continued...
Particularly bright or enthusiastic students may be able to deal with the situation however it is not uncommon for those that have had experience of both to, for example, point to the third line of the stave and ask “which string is that?”, even after seeming to have made considerable progress in staff notation.
Tablature is the straighter forward of the two, relating more closely as it does to the physical guitar, and tends to overpower the comprehension of staff notation.
Why not just focus on notes and let them access TAB themselves later? The process of learning to read notes proficiently is a long and arduous task. The musical results that one produces are hugely limited in comparison to those possible through the oral language that people naturally acquire.
With TAB, students even at a very early level are able to make an attempt at even quite complex or technical pieces of music making use of their own aural experience of the music.
I have had some success or at least avoided the dangers outlined above by avoiding the visual similarity of TAB and notation by writing down a string name and then a fret number e.g. G - 14, 12, 15 B – 12, 12, 15. This also keeps students engaged to an extent with the language of notation even if only in the names of the strings.
With this we are still not able to directly access the infinite resources available through TAB yet the new learner is not limited to a basic notational vocabulary.
Alternatively I have been taking on the time consuming but enjoyable and rewarding task of augmenting or ideally substituting the usual repertoire of nursery rhymes, exercises and purpose composed pieces with simplified notations of popular and well known pieces tailored for basic notation teaching.
Perhaps these are the alternatives we have to settle for until the student is competent enough to be able to navigate the vast range of possible musical symbols applicable to the musical language of their instrument, and the range of materials that includes them.
Of course the attainment of such multilingualism is a necessary goal for anyone wishing to develop real proficiency, and therefore versatility, on any instrument.
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