Advances in Music Notation

Nobody likes to see their parents get old and start forgetting things. One activity that helps keep the mind young is playing a musical instrument, especially one that you learned to play as a child. To help combat my own father's failing memory I worked with my son and got him an electric bass. Then I picked up a copy of Rocksmith. In addition to teaching you how to play guitar, it can also teach you how to play the bass.

My dad played bass in high school and even played with the local symphony. Then he got married, had kids, and never really picked it up again. Once in my youth, my dad borrowed a bass and tried to play it at a talent show but that was it. I have had a lot of fun learning how to play the guitar and hoped that my father would enjoy it as much as I do. What I didn't realize is how something as simple as advances in music notation would cause problems for him.

Guitar chords have been appearing on sheet music as long as I can remember. Then in the late 1980's and early 1990's a new guitar music notation started gaining favor. Instead of the usual 5 lines on the treble clef, guitar tabs have 6, one for each string. Instead of music notes, numbers represent which fret should be held to create the correct note. It is very intuitive for someone that does not have much music training. For someone like my dad that grew up playing the bass as well as the piano, it created a learning hurdle. Instead of embracing this new music notation, my dad ridicules it and belittles guitar players for not knowing how to "read music."

Fortunately I know enough about traditional music notations and guitar tabs to be able to explain the merits of the later. One thing you lose with tabs is timing information.There is no distinction between whole, half, quarter, or eighth notes. This is fixed by showing the treble clef notes above the space for lyrics and guitar tabs below them (often where the bass clef can be found in regular piano music).

The guitar is somewhat unique in that you can play the same note many different ways. If you hold the low-E string (the thickest one) at the 5th fret, it is an A note. That is the same note as the 2nd thickest string without any frets pressing. On a piano, each key represents a unique note and there are not any duplicates like there are on a guitar. Sometimes guitar music is written so that you will play the same note on 2 different strings. This is the way the introduction to "Wake me up When September Ends" by Green Day is written. The only way to indicate that with traditional music notation is to create a footnote that is impossible to figure out when sight reading the music. With guitar tabs, it is very intuitive and can easily be sight read.

There are technological advances happening around us constantly and it is important to embrace these advances even when they seem different and foreign. A lot of older people shy away from technological advances simply because they find it difficult to learn a new way of doing something. While it is easy to see the flaw in my own father, I too suffer from the same reluctance to embrace certain advancements. Naturally my kids are the ones that point it out to me.