The Best Way To Learn Blues Guitar – Tablature Or Standard Musical Notation? by Jim Bruce
During the 1960s, Stephan Grossman and others created a method of musical notation for guitar that was peculiar to those years. Most of the first blues men were dead and gone by that time, but a noteworthy few remained, such as Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Reverend Gary Davis. It was Grossman’s encounter with Davis that was the catalyst that ignited the quest for old style blues picking. Many young men at that time yearned to learn and play the old acoustic blues in the original old style, just like the original masters. Blues guitar tabs were the backbone of this revival.
Blues music has a traditional root, and many different songs have evolved using an original piece. Take Sweet Home Chicago by Robert Johnson, for example. The song was originally titled ‘Kokomo Blues’ and was authored by Scrapper Blackwell. As well as the countless permutations around a theme, new pieces were created in various regional picking styles. Within the regional styles we can also find considerable variations between musicians, so producing a great range of blues guitar picking. Of course, in the past, blues musicians stole each others material and additionally altered traditional songs to their own individual style which added to the great variety of this music. How could this material be written down in such a way so that future generations can teach themselves to finger pick the blues in the same style? We can listen to the records, but there’s a huge amount of music so this isn’t sufficient.
Traditionally, musical notation was about the same for all instruments, and featured a stave, notes and an indication of timing. If we decide to use this recognized way of writing down music, then we have to know how to interpret it – this is not particularly easy! Actually, the only thing we have to do is to know where to put the fingers of each hand. If there was some way of knowing this, and listen to the original music, it would represent an enormous shortcut to performing the old finger picking techniques. As a matter of fact, Grossman invented a sort of musical notation known as ‘tablature’, which reduces the time needed to learn guitar.
The guitar strings are portrayed by 6 lines, and a number might be written on one of those lines. This signifies that the string should be plucked on the fret shown by the number. A line extending upwards from the side of the number indicates that the string should be picked with a finger on the up stroke, and a line extending downwards means a thumb stroke. The chords can additionally appear over the tablature as well. Other symbols are also used, which help in defining the tempo, slide or type of strike.The notation is simple and very easy to learn. Although it can seem a little cumbersome at first, most guitarists are sight reading within a couple of weeks.
About the Author
Jim Bruce is a working blues man making a living playing blues guitar. His acoustic lessons are fast becoming the standard to reach for students wanting to lean how to play guitar using blues guitar tabs.
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