Eric, and any of the rest of you who have studied Classical guitar music...

There are some comments about this video, and StaffTab in particular, that are a little out of my area of expertise to respond to, having to do with the need for StaffTab vs. some standard references in standard notation for classical guitar music.

If you feel like taking a stab at responding, I'd be grateful. I just have no experience reading classical guitar music. So I'm not really sure why what the writer is suggesting wouldn't be good enough for tapping.

here's the URL for the video for anyone who's interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVNNUHKZWLw

Hi, Greg. I'm on it. I'm curious about this myself now, and I've asked a question of the commenter. We'll see!

-Eric

Hi, Greg.

I just left some comments on the YT page. I have been experimenting with using classical guitar notation for the Stick and it would work. It might be a better notation for very experienced Stick players who read music well. I might call it a performance notation. But, StaffTab is not intended for that purpose. I call StaffTab a teaching notation. It allows teachers to fully communicate all aspects of a piece to someone who is learning Stick. With classical guitar notation, there is a lot of inference happening. The notation does not give you all fingerings, frets, etc., you need to fill in the rest based on where you are and your knowledge of the instrument and music.

Many people come to the Stick from non-classical guitar or are new to music. If you don't read any music notation, or only read Tab, then classical guitar notation would seem to me to be a barrier to getting started on Stick. StaffTab is like a teacher standing next to a student and showing them where to put their fingers on what frets and strings. It allows you to learn some hard concepts from a book that would usually require weekly lessons with a local teacher.

One of the side effects of StaffTab is that you are learning standard music notation while learning a piece of music. This is kind of ingenious, actually. I started out on piano as a kid and switched to guitar in college. I never used Tab and I don't really like it. My opinion is that learning standard notation opens up the whole world of music to you. However, you have to start somewhere and if you are comfortable with Tab, or you can read standard music notation, you can use StaffTab. This is a very good thing.

-Eric

I agree that StaffTab is useful and ingenious. Hats off to Greg for finding a way to familiarize students with standard notation, even as they are using tab notation.

And the new video is brilliantly done as well.


Mad Monk.

Great video Greg, thanks for posting it. This definately helps to reinforce the Skype lesson we did. I agree with others here in that if you put out an instructional DVD of this quality, I will buy it! Better yet, put it on Youtube so we can all get it free

Thanks Randy,

I know you are a serious student of reading for The Stick, so I appreciate your comment. StaffTab was truly a team effort. Emmett and I spent a lot of time on the phone hashing it out. In the end I credit the graphic on page 62 of Free Hands with subliminally percolating in my head for 10 years as the inspiration for StaffTab.

Hi Eric,

Thanks for checking that out. I think the concept is a good one, but better suited to an instrument with a key-centric tuning like the guitar. When you have the duplication of pitches created by the major 3rd between strings 2 and 3 (which gives you the same notes on strings 1 and 6) this makes it much easier to define the position with these kinds of zones.

With uniform 4ths and 5ths, each fret straddles different keys, as does each string, so I'd rather not ask the player to interpret any more than necessary when trying to teach the movements the music requires.

I really value the key-neutral aspect of the uniform intervals. How much guitar music is written in Db Major? With The Stick we can work in one key just as easily as any other.

The other thing I don't like about the zones is that they reinforce position-oriented play, which I just think is a limiting approach to tapping.

For more advanced books, I will probably be leaving out the string markers as the fret numbers do clearly indicate the position of every note, and the string markers can make the page a little dense. But Emmett's finger symbols for the note-heads, and fret numbers, are too useful as teaching tools.

One suggestion I have for anyone offering music written in StaffTab is to make the music a little larger on the page than you would for standard notation. I did this for the songbook, and it really seemed to help with legibility (especially for my 46-year-old eyes)

StaffTab is evolving,so if you have any suggestion which will make it more readable, please pass them along. Here's one change I made recently, which I hope will help players learn the fretboard better, too:

In the video, the "first generation" concept of numbering the strings was used, as in The Stick Book. Future publication using the notation will name the strings by their lettered note names, instead. This helps identify the tuning for which the piece is arranged, and it also makes it easier for Grand Stick players to identify which strings to use.

Here's an example of that from the Greg Howard Songbook:

http://www.greghoward.com/free_hands/books/

>>>How much guitar music is written in Db Major?<<<

Hence the invention of the capo!

Anita K. Poe

http://www.ehow.com/video_4393971_using ... -flat.html

Confusing Db video.


Abie Seedy