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Tab. for beginners

presented by

Awkward Strangers

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Some questions you may have:

What is Tab, and what is musical notation?
How can ‘dots and tails’ thinking be used to enhance ‘lines and numbers’ numbers thinking?
Why is a little knowledge dangerous, and why is that a good thing…?

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The purpose of today’s workshop:

to learn the basics of Tab. (it’s not an acronym, but short for tablature…)
to learn the basics of rhythm marks
to learn a tune (Small Thoughts by Awkward Strangers)
to play the tune in canon

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Warm in - check in:

private five-finger vote: how confident are you reading TAB?
private five-finger vote: how confident are you reading musical notation?
hands up if you didn’t vote at all…

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Which is older? Musical notation or TAB?

Tablature is actually older than staff notation in its modern form, and was the standard notation used for lute, vihuela and chitarra music in the Renaissance.
Nobody used dots and lines for this purpose, and even when they did tab was still in use. Bach, for example, wrote lute pieces in tab.

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So what is Tablature?

Simply put it is:
Your strings as the lines
The numbers as the bar where you put your fingers

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So how is TAB different from Musical Notation?

Musical notation tells you
pitch and tells you
rhythm
but doesn’t tell you anything about how to play either of those things on your specific instrument
so it is universal but also quite useless, except…

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What notation can give us…

a finer understanding of rhythm…

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and so, notation is just shapes

and ‘staircase thinking’

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A video you might find useful for rhythm notation

Yes, it’s for kids. Yes it’s fun. Yes it will help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71fkBqZ_4K8&t=1s

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And this one challenges you to use several rhythm notations

Yup. Still for kids. Yup. Still fun. Also, surprisingly challenging…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuHH3Slh80k&t=4s

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Today, however, we are sticking with…

Pears

and plums.

Simple, wholesome fruit…

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We are learning a ‘canon’ or ‘round’

Not sure what that is? Think ‘Row, row, row your boat…’ �See? There you go…

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Exit ticket:

What is TAB, and what is musical notation?
How can ‘dots and tails’ thinking be used to enhance ‘lines and numbers’ numbers thinking?
Why is a little knowledge dangerous, and why is that a good thing…?

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Notation software and app

Musescore - software and app

�https://musescore.org/

�Musescore is has stacks of music already written for Ukulele and in Tablature.��It also has a nifty function. E.g. if you would like a piece of music notation written in Tab., it will do that for you at the click of a button:�

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