Reading Sheet Music or TAB Within Your Guitar Lessons? A Guitar Teacher’s Opinion

A question often asked with student’s guitar lessons is should I read music notation or TAB?  There is a lot to be said for both. 

The faster route is TAB.  Tab is short for tablature and consists of reading numbers (to represent fret positions) and lines (to represent the strings).  It is easier and quicker to read for many as the TAB tells you exactly where to put your fingers (although it doesn’t tell you what fingers to use – we have to use common sense finger placement).  Tab does however require some knowledge of music notation still.  We use the rhythm taken from the music notation to decipher the feel of the part we’re being asked to play.  Of course if you know the song already you may already have some idea of how the part you’re playing is meant to sound.  For a piece that you’ve never heard before or for a piece you can’t listen to first, it’s important to know how to read the rhythm taken from music notation.

When we talk about rhythm we are referring to semibreves, minims, crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, demi semiquavers and hemi demi semiquavers (yes these are the real names for them!!!).  They tell us what each beat is worth and by using counting methods for each individual rhythm we can begin to feel how the piece should feel and sound.

The other option within your guitar lessons is to learn music notation solely.  Music notation requires the ability to be able to read the notes written on treble clef or bass clef notation.  We then need to know where we can play those notes on the guitar.  It requires the understanding of octaves, key signatures, accidentals and more.  This is probably the slower way of reading music (at least to begin with).  Once you gain confidence and knowledge it is pretty straight forward.

Most players begin with tablature and then make their way to learning and understanding music notation.  It is important to note that tab is recognised up to Grade 8 (top grade) and can be used alongside the music notation (as long as you can read the rhythm from the music notation fluently).

In my opinion it’s important to learn both.  Starting off with tablature reading is usually the quickest and will give you quicker results.  Music notation is more in-depth and requires a little more knowledge but will open up a better understanding of how music is written and the scales from which we build songs from.  Playing by ear is also important but more of that in future posts!