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What the hell are piano 'tabs'
Floofy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
And how do you read/play from them?
To explain properly, I've been taught to play piano classically to fairly midlevel standard. Taken exams up to grade four, from then on I've been self-taught. So I can read traditional sheet music with no problem, pick out tune and create an accompaniment for it, and so on.
But recently I've been wanting to learn some decent pop/rock type songs rather than the traditional twinkly-twinkly classical piano stuff. Being broke, I figured there might be a few out of copyright bits of sheet music here and there that kind kind people had scanned in to share. And sure, there's a few out there, but the vast majority of what I've found have been "Piano tabs"
Now I though 'tabs' were just for guitar, and these sorts of things just leave me confused. How do you read them? What are these strange lines and numbers for? Anyone?
To explain properly, I've been taught to play piano classically to fairly midlevel standard. Taken exams up to grade four, from then on I've been self-taught. So I can read traditional sheet music with no problem, pick out tune and create an accompaniment for it, and so on.
But recently I've been wanting to learn some decent pop/rock type songs rather than the traditional twinkly-twinkly classical piano stuff. Being broke, I figured there might be a few out of copyright bits of sheet music here and there that kind kind people had scanned in to share. And sure, there's a few out there, but the vast majority of what I've found have been "Piano tabs"
Now I though 'tabs' were just for guitar, and these sorts of things just leave me confused. How do you read them? What are these strange lines and numbers for? Anyone?
Floofy on
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The number before the first | tells you what octave of the piano the notes are referring to, with each octave starting on a C and c4 being middle C. Lower case letters indicate naturals and upper case are sharps. Each | represents a bar line. When there are only 2 notes at a time, the top line will be right hand and the bottom will be left. If there are more notes, RH at the beginning of a line will represent right hand, and LH is left hand.
I'd never heard of this before. It looks like a really obnoxious way to write/read music honestly, but hopefully it's helpful.
edit: I just looked some things up, and it doesn't even always tell you what hand to use, and there are sometimes numbers underneath to indicate (I'm assuming) which fingers. Everything just seems to look needlessly complicated.
I think I might just do that. This piano tabs stuff does just seem to be ridiculously convoluted compared to proper sheet music. It's not even like it's easier to read, like guitar tabs. ARGH.
Cheers anyway people. Going to look to pick up a Muse book (Is BHaR in print yet?) and one with some generic recognisable rock/pop as well.