[Dixielandjazz] For all guitar wannabes -

[Steve Barbone]

Fascinating! Anyone who has surfed the web for chords to songs has come up
with guitar tabs. They are all over the place. Here's why.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

NY TIMES - October 8, 2006 - By ANGELA FRUCCI

Log on, Learn to Play (Without Reading a Note)

FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD Joe Hospodor parts his hair like Gregory Peck and plays
surf music on an old-fashioned Telecaster guitar. This retro-minded teenager
from Los Gatos, Calif., says he admires the Pink Floyd legend David Gilmour,
but draws the line at Green Day: ³I detest Green Day.²

At 12, he told his father, Andy, a computer engineer and skilled guitarist,
that he didn¹t want to continue basic guitar lessons with him at home. The
turning point? ³I saw my dad reading tab one night,² Joe said. By his own
admission, Joe is now ³deep into tab² downloaded off the Internet.

Tablature, or ³tab,² isn¹t standard musical notation, but sheet-music-like
diagrams that allow a guitar player who can¹t read music to learn a chord, a
solo line or an entire song. In tab, horizontal lines represent not a
musical staff but the six strings of a guitar, and each note is indicated by
a number on one of those six lines, representing the fret at which to play a
given note on each string through the course of a song. (Chords are
represented by clusters of fret numbers.)

Tabs are now a controversial part of online guitar learning, with music
publishers threatening copyright lawsuits to shut down sites offering
unauthorized (and often inaccurate) transcriptions of songs. But the
proliferation of tablature is only a small part of a largely online
revolution in musical instruction. From the real-time animated guitar
fretboard of workshoplive.com to the truefiretv.com on-demand guitar lessons
to the animated courses of Berkleemusic.com, students are increasingly able
to forgo formal lessons in favor of à la carte online instruction with as
little or as much human interaction as they want.

Online learning exists for many instruments ‹ notably electronic keyboards,
which interface well with computers and the Internet ‹ but nowhere does it
appear more prevalent than with the guitar. With 3.3 million electric and
acoustic guitars sold this year ‹ nearly three times the number just 10
years ago ‹ the guitar is the best-selling instrument in the United States.
(The growing interest in the guitar no doubt helps explain the wild
popularity of a much-noted video on YouTube.com featuring a young Taiwanese
guitarist playing an exceedingly difficult rock arrangement of Pachelbel¹s
Canon.)

As informal online learning democratizes the musical experience, it also
challenges the norms of musical education and raises questions about
creativity itself. Of course a background in musical theory and an ability
to read musical notation are preferred skills in all forms of music (though
hardly essential in much of pop music). But are they really essential in a
world where autodidacts can conceivably create hits on MySpace while holed
up alone in their bedrooms with a guitar, a microphone and Apple¹s
GarageBand software? Similarly, does learning and playing with other
musicians matter? Does hybrid learning in cyber-isolation create a tower of
Babel with no one speaking the same language? Or does it foster
individuality and musical innovation ‹ which, after all, are all about
ignoring established conventions?

³You can learn all that stuff on your own sitting in front of a computer or
a TV,² said Keith Wyatt, a guitar instructor and director of programs at the
Musician¹s Institute in Hollywood, which teaches everything from bass to
recording and offers accredited degree and certificate programs. But, he
added, ³at the end of the day making sense of a torrent of data requires
old-fashioned skills like critical thinking, pattern recognition, the
understanding of musical structure.²

Michael Manderen, admissions director at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music
in Ohio, agreed. ³What I do see is that if you do spend all your time
downloading MP3¹s, being wired, sharing playlists, that you don¹t spend much
time learning to play scales,² he said. ³Especially when you¹re young, you
really don¹t know music ‹ and I can¹t prove this ‹ if you don¹t lay some
kind of strong foundation and have some exposure, some connoisseurship.²

Tell that to Jimmy Tamborello, who never learned to play an instrument yet
is one half of the phenomenally successful pop duo Postal Service. It¹s so
named because Mr. Tamborello, an electronica producer in Los Angeles, would
mail his melodic electronic backing tracks to his collaborator, Ben Gibbard
of Death Cab for Cutie, to create tunes like ³Such Great Heights.² (Perhaps
you¹ve heard it on ³Grey¹s Anatomy.²)

³I think it¹s good to have actual personal contact while you¹re creating
something if you¹re working with somebody else, but I¹m not really
comfortable working that way, playing with other people,² Mr. Tamborello
said. ³A lot of it¹s just the fact that I don¹t play any instruments. I
can¹t play even the piano really. It¹s all programming. And I think this
isolated way of working works better for people who aren¹t traditionally
musicians.²

The roots of informal musical training go back centuries. The Renaissance
produced tablatures for the lute and other plucked-string instruments.
According to Gary Boye, an early-guitar specialist at Appalachian State
University, the earliest printed tablature for guitar appeared in a book for
the vihuela, a Spanish lute-guitar hybrid, published in 1546.

The lute went out of fashion, but tablature was revived in the postwar
period, thanks to Pete Seeger. Many fledgling musicians first encountered
tablature in his 1948 book ³How to Play the Five-String Banjo.² At the time,
he recalled in a letter, tablature simply made sense to him.

³Someone told me about medieval European tablature for lutes, and I invented
a banjo version,² he wrote. ³A few years later, working on an instruction
book for 12-string guitars, I adapted it for guitar. The banjo book invented
the terms Œpulling off¹ and Œhammering on.¹ I¹m quite proud that these terms
are now used worldwide by guitarists.²

BY the 1960¹s guitarists could use diagrams to learn chords, licks and
solos, and music publishers were becoming aware of the potential of
instructional records and tapes. In 1972 Hal Leonard of Milwaukee released
the ³Hal Leonard Guitar Method.² Jeff Schroedl, the company¹s vice president
of pop publications, said the product went ³from a book, to a book with a
flimsy vinyl 45 record, to a book with a cassette, to a book with a CD, to a
guitar method on a DVD.² But just as online music downloads like iTunes are
replacing CD sales as a way to buy music, online guitar instruction has the
potential to replace CD-ROM¹s and DVD¹s as the way to learn guitar.

In 1991 TrueFire began as the pre-Internet ³Notes On Call,² recalled the
company¹s chief executive, Brad Wendkos: ³People dialed an 800 number,
punched in the code, and heard a 5- to 10-minute lesson from the
instructor.² 

In 2001 the company introduced interactive video software that enables
students to display a window on a computer desktop with button controls,
like zoom, loop and so forth. David Hamburger, one of TrueFire¹s mainstay
artists, explained how it works: ³On any tune you have a series of options.
Watch the person playing the tune ‹ it¹s a split screen so you can see the
hands playing simultaneously. Zoom in. Click on another button, and while
you¹re watching, you¹ll hear them talking through the tune.²

The company recently started truefiretv.com, which allows anyone with a
broadband Internet connection to access more than 2,500 interactive video
guitar lessons. Just like that, you can study jazz guitar with Mimi Fox or
blues guitar with David Hamburger without having to download anything. Of
course, for the well-heeled learner, there are fantasy experiences like
Jorma Kaukonen¹s Fur Peace Ranch Guitar Camp in Pomeroy, Ohio. Mr. Kaukonen,
a former member of Jefferson Airplane and still a member of Hot Tuna, keeps
his instructors¹ roster packed with celebrity musicians. But he also
operates a Web site, breakdownway.com, where his own songs are taken apart ‹
measure for measure ‹for players to learn at their own pace.

With all these nontraditional teaching methods at their fingertips,
guitarists like Ron Embry, a retired doctor from San Francisco, can design
their own musical education. When Mr. Embry, 59, was looking for a way to
take lessons anywhere in the world, he landed on line6.com. ³I also needed
some structure and something to help me remember the self-discipline needed
to practice the guitar regularly,² he said.

When he plugs his guitar into the device, the sound comes out of his
computer speaker. As a subscriber to GuitarPort Online, he can download
songs that he wants to learn to play, like ³The Wind Cries Mary² by Jimi
Hendrix. ³This is what you should aspire to,² he said, laughing, as he
nailed the familiar opening chords of the Hendrix classic.

Each GuitarPort song is a version of the original, but without the guitar
part, so when Mr. Embry plays along he gets to pretend he¹s Hendrix for a
while. He can even adjust the volume and sound quality of his guitar through
controls on his computer screen. But he has other ways to teach himself:
instruction books with professionally written tab and companion CD¹s of the
music, as well as CD¹s from TrueFire. Meanwhile he can track his progress
with the National Guitar Workshop¹s online tutorial, Workshop Live.

Other, more formal, programs are offered online as well. The online arm of
Berklee College of Music in Boston offers students many of the same classes
offered at the real school, taught by the same instructors. ³It¹s a way to
extend music education opportunities to musicians all over the world, said
Debbie Cavalier, dean of continuing education.

Among them is Cpl. Andrew Bonica, 22, who plays a cheap guitar because the
Iraqi desert is hard on musical instruments. Corporal Bonica, a marine who
returned to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego in August, began
studying music production online through Berkleemusic when he was deployed
last fall. Over 400 of his fellow service members have also taken courses
with Berkleemusic, Ms. Cavalier said. ³I had to finish Recording and
Production for Guitar With Pro Tools over here,² he said in an e-mail
message. ³Instructors are fairly flexible and understand how hard it is
being deployed, dealing with combat stress and trying to do college work.²

Customized training isn¹t limited to the guitar: more and more keyboard
manufacturers are making keyboards that control virtual instruments inside
the computers they are hooked up to. ³Piano is kind of an old word,
unfortunately,² said Tommy Reeves, director of keyboard programs at the
Musician¹s Institute. ³Using the computer is the way keyboard players are
going.² 

TAKE the Disklavier, a kind of grand piano with a media center inside. A
student practicing a Chopin étude can press a remote control to tell the
Disklavier to record the piece, which can then be sent as an e-mail
attachment to his teacher. Or a standard camcorder can be plugged in to the
Disklavier to videotape the student. In July at the Minnesota International
piano-e-competition at Hamline University in St. Paul, judges watched
Disklavier video performances from around the world on a giant video screen.
At the same time a Yamaha Grand on a stage played back each performance in
perfect timing. ³This is like time travel for musicians,² Jim Presley,
Disklavier¹s marketing manager, said.

If the Disklavier is like time travel, the iGuitar is the immediate future.
In June, Patrick Cummings, chief executive of iGuitar, strode into the Apple
Computer store in Palo Alto, Calif., to give a demonstration of ³the world¹s
first USB digital guitar.²

Basically it¹s a normal guitar that plugs into a computer through a USB port
and allows students to operate recording software like GarageBand. The
guitar enables a player to choose whether he wants to play a traditional
guitar or transform it into a virtual instrument that plays back the sound
of a piano or any other synthesizer.

Marc Schonbrun, the author of ³Digital Guitar Power² and a guitar teacher in
New York, uses the iGuitar to record his lessons and print out what he¹s
played in notation and guitar tab for students to take home and study.

He acknowledged that because students have the tools to compose their own
music, they may not feel the need to join a band or perform. But for those
too busy for a full-fledged music career, he said, learning music this way
is better than nothing. ³Making high-quality music at home isn¹t a bad thing
because it leads to self-expression in a society where schoolwork tends to
dwarf all other activities,² Mr. Schonbrun said.

Back in Los Gatos homework makes it difficult for Joe Hospodor to pursue his
passion. ³The guitar is really nice to calm the nerves, but I have so many
other commitments,² he said. Even so, he signed up for traditional music
lessons last summer, and now he¹s learning to read music. And he¹s cool with
that. So is his dad. ³Apparently,² his father said, ³it wasn¹t that Joe
didn¹t want learn how to read music, he just didn¹t want to learn from his
dad.²