Bouncing ball tab?

[John Wilson]

It was Mitch Miller that did all the sing alongs.

I think Mitch Mitchell was the original bass player in the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
The older we get, the memories seem better, but not necessarily clearer....

[CrowBear Schmitt]

Mitch Mitchell (RIP)played drums w: Jimi, John

[John Wilson]

Thanks Crow. I knew he was in the band somewhere.

I made it through the sixties, but I don't remember much of it.


J.

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

My personal opinion is that tab is a useful tool for an absolute beginner, but once somebody knows their way around the instrument, even marginally, they should abandon it and learn how to read music.

This reliance on tab and refusal to learn to read music is holding our instrument back, and keeping us isolated from the rest of the musical world. It's one of the reasons why some people say that the pedal steel isn't a real instrument, but more of a musical toy, barely a step above a kazoo.

I remind you all once again, that I wrote an article on how to read music on the E9 neck which I will send for free to anybody who requests it. (If you want it, please send me an E-mail, not a PM.)

[Alfred Ewell]

should abandon it and learn how to read music.

This reliance on tab and refusal to learn to read music is holding our instrument back, and keeping us isolated from the rest of the musical world.

On the fiddle you can read Johann Brahm's Hungarian Dance No. 5 (excuse me, violin, not fiddle:) or Charlie Daniel's South's Gonna Do It Again (if you can find the sheet) or Jeff Beck's Cause We Ended As Lovers (if you can find the sheet nusic) and it's a language that's developed over hundreds of years. It's got difficulties and something may soon develop to improve the situation, but FACE and Every Good Boy Does Fine along with time signatures, key signatures, and notation timing gives a read that works with any instrument - you can hear the music once you learn to read it and if you play multiple instruments, it works in your ear with them all. I've looked at tabs and in frustration, just gone ahead and played by ear, and done good - but there's something about so many strings on the steel crossing octaves that makes it a little hard to write in a clef. And example-wise, on violin your 1 and 3 finger are always lines and open string, 2 and 4 finger are always spaces and you can develop a mental-visual shorthand that works fast enough to let you combine the timing/rhythm with the intonation as quickly (with luck) as if you already knew the tune. In short, I'm agreeing that I wish there was an equivalent library of notation for the pedal steel as there is in tab. The first impression is that tab would be playable, but it would be faster to read notes with a well-known translation (as with the fiddle - pardon, violin) to fingers. However, the variation available with so many copedents makes the pedal steel so flexible but more difficult to use standard musical notation - maybe somebody's got that figured out. Anyway, agreeing again, I just find tab lacking. Apologies for the length. I guess I'm hoping somebody's figured that out.

[Clete Ritta]

...something really useful like “boys and girls please follow the bouncing ball” tab...

Although I like to play by ear, I found this useful, and free no less!
(Too bad it hasnt been adopted for steel guitar transcribing yet).
Heres a classical violin piece transcribed with midi and tab for 6 string guitar.
This is what "follow the bouncing ball" tab (in this case a green arrow) looks like.
Paganini Caprice 5
The bouncing ball bounces only 6 or 7 times per bar, so it bounces right over many notes in this one.
You may recognize this from the movie Crossroads.
Have fun!

Clete

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

...the variation available with so many copedents makes the pedal steel so flexible but more difficult to use standard musical notation - maybe somebody's got that figured out.

Yeah, me. And I wrote this article that explains it all.

Reading standard musical notation on the steel is difficult, but not impossible. And it doesn't matter what copedant you use. My method requires a fair amount of study, but it does work.

Once again, I will send a PDF file of the article, for free, to anybody who requests it. All you have to do is send me an E-mail asking for the article.

[Bo Legg]

Mike I agree with you that you should learn notation. But notation only tells you what note but it doesn't tell you where on the neck you want the note played. Tab is just an extension of the notation to encompass that aspect. I would think though that playing by notation would be ridiculed here on the forum as "painting by little dots with flags".
Clete, regarding your example of the program used for Paganini Caprice 5.
TablEdit does everything that program does and more except it displays it with a blue line following along the tab for anything from a Pedal Steel Guitar tab to a home made 17 string Sheepenspegul tab and it ain't free but it is inexpensive.

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

... notation only tells you what note but it doesn't tell you where on the neck you want the note played.

My article tells you how to figure that out.

The problem with my system is that it requires both knowledge (which is provided in the article) and thought instead of just following directions, in order for it to work. But it does work. And as I said earlier, it works on any and every tuning and copedant.

I fail to understand why there is so much resistance to learning to read music. it's true, reading is not easy, and my system requires people to work and study in order to be able to do it.

But once you do, you can go out and learn any song in the world that you want to play. Every song ever written is available somewhere written out in standard notation. Why would anybody want to cut themselves off from that?

[Georg Sørtun]

Every song ever written is available somewhere written out in standard notation. Why would anybody want to cut themselves off from that?

Beats me, but then again; I haven't really played by standard notation for nearly 40 years, so will have to practice speed-reading for a while if I am to play somewhat unknown sheet music directly. As it is now I have to spend hours studying notation before being able to play anything new and ever so slightly complex, my style(s).

"Tabs" is something I occasionally look at briefly to see what whoever wrote them intended. Will have to write new tabs to reflect my own copedents anyway, and I never bother.

[Bo Legg]

Mike I would love to have a copy of that just out of curiosity, however I personally don't want to waste time trying to figure things out that can already be down faster with software.
I don't want to have to take the time to figure tab or anything else out when I have programs that will just let me follow the bouncing ball.
I have a program that will scan sheet music and play the notation in midi. I much prefer to play by notation in this manor because I can instantly play a song I've never heard before with little or no effort by following the bouncing ball.
To learn a new song I import the wav, mp3 or whatever into BIAB and just follow the bouncing ball through the chords as the song goes along. I'm not real happy with BIAB chord choices at times and I have to do a little work there but I haven't found anything better yet.

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

I haven't really played by standard notation for nearly 40 years, so will have to practice speed-reading for a while if I am to play somewhat unknown sheet music directly. As it is now I have to spend hours studying notation before being able to play anything new and ever so slightly complex, my style(s).

George, I can't sight read (look at a piece of music and instantly be able to play it) myself, and my system does not teach you how to do that. What I must do, and what me system teaches, is how to look at a piece of sheet music, and figure out relatively quickly how best to play it, and what pedals to use and where to use them.

The process is not instant. Usually it takes a couple of minutes, sometimes it can take longer. (And of course the more you do it, the better you'll get at in and the less time it will take.)

I have had the honor and privilege of playing in a trio with 2 ladies from the L.A. Philharmonic and Pasadena symphony respectively. These 2 women are such great sight readers that if you put a music staff over a Jackson Pollack painting, they will sit down and play it perfectly, instantly. (The flip side of that is that neither of them can pay by ear. We've all seen musicians like this.)

I will never be able to do that, and I can't teach you to do that. But I can look at any piece of sheet music, and play it after a few minutes. And if you read my article and do what it says, you will be able to do that too.

Bo, I set you the article. Check your E-mail.

[Stuart Legg]

Mike I read your article. Bo hasn't got to it yet. Looks great but Bo and I think more in terms of Jazz. Apply three of the modes (2m-5dom7-1maj)within whatever key.
We visualize the notes as numbers related to a chord structure since on a steel or guitar the patterns are the same within a given fret. The modes are contained within that given fret.
It is unlike the piano where it would require you to think in terms of A B C D etc..

[Jeff Spencer]

Well guys I have just read Mike's Perlowin's article and be sure to get it. makes a lot of sense. I play other instruments and I always request the music so I can see what the writer had intended with all the nuences etc. I get frustrated with just chord charts because I have to know the tune. Music is a language that must be learnt. In saying that the steel guitar is quite a beast and I find something like Doug Beaumier's stuff excellent as it has the notation as well - above the tab. The more I am using it the better I am getting to know the fretboard and and it's realtionship to notation - brilliant! I think the forms sit beautifully together for steel guitar. Tab on it's own I find I need to know the song. I have all Mike Headricks stuff as well - brilliant! but I need the songs to hear them.
Grab Mike's article and start the journey.
The 2 ways of reading can and should coexist harmoniously on the one sheet for the steel guitar both pedal and non pedal.
Thats my 20c worth
Cheers
Jeff

[John Polstra]

UPDATE: The problems described here were my own fault. I made a mistake when I installed the demo. I apologize for the confusion.

Bo, I was intrigued by TablEdit and downloaded the demo version for the Mac to try it out. As far as I can tell, the Mac version simply isn't ready for prime time. It looks pretty bad on the screen. (Where's the time signature, and what kind of clef sign is that?):



And when you print from it, what comes out is just unusable:



This is on an up-to-date Mac OS X 10.6.7 system. Too bad; I'd buy it if it worked better.

John

[Bo Legg]

All Demos are crap. If they were good we would just continue to use them and not buy anything.
Just for the heck of it I downloaded the TablEdit File Viewer again just as I suggested (my suggestion and the Viewer are free) and then I selected a TablEdit file created by Stuart within his paid for version,
entered it into the Viewer and here is the picture that is worth a thousands words. If you have the purchased version of TablEdit then of course you don't need the viewer.

[Buck Reid]

We've been using this program for the past five years with good results and nothing but praise. I don't think anyone will dispute the value of being able to read standard music notation but I also believe that tab or "transcriptions" as I like to call them, is a very useful tool for a new player or a player trying to gain insight into another's style. As someone has mentioned, the key is ACCURACY. You get out what you put in. My friend Fred Amendola turned me on to this program in 2005 and uses it to transcribe all my songs. We spend hours if necessary going over every note to ensure it is an accurate representation of the way I recorded the song. Bo's example above shows that the program includes standard notation to assist in note value's and shows what the end result can and should look like. No matter where you stand on using tab or "transcriptions", some find it helpful and I started producing it because people were requesting it. If it weren't for a quality program like this I wouldn't bother because standard tab really is unfinished. Our booklets also include separate pages with tuning and pedal setup info.

[John Polstra]

Guys, I am not criticizing TablEdit in general. I'm saying the Mac version doesn't work well for me. If you are using the Mac version and it works fine for you, I'd like to hear about it. The fact that the Windows version works well doesn't do me any good.

John

[Bo Legg]

John if you are really interested I would contact them and I'm sure they have someway to remedy your skepticism.

[John Polstra]

I'm sorry I left this hanging for so long. I've been away from the Forum for the past 10 days, totally wrapped up in building myself a new amp for my pedal steel.

This morning I finally took some time to revisit my TablEdit problems on the Mac. It turns out that the problems were caused by a screw-up on my part in installing the demo. I fixed that, and the TablEdit demo is working great for me now. The printed output looks beautiful. I apologize for bad-mouthing the product when the actual problem was my own dumb mistake.

Anyway, I think it's a handy tool and I'm going to buy it.

John

[Stuart Legg]

John way to go, looking forward to exchanging some great tab with you.