Why you should learn to read music (standard notation)

TAB is very good when you want to learn "how to" on a guitar. Standard notation is difficult, and most guitarists are inferior sight readers, if they read music at all. But TAB is a technical, not a musical notation. It describes playing technique, it does not describe the music. This means that it is hard to understand musical concepts from reading TABs, and it is hard to describe them with TABs only. It is as if you try to learn the grammar of a language without being able to read it. It is not impossible, but it is hard.

I am not saying that you have to be a good sight reader. It is enough if you are able to spell your way through the music, you do not have to read it fast and fluent. When I have the choice, I always prefer TAB when I am playing from printed music. And TAB is better when you will explain how to play. I have to work a lot more with standard notation to find fingerings, position etc, and can only sight read rather simple music. But when working with theory, I use standard notation.

If you want to learn music theory, it will be hard to find a book with TAB. They are mainly written with no specific instrument in mind, and the music is described in standard notation. Even some of the books that are written for guitar, use standard notation only. Standard notation is a universal musical "language", while TAB is an instrument specific "language". (This also mean that you will not be able to work with music written for other instruments, if you only read TAB.)

Having said all that, I will give all examples in both standard musical notation and TAB, so that you at least should be able to play the examples and listen to their sounds. And I will assume that the majority of guitar players, with classical players as an exception, are rather poor sight readers. So I will discuss some aspects of standard notation as we go along.

Introduction

  Lesson 1 :
Introduction to Scales 		(Picture)

Books

Nothing is a practical as a good theory

If you are not satisfied by knowing how, but also want to know why, you need to know and understand the basis of the music. This means that you have to know some music theory. If you understand the musical concepts, then you will be able to figure out chords, scales etc., without having to look them up in a book or on the web. Chords will no longer be just labeled fingering positions, but relations between notes.

Understanding basic theory will also make it easier to learn and to remember music. When you understand how music relates to a musical context and are variations over the same concepts, then you do not have to store songs in your memory as individual musical structures with unclear interrelations. (And you learn even more from writing than from just reading about the subject, which is one of my main motivations for writing all these lessons.)

If you want to break out of your playing habits, an understanding of the music will help you in finding possible ways out. It has been said that the even such a natural talent of music as Jimi Hendrix was musically very frustrated at the end of his life. He felt confined within his – after all rather limited – musical universe. He was a musical genius, but had very little musical knowledge. He felt that he needed to learn a lot more, for instance about music theory, to be able to further develop his talents. But he did not get the time to do that.

Music has not strict rules saying what you shall and what you shall not do. Music theory summarize and analyze common practice. It tells you which musical concepts that usually has been working until now, and it explains why, and it can give you some guidelines about what to do and what to avoid. Following all these guidelines will usually give results that are acceptable in the sense that the music does not sound wrong. But it might still be very boring. Good music don't stick to rules, and no great composer have been following the rules of their own time. Imagination, willingness to experiment and good taste is needed. But knowing the basics might help you not wasting time trying to reinvent the wheel or save you from being stuck in a dead end street.

It is a challenging task to write lessons on music theory for guitar players who mainly play blues, folk, rock, country and maybe jazz guitar. Most of the literature on music theory assume that you have a keyboard. This is logical. The layout of a keyboard is much better suited for illustrating musical concepts and relations. But I want to write for guitar players, and take into consideration the peculiarities, limitations and possibilities of the guitar. I have learned a lot from John Duarte's column in Guitar Player and other columns from the time when Guitar Player was running columns of this kind.

The next challenge is that what is written is mainly based on classical music, or maybe jazz. This is not without reason. If you are looking for precise examples, you cannot use rough and ready chord strumming. But classical music and popular music does not always speak the same language. The language and the analytical concepts of classical music does not always fit popular music. It is sometimes hard to find examples from popular music to illustrate the musical concepts, and the classical theory does not always give the tools to analyze popular music.

In recent years there has been written some books on theory based on popular music. But too often they only explain how, without the analysis to give a real understanding. One Internet series that has been of great value is Alan W. Pollack's Notes on Beatles. This is not a series on theory, but a series where every Beatles' song is analyzed. Here all Beatles' songs are analyzed by a trained musicologist. A lot can be learned from how he does it.

I will also mention the Dutch on-line magazine Soundscapes on-line journal on media culture, that has many interesting articles on popular music.

  Lesson 1 :
Introduction to Scales 		(Picture)