I hope I’m not alone in this, but I find my self relying on the tab way too much!
The minute I take the tab away I start to fumble all over!
Trying to memorize the songs is really becoming a challenge!
I understand I need the tab to learn something new, but I find myself using it as a crutch.
Too much reliance on tab!
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Memorizing comes with repetition and when you break the tabs down by measures. Being able to jam to tabs is a great thing and just because you don’t memorize everything you play you’re still developing your techniques and skills. All you need to do from there is like the song enough and be dedicated to playing it over and over and breaking it into bits until repetition sets in and muscle memory kicks in.
Also try to correlate the tabs to theory and understand the song and what you’re actually doing and trying to learn as that will help a lot as well.
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https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/banjo-make-a-break-featuring-tex-critter-banjo-intermediate
@2Timothy4 Don’t know if you are on banjo or not, but this lesson applies to any instrument. I wonder if maybe you are over thinking things. If you want to jam, then you don’t have to focus on a specific arr. Try doing literally what the lesson says even if all you can do is melody rolls. Don’t try to get to advanced too fast. The harder stuff will come by itself as the easy stuff becomes more natural. Make this a part of your daily practice routine if possible. Pick a song and try to play even the most simple break by ear. Eventually it will click you will suddenly be playing stuff on the fly that you thought you would never be able to play.
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@2Timothy4 I was totally in that boat, and am finally jumping overboard to flap around a bit. With the accumulation of songs, study of G, C, and D licks, playing things in different keys, learning to pick out simpler melodies by ear, it will come. The more I learned these things, like words in a language, the more I could identify them in the music I was listening to. I especially found Ben’s Fretboard Geography lessons with Alan Munde to be helpful. I also really love AcuTab’s Power Pickin’ Vol. 1 DVD with Bill Evans. Jam along with records and apply it often in jams, and glean from what other pickers do. It seemed to me that like language, full immersion really helped. Did lots of listening, practicing, and application in jams. Hope some of this is helpful. Stay the course; you’ll get there.
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Hi @2Timothy4 Robert - How are you using TAB ? Are you working from a printed sheet/ PDF or are you working from a TEF File TAB in TefView ?
What instrument do you play ?
How long have you been learning with TAB.?
Let me say that TAB is not a crutch - it’s a tool to help you learn. Once you accept that fact and get rid of those negative thought’s I’ll help you see the benefit of TAB.
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I think the problem runs deeper than just using tab. It seems that you have limited yourself to only two options:
- Play a break reading tab, or
- Play a break from memory.
Many players hit a brick wall because they fail to realize the third option, and this is key: improvisation.
Improvisation is essentially writing your own arrangement on the fly. It gives you the ability to play a solo without planning it out prior to the song.
I used to think that the best way of playing songs is to memorize just an awesome solo for every song you know. So I go through Ben’s arrangements, thinking, “Salt Creek, check. Nine Pound Hammer, check. Old Joe Clark, check… I have a great solo for each of these songs!” So when I would jam, I would play the solos I learned here on the site.
Then I’d get the nod for a second solo.
Or a third.
What are we going to do, memorize several solos for every song we can think of? What about songs that we don’t know about yet?
Think of it this way: a song is a jigsaw puzzle, but it’s an odd jigsaw puzzle: some of the pieces are exactly the same, and interchangeable with other puzzles.
So let’s take a look at the Nine Pound Hammer puzzle. We know this one, and the perfect way to come up with the pieces! But we want to solve a new puzzle, the Salt Creek puzzle. Well, if we take the whole Nine Pound Hammer one and try to overlay it, it’s not gonna work. The two songs aren’t exactly the same.
BUT, some of the pieces are exactly the same! We can pull that G to C transition piece and use it. We can use that D to G transition piece. We can use that little tag lick at the end.
Lightbulb!! THAT’S why we learn breaks!
We learn breaks to learn more things to throw in our own breaks!
So I think a good way to start improvising is to start slow. Start out by writing your own break for a song you don’t know yet, and it doesn’t matter how long it takes you. With repeatability comes speed, and you’ll start to recognize common patterns in songs more and more. Writing a solo may take you several hours of stealing licks at first, but if you keep at it, you’ll be able to do it in 10 minutes, and then 5 minutes, and then in 3 or so, and then in the 30 seconds or so that it takes for a verse and chorus of a song to go by. You’ll learn to map out the song’s melody and chord structure.
I’m gonna wear everybody out eventually with my nerdy Rubik’s Cube analogy, but it’s just too good 
I am a speedcuber; I speedsolve the Rubik’s Cube. This is done by recognition of cases and algorithms that are prememorized. Speedcubers don’t memorize the solution every possible scramble of the cube, but they can solve any possible scramble because of common patterns. As we keep doing this, our recognition becomes faster and more natural, like playing chess fast, typing fast, or speaking a foreign language fast. And so much of a cuber’s speed relies on something called “Look ahead”. Look ahead is just like it sounds– looking and thinking ahead to the next step while performing the current step. If what you’re doing in the current step is not ingrained in your muscle memory enough, too much of your mind will be occupied with the current task, which will lead to pauses in your recognition. There needs to be a brief “overlap” in the brain.
Well, it’s the same with music. If we start playing a song and we’re not familiar enough with our options to play over the chord changes, etc., there’ll be an awkward pause in our solo where we get lost and can’t decide what to do.
So practicing improvisation is a lot like learning and memorizing just one solo, but it’s a MUCH bigger picture. We have to keep working at it and exercising it to improve the speed and quality of our improvisation.
I hope that helps somehow. You may also want to read though this thread; I think we discussed this issue a bit there as well: Didn't think I would hit a plateau yet
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That’s a very well articulated way of saying it. I was going to say something but it’s not really necessary now you covered it all good job.
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@Michael_Mark, good job there, very much like what i was trying to say but i’m not a teacher
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I use tab a lot of the time to jot down ideas when practicing. For example, today I’m working on “Deep River Blues”. I find some originality in arranging and changing this around to suite my playing. Here’s an example of my hen-scratching. As stated above, I see tab as a tool to learn but very rarely use in a group.
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@2Timothy4, I did not read the advices here yet, I’m sure all must be good as it is our experts’ own experience, but I’ll say this from my view having limited time for practice. Keep doing the tabs, it will make you good in all the techniques. It will start to pay off all of sudden. I was in the same boat, probably even now, but I’m able to improvise a little bit even to my surprise, and be able to more from not looking. Thanks to Ben!
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Lots of great advice here, so I’ll just say that I usually break up a song into 2 measure bites. I don’t move on to the next set of measures until I can play the previous set without looking at the tab. TEFView’s looping feature makes that super easy.
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Great advice @Mark_Rocka I was waiting on a response from @2Timothy4 Robert to find out how he is using TAB before handing out advice. Maybe he was just having a bad day we all get them.
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Good luck with that one Neil I struggle to read it. Mind you I am getting on in years and my eyesight is not as sharp as it once was. 
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I came here to recommend that Tex Critter lesson as well! It’s a painful thing to get weaned off tab but a great process!
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I’ve been playing the banjo for 6 months.
Using the tab since I became a gold pick member. I use the tab and the tef files for practice.
Perhaps I’m just expecting too much too soon.
I 'm not against tab, I see it as a learning too. I just want to come to the point where I can just play a full song without it.
After reading all the great advice and wisdom from this thread, I can see that it will take time.
I’ll continue to practice.
Thanks
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I’m just beginning banjo.
Thanks for the great advice! I’ve been trying to memorize a line at a time.
I guess it will just take more practice.
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Thanks for the great advice!
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Hi @2Timothy4 Robert. Ok so as I mentioned earlier TAB is just a tool to help you learn to play banjo. My experience is those that describe TAB as being a crutch just don’t see the true value of TAB and just push negative vibes out to others by suggestion it’s bad.
So I am glad to hear you are new to the banjo and you are using the TEF Files to learn and practice. Using the TEF files is going to be key to helping you learn to play banjo.
Unless you are gifted like @BanjoBen or @Michael_Mark and can play tunes on the fly then you have a lot of study and practice ahead of you and the key to you making any significant progress is TAB.
TAB will help you learn the basic fundamentals, The Rolls, Pinches the Slides, Pull-offs Tag Licks etc. that will give you the foundational skills to go on and learn more complex elements later on.
It might help you to know that almost every banjo teacher out there uses TAB as an aid to teaching so if it was such a crutch - (this negative label it seems to have earn for it’s self) - then teachers just wouldn’t use it.
So how do we make best use of TAB to help us learn to play banjo @Mark_Rocka sets out how he uses it by learning one or two measures at a time. I agree with Mark although I tend to work with musical phrases which can run to four or five measures at a time.
TAB is like an apple pie, The thing that most beginners try to do is eat the whole pie in one sitting and it all becomes too much. Instead of cutting it up and learning little sections at a time.
In time and as you gain experience you can often learn a verse or chorus in one sitting. Which is what my goal is when I sit down to learn a new tune. But if it’s an advanced lesson I tend to tackle the tough bits first and if that means spending a day or two on two measures then I am just as happy to work on this. At times you’ll hear Ben say that was a tough one to learn so even Ben finds some tunes a challenge.
The other important factor in using TAB as an aid to learning is the ability to HEAR the TAB being played (and you cant do this from a PDF file or Printed Sheet) So to do this your going to need either TefView or TablEdit. As Mark mentioned earlier there is a feature in both these applications that allow you to loop a phrase to practice. Also a feature that lets you adjust the speed of the play back to your skill level.
If you are watching @BanjoBen Video’s (which I hope you are) you will see the TAB on the screen as he is describing licks, rolls and note duration. You will hear him mention sixteenth note hammer - ons and pull offs, or eighth note slides and chokes. and with the aid of TAB you can read this on the screen.
Once you know all the elements you need to play banjo with confidence you can begin to wean yourself off TAB . That is to say stop reading it and focus your attention on listening to it as you practice . When you are able to play along with the TAB and backing tracks you’ll begin to put away the TAB till the next time you need it and begin jamming with others.
Ben has created lessons on reading TAB and on TablEdit he has also put in a lot of hard work creating all his lessons with accompanying TAB, TEF and Mp3 files to help you learn and develop your playing skills. It seems only fitting that you put in at least half as much effort to using these tools before labeling TAB a crutch.
If you have any problems reading or understanding any TAB I am always here willing to help.
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Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration… we are ALL gifted, in that the human brain is an incredible wonder. Ear training/improvisation is not like perfect pitch, which is almost 100% naturally occuring.
Keep in mind that sheet music/musical notation was originally used (before the age of widespread long-distance communication) to convey specific musical arrangements, especially when it was impossible or impractical to play a song repeatedly for someone so they could learn it. It’s an arbitrary system of communication; music transcribed on paper for dissemination purposes.
It works quite well– but no system of comprehending musical communication matches the ear, because that’s how music is designed to be communicated.
With the technology of the modern age, TEF files are a great combination of both communication methods– you can see and hear the music being played. It’s like reading words vs hearing words vs reading AND hearing them at the same time.
Since the ear is the most direct form of musical comprehension, I believe that it is better to use tab as a supplement to ear training.
But transcending the notion of tab vs. no tab: Whether you learn an arrangement by tab, hearing, or both, every time you learn an arrangement, you should seize the opportunity to accomplish a larger goal than just learning a solo for a song. That’s why Ben’s lessons are so good– he’ll tell you not just what to play, but WHY.
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