Whistle Tabulatures. Opinions?

[Blackout_Entertainment]

What do you think of Tabs for the whistle, in general?

I made this. I'm hoping to make a bunch of them for different songs, mostly for beginners. What do you think of it? How could I improve the notation? I hope to accompany this, on a website, with a recording. Should I include sheet music?

[brewerpaul]

Tabs are a pain in the butt and more of a hindrance than an aid, if you ask me. You might as well use little drawings or photos of someone's hands on the whistles showing which fingers are up or down. Learning to read conventional notation is NOT difficult and once you learn it, you have thousands of tunes of all genres available to you.

[Blackout_Entertainment]

Tabs are a pain in the butt and more of a hindrance than an aid, if you ask me. You might as well use little drawings or photos of someone's hands on the whistles showing which fingers are up or down. Learning to read conventional notation is NOT difficult and once you learn it, you have thousands of tunes of all genres available to you.

Well, I was introduced to tabs after knowing how to read sheet music already. So to me, it was, "I can read the music, but I have no idea how to play the notes on this instrument."

I suppose, from the perspective of a total beginner, things like this might be more of a teething ring than is really needed. However, for children and for casual players, could we not say that expecting them to sight-read is somewhat... well, musically macho? There are a lot of people who want to play music, without actually reading it. I think, if used correctly, tabs can help teach sight reading.

It's especially macho to expect total beginners, who can neither read music nor play by ear (yet), but who have full time lives, to be able to pick something as complicated as music up without some sort of very large, easy to understand mental crutch.

[crookedtune]

I'd have to agree with Brewerpaul. I'm all for helping out newbies, but really the ear is the very best guide, and for those who want to go further, standard notation is really not that hard. I know people find it intimidating, but the small amount of time spent learning standard notation has SO MUCH payback in the long haul.

I think the best way to help new players is to get them to learn how to slow down tunes and learn simple phrases. Once you learn a few simple tunes, things pretty much fall together naturally.

Still, fine job, and there may be those who find that very helpful.

[Blackout_Entertainment]

Many thanks.

I think, if I go through with this website, I might very well include the resulting discussion as a disclaimer, and I will definately include Sheet Music in the appropriate key.

I'll also, probably, have a r*c*rd*r section, since thats another very common instrument for people new to music.

[RonKiley]

There are whistle fonts available online as well as music with tab. The tabs are too slow. In fact many of the tunes I saw in tab the tab was wrong. It only take a little bit of time to learn to play from regular notation. I started using whistle tablature but found it to be too difficult to actually learn a tune. I moved on to learning regular notation. It is much easier. Then I started learning a lot of tunes by ear. Tunes learned by ear stay with you longer and are more likely to be in the correct rhythm. I use both notation and ear to learn new tunes.

Ron

[Blackout_Entertainment]

If the general consensus is that Tabs are essentially useless, why then do I hear people ask for them all the time?

Does the tin-whistle just attract the epically lazy, or something?


Question - Would you say Tabs are more for helping someone learn an Instrument, or for helping them learn a specific song?

[ronya]

I've made several attempts to learn to read sheet music and never had any luck. I just could not understand what was wrong with me, because I knew I could read three different alphabet systems, for example, why notation had to be so hard? I counted the steps my brain had to do, it was like this: 1. to recognize the sign (say, 'note on the second line of the staff') 2. to realize what it means (say, 'the note on the second line is G') 3. to remember how to produce this note on the instrument ('to produce a G I have to close 3 holes on the whistle'). I relized that 3 steps were way too much for my brain :) :) I tried eliminating the 1st step by writing down the letters c-d-e-f under the notes with my pencil. But it was just not a decent way to do things :) I eliminated the 2nd step. I finally understood I didn't actually have to tell myself 'this note is called G'. It may sound silly but it kind of made sense, really, since immediately after that I started reading the darned notes without any problems.

It might work just with myself, but anyway, I wanted to say that it isn't actually that hard to read them even for a complete beginner with zero musical background as I am.

And as I am practicing more and more on simple tunes, I see that notes duration is also not something I ignore anymore (which I used to do at the beginning :)) and though I still cannot get any idea what the tune sounds like unless I hear a sound clip of it, I slowly start to understand at least some character of the tune, you know.

Having learned to read (I mean books) in the age of 3,5 I do not of course remember what that process was like - at all. Probably this is why the moment when I slowly started playing the first tune looking at the sheet was such a delightful moment! It was a whole new experience, really, though it may sound rather stupid :)

That's why I'm not for the tabs. I have a scanned tunebook in my computer where tabs are drawn below the notes - I have to use photoshop to erase the tabs out :) I just can't keep looking on them while I would rather like to look at the notes! For I can't be sure that the next tunebook will have those handy little circles :)

[crookedtune]

I'm a 5-string banjo player, and we have the same debates on the "Banjo Hangout". In that case, I support the use of tab, because the banjo is tuned in many different ways, and it would be very difficult to learn to read standard notation for each different tuning. Same can go for guitar, and even fiddle.

The whistle is very simply laid out, and is static in the sense that you don't tune it. Whistle music is really pretty basic, if you strip off the ornamentation. My personal opinion is that standard notation is the ideal way to document the tunes, (although the ear is still a better tool).

Others may disagree, but I don't see a lot of value for whistle tab.

[CelloDog]

I'm with the majority here. Learning to read music may seem complex and scarey, but it can be done. Tabs seem like a shortcut, but they really are not. They also have to be read. I finally realized that the time I spent getting used to guitar tabs would be better spent improving my music reading (and playing). The standard notation system, while imperfect, is pretty good. It conveys a lot of information (pitch rhythm, dynamics, articulation) at once in a clear and concise manner. [My only major complaint is that the sharp and natural symbols look too much alike.] . Better to spend the time with a fingering chart in the first stages of learning, get the "hand shape" and sound of each note in your head, and play. We all have our own ways of learning (look at Ronya's method) and maybe tabs do work best for some people, but I don't see how.

Then there's the difference between sight reading (being able to hear a melody in your head as your read it on the page) and being able to use notation as a tool to pick out a tune on an instrument. I think a lot of us use the second approach, learn the tune with the music as an aid and rely on memory and the ear. I think the easiest way to learn a tune is to hear it (best to have a recording you can replay) and then have the music in front of you to work out the deatils of playing it.

Doug

[Cynth]

One thing about whistle tab is that people aren't going to find anywhere near the number of tunes in it that there are for guitar tab, for example. Any guitar book I got for the notes, always had TAB included. I don't think whistler players are lazier, it's just that they can't find much tab out there because there isn't much, so they are asking about it. So to depend on it isn't going to be very helpful to them in my opinion. I don't think all that many people ask about it, but I could be wrong.

I am just beginning to try learning by ear. I have learned the A part of a tune. I nearly died. Honestly, it really just about killed me .

However, I have come to realize that I have to hear the tune played by a well-known player in order to try to learn the style---I can read the notes fine but the style is not there. It isn't a style of music that I grew up with, so the sound is not engrained in me like other kinds of music might be. If I learn it by ear I won't have played it wrong over and over with the notes, I will be copying (at my beginner level, I must copy to learn) what I hear. I have learned tunes by the notes, and they did not sound anything like the music on the CD. I didn't have any idea how to play the style. Today I will try to learn the B part. It is a very simple tune, but it is still hard by ear. They say that with practice it gets better. They better be right!!!

Knowing how to read music is handy though. I would put the effort more into that than into tab, just my own opinion. For those who already read sheet music, the fingering on the whistle is not hard to learn. It's hard to DO but not hard to remember what to do. You remember what note is at the bottom, and what key you're in and then you just practice. The hard part for me is getting the holes covered properly!

[Bridges-PdP]

Whatever it takes.

I started with tab, because I couldn't read music. As I learned the whistle, using tab, I learned to read music. For a while I even transcribed music into Finale Notepad just so that I could add the tab.

Now I try it without tab. Sometimes I add the tab. I listen to an mp3 of the piece a lot while trying to learn it. Use whatever it takes. If you're thinking of adding tab to a lot of music, you'll be appreciated. Maybe not by the quasi-accomplished whistlers, but by the beginners. Tab made me feel like I could get a tune outta the whistle before I could read music. A little success spurs us toward greater efforts.


Scott


Heb 12:29

[Wanderer]

When I first started playing the whistle, I didn't know sheet music. I only knew what i learned in kindergarten: "FACE" and "Every Good Boy Does Fine" (to denote the spaces and lines on the staff).

I used whistle tab for all of about a week. It was too hard to find music in it, and took too long to make myself. So, I took all the sheet music I was learning from and put a # underneath each note from 1 to 6 to tell how many fingers should be down...a form of rudimentary tablature.

After about 6-8 months, I had gotten to the point where I could, with a little concious thought, tell you how many fingers went with each note, and that has improved over time to the point where I can tell instantly a note's value and duration. I never got the point where I could "sight read" while playing unknown music at speed, though I can do it slowly, because I just never really cared to develop that skill beyond what I needed to put the base tune into my brain and put the sheet music away.

To learn which note on the page goes with which note on the instrument, doesn't take that much work in the grand scheme of things, and can be eased into.

[pop]

When I first started playing the whistle, I didn't know sheet music. I only knew what i learned in kindergarten: "FACE" and "Every Good Boy Does Fine" (to denote tohe spaces and lines on the staff).

I used whistle tab for all of about a week. It was too hard to find music in it, and took too long to make myself. So, I took all the sheet music I was learning from and put a # underneath each note from 1 to 6 to tell how many fingers should be down...a form of rudimentary tablature.

After about 6-8 months, I had gotten to the point where I could, with a little concious thought, tell you how many fingers went with each note, and that has improved over time to the point where I can tell instantly a note's value and duration. I never got the point where I could "sight read" while playing unknown music at speed, though I can do it slowly, because I just never really cared to develop that skill beyond what I needed to put the base tune into my brain and put the sheet music away.

To learn which note on the page goes with which note on the instrument, doesn't take that much work in the grand scheme of things, and can be eased into.

Exactly the route im taking ive only been playing since christmas and it didnt take long before i was seeing the number and thinking the note.Like wanderer i only knew the face egbdf thing and worried way too much about trying to cram and learn to read music,like most things to do with the whistle for me ive learned to relax, things like reading the music and rolls crans etc happened naturaly the more i practiced had the sound in my head i wanted and put the hours in .Wanderers way is a much more user friendly option than the table method to get you started i think in my novices opinion.

[buddhu]

Personally I find tab of minimal use. I read music so slowly that it'd take me a day to go through a tune from proper notation.

Funny thing is that my basic knowledge of music theory is actually very good!

So, I generally learn tunes by ear with the aid of The Amazing Slow Downer.