So you’ve decided to learn the guitar – great!
You’ll realise fairly quickly though, just as all beginner guitarists do, that you’re faced with a few pretty important decisions:
- Should I learn acoustic or electric guitar?
- Should I buy a nylon or steel string acoustic?
- What’s best, in person or online guitar lessons?
Probably one of the biggest decisions you’ll be faced with is whether to learn guitar tab, or standard music notation.
Probably one of the biggest decisions you’ll be faced with is whether to learn guitar tab, or standard music notation.
The Difference Between Guitar Tab And Standard Notation
As is probably obvious by the name, standard notation is the conventional way of reading and writing music. It’s non-instrument specific, meaning notation is used for a variety of instruments; piano, vocals, bass guitar and more…
Guitar tab, short for tablature, is specifically designed for guitarists (and bassists), and offers a more ‘user-friendly’, if less comprehensive representation of a piece of music.
| Standard Music Notation | Guitar Tab |
|---|---|
| Staff (lines) show the notes of the music | Lines represent the string of the guitar |
| 5 lines – notes are positioned on or between lines, as well as above or below | 6 lines – notes are displayed on the lines |
| Pitch is represented by the position of each note on the staff. Notes move up in pitch as they move higher up on the staff | Pitch is represented by number on a string, which denotes which fret to play on the guitar |
| Note duration is shown by the shape of the symbol | Note duration isn’t shown in guitar tab |
| Show what the music sounds like | Show how to play the music on a specific instrument |
Pros And Cons Of Each Approach
As you’re no doubt starting to realise, both guitar tab and standard musical notation have their pros and cons. Ultimately, your decision as to which approach to learn depends on what you’re wanting to get out of learning the guitar. Here are a few of the pros and cons of each form.
Standard Notation
Pros
The biggest advantage of learning music notation is that it’s a universal language among musicians. That means a vocalist, a guitar and a violinist can all pick up the same piece of music and understand it similarly.
Compared with tab, it offers a more meaningful and complete representation. In some cases, guitar-specific information such as fingering or fretboard positioning can be added. As you improve, you can eventually get to a point where you can even read a piece of music and play it in real time, even if you’ve never heard it before.
Cons
The main drawback of learning standard notation for guitar is it has a pretty steep learning curve. It’s basically a whole new language, and for most beginners it takes a long time to comprehend. That said, learning a musical instrument in general is a pretty big endeavour and takes a lot of time, practice, and dedication.
Notation is also a lot harder to write and produce, so you’re more likely to find an abundance of free tabs online, and not a lot of free pieces of music written in standard notation. For guitarists, standard notation can also struggle to display certain instrument-specific techniques, such as note bending.
Guitar Tab
Pros
Compared to standard notation, tab is super easy to learn. It’s fairly self explanatory, since the lines are a visual representation of the guitar strings, and the piece shows you exactly which frets and which strings to play.
Instrument-specific performance information such as bends and strumming patterns are easy to write into tab, and alternate guitar tunings don’t make a difference to how a piece is written. Tab is a lot easier to write and publish too, you can create tab in a word processor like Google Docs, meaning there is plenty of free music to download from the internet.
Most guitarists know how to read tab too, so if you’re planning on jamming with others in the future, learning tab is a smart idea.
Cons
Tab’s main disadvantage is the lack of timing information. Though some tab does have timing info, it complexifies a piece and kind of takes away from the idea of tab being fairly easy to grasp. Tab therefore is better if you already know how a piece of music is supposed to sound.
Because guitar tab is so easy to produce, it means there is inevitably a lot of poor quality tab music online. Also, if you plan on performing with other musicians in the future who aren’t guitarists, you may find it difficult to communicate in a written form if you’ve learned tab and not notation.
Which Is Best – Guitar Tab Or Standard Notation?
Ultimately, it depends on why you decided to learn guitar in the first place. If you simply want to learn how to play a few chords and a couple of your favorite songs, then guitar tab is your best bet. If in the future you hope to play with other musicians such as pianists and singers, being able to read musical notation is a good tool to have in your belt.
You may also find your guitar teacher has a preference for one or the other. If you’re planning on taking online guitar lessons, you should check out whether they are taught using tab or notation.
If you’re really serious about becoming a guitarist, then you should consider learning both. Many guitarists start by learning tab to get off the ground, and then pick up notation at a later point.
Written by Ellie Mckinsey
