and a tuning. In practice this means you won't be able to play a 6 string lute piece on modern guitar in standard tuning if all you have is the lute tablature.
jasode 2y ago
>However, sheet notation tells you precisely the duration of each note, True but the reason that guitar tabs missing the duration of the notes is not much of a handicap compared to traditional sheet music notation is that the guitar players learning popular music already get the notes' durations from listening to the actual recordings. This is the same reason that printing out the lyrics for songs don't require notations of durations for each syllable of every word. People singing karaoke or whatever already get the durations by hearing the recordings. (Indeed, lyrics sheets are also missing the pitch of each syllable.) On the other hand, traditional notation was invented before recordings so musicians often had no idea what the music sounded like unless they correctly decoded the notes durations on the page.
- ramblerman 2y ago
  That's a great point I'd never considered as a guitarist myself who uses both tabs and sheet music. I think it also explains why in my last 2 years of playing flamenco I never found tabs, the rhythm is almost as hard to play by ear as the notes.
- bossyTeacher 2y ago
  Yes, I already said this but you really hammered the point home with the additional analogy of karaoke lyrics. I feel people playing non-popular forms of music live in this ivory tower where they forget other forms of music exist. I wonder why it happens
GardenLetter27 2y ago
A lot of tabs will put the note length on the "beat" of the tab too. You can see this in Tuxguitar IIRC.
KolenCh 2y ago
Assuming you’re talking about standard guitar with standard tuning system, no, there’s no notes that you can play in 6 different strings. (But if you’re not talking about standard guitar, then don’t stop at 6, you can have more than that.)
- eyelidlessness 2y ago
  Nit: if you count harmonics, you only need 14 frets to play high E on every string in standard tuning.
  - KolenCh 2y ago
    Harmonics should be denoted differently. For such notes, you can only play the same note on at most 3 different strings.
    - eyelidlessness 2y ago
      I wasn’t responding to the broader topic about music notation, only picking the nit on the claims about whether you can play the same note in six positions on a standard guitar in standard tuning. If you count harmonics— acknowledging one may not count them—but now I’ve repeated almost my entire comment.
      - KolenCh 2y ago
        If you have an ear then a harmonics should not be counted as the same note. To a layman, they probably can’t tell the difference between the same note from a different string. But it will be very obvious to even a layman a harmonics has a different quality. That’s the reason they have a different notation. The notation is there to convey what we mean, not a nitpicking. To claim it is still the “same” even when the notation isn’t are really pushing what “the same” is. We might as well start to count the way one scratch on the string to be the same note if they gives the same fundamental.
        2y ago
ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
> However, sheet notation tells you precisely the duration of each note That's why "real" notation is displayed above the tabs or sometimes some other way is used to indicate duration, mostly space between two notes. That's also why it's hard to write an actual usable guitar tab GUI, it needs to display sheet notation too, with all of it's intricacies.
bossyTeacher 2y ago
You are missing the point of tabs. Sheet music people always do. I will explain it below: - Tabs are meant for music you have the recordings of (so additional details can be obtained by listening to the song) - Tabs are meant to be an easy way to play a song for people that might not be interested or have the resources to invest the time to learn sheet music
exDM69 2y ago
Guitar Pro tabs have time durations on every note (as described in the article), and can also be displayed in standard musical notation. It also has a whole host of articulation symbols, including the standard musical articulations (mezzoforte etc) as well as a bunch of guitar specific special articulations (e.g. artificial harmonics). Printed guitar tab books also have durations and articulation symbols. I agree that old fashioned ASCII art guitar tabs without durations aren't great.

kjkjadksj 2y ago

The biggest advantage of guitar tabs is you don't need to be able to read music. You just need to know how to count. The timing is a non issue as most people will try and learn the song with a tab and a recording of the song.

javier123454321 2y ago
Which is funny if you presume it is true that tabs precede standard notation (and therefore recording techniques). Tabs make quite a bit of sense in a post recorded music culture. However, the information density you can get in standard sheet notation is far greater. There's tradeoffs.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Powertabs or guitar pro files fix the tradeoffs at least. You get the sheet music for all instruments, tab, and midi instrument backing tracks to listen to in one view. And a metronome.
- bossyTeacher 2y ago
  For most people using tabs, the additional information is not needed as you are most of the time not aiming for an identical replica of the song. You might play it slower or faster, different key, remove sections, etc
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    On the other hand I think tabs actually do strive to be an actual replica of a song. That's why there are so many versions of the same tab that broadly sound the same, from people trying to get as close as they can by ear to the recording.
- nickserv 2y ago
  Tablature does precede standard notation, by hundreds of years. In fact tabs are older than guitars and were heavily used for lute music.

zbidi 2y ago

some tab viewers do have the rhythm shown as well, just connected to a tab number. Though it might get confusing a bit but more than sheet music imo.

hoytech 2y ago

While I agree that sheet notation is superior, it actually is fairly common to indicate duration and articulation in tablature, especially classical. See many of the tabs on classtab.org: https://www.classtab.org/tabbing.htm#key https://www.classtab.org/tabbing.htm#key Surprisingly (to me), tablature is apparently older than sheet music. Tabs are also pretty nice when you're dealing with non-standard tunings. Lastly, even with standard notation, guitar music is often "unnecessarily" annotated with numbers for left hand fingering, roman numerals for barres, "pima" for the right hand, diamonds for harmonics, etc.

bluGill 2y ago
There are often several strings that could be usedeto play the same note. However getting the right one is important as they are not substitutable. Thus standard notation isn't enough.

bigstrat2003 2y ago

I think that neither notation is wholly superior, and your comment perfectly illustrates why. Sheet music notation tells you the tempo of the notes but gives no guidance on which way you should play them. Tabs tell you exactly how to finger the notes but don't (usually) tell you anything about tempo. Both notations are leaving out crucial info, and so neither is really superior to the other. It's a matter of which defect you are more willing to live with.

javier123454321 2y ago
Agreed, the video goes into depth in those tradeoffs.
dbalatero 2y ago
Sheet music often gives fingering suggestions which make it clear which string to play it on. With fingerings though, there's no correct answer, and often you want to bias towards the best sound (to your taste) vs. the easiest finger execution.
nickserv 2y ago
Sheet music often has fingering suggestions when adapted for a particular instrument. I say "suggestions" because on some instruments, like the guitar, there are multiple fingerings possible for the same note. Which leads to something you didn't mention, that sheet music can be used with any instrument, whereas tablature is limited to not only a single instrument, but the specific combination of an instrument and a tuning. In practice this means you won't be able to play a 6 string lute piece on modern guitar in standard tuning if all you have is the lute tablature.

jasode 2y ago

>However, sheet notation tells you precisely the duration of each note, True but the reason that guitar tabs missing the duration of the notes is not much of a handicap compared to traditional sheet music notation is that the guitar players learning popular music already get the notes' durations from listening to the actual recordings. This is the same reason that printing out the lyrics for songs don't require notations of durations for each syllable of every word. People singing karaoke or whatever already get the durations by hearing the recordings. (Indeed, lyrics sheets are also missing the pitch of each syllable.) On the other hand, traditional notation was invented before recordings so musicians often had no idea what the music sounded like unless they correctly decoded the notes durations on the page.

ramblerman 2y ago
That's a great point I'd never considered as a guitarist myself who uses both tabs and sheet music. I think it also explains why in my last 2 years of playing flamenco I never found tabs, the rhythm is almost as hard to play by ear as the notes.
bossyTeacher 2y ago
Yes, I already said this but you really hammered the point home with the additional analogy of karaoke lyrics. I feel people playing non-popular forms of music live in this ivory tower where they forget other forms of music exist. I wonder why it happens

GardenLetter27 2y ago

A lot of tabs will put the note length on the "beat" of the tab too. You can see this in Tuxguitar IIRC.

KolenCh 2y ago

Assuming you’re talking about standard guitar with standard tuning system, no, there’s no notes that you can play in 6 different strings. (But if you’re not talking about standard guitar, then don’t stop at 6, you can have more than that.)

eyelidlessness 2y ago
Nit: if you count harmonics, you only need 14 frets to play high E on every string in standard tuning.
- KolenCh 2y ago
  Harmonics should be denoted differently. For such notes, you can only play the same note on at most 3 different strings.
  - eyelidlessness 2y ago
    I wasn’t responding to the broader topic about music notation, only picking the nit on the claims about whether you can play the same note in six positions on a standard guitar in standard tuning. If you count harmonics— acknowledging one may not count them—but now I’ve repeated almost my entire comment.
    - KolenCh 2y ago
      If you have an ear then a harmonics should not be counted as the same note. To a layman, they probably can’t tell the difference between the same note from a different string. But it will be very obvious to even a layman a harmonics has a different quality. That’s the reason they have a different notation. The notation is there to convey what we mean, not a nitpicking. To claim it is still the “same” even when the notation isn’t are really pushing what “the same” is. We might as well start to count the way one scratch on the string to be the same note if they gives the same fundamental.
      - 2y ago

ReleaseCandidat 2y ago

> However, sheet notation tells you precisely the duration of each note That's why "real" notation is displayed above the tabs or sometimes some other way is used to indicate duration, mostly space between two notes. That's also why it's hard to write an actual usable guitar tab GUI, it needs to display sheet notation too, with all of it's intricacies.

bossyTeacher 2y ago

You are missing the point of tabs. Sheet music people always do. I will explain it below: - Tabs are meant for music you have the recordings of (so additional details can be obtained by listening to the song) - Tabs are meant to be an easy way to play a song for people that might not be interested or have the resources to invest the time to learn sheet music

exDM69 2y ago

Guitar Pro tabs have time durations on every note (as described in the article), and can also be displayed in standard musical notation. It also has a whole host of articulation symbols, including the standard musical articulations (mezzoforte etc) as well as a bunch of guitar specific special articulations (e.g. artificial harmonics). Printed guitar tab books also have durations and articulation symbols. I agree that old fashioned ASCII art guitar tabs without durations aren't great.