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I think I'm somewhere in between a few of the viewpoints expressed
here. To use a really crappy analogy, I look at it like riding a
bike. You don't just hop on a ten-speed and head for a steep hill--
there has to be some sort of guide at first, like training wheels.
Tabs are great for those of us who can't read music. A friend of mine
just bought a guitar and wanted me to show him some basic stuff.
Since we live a few hours away from each other, the easiest thing to
do was tab some chord progressions, etc. out for him. He can learn at
his own pace, and I really don't see too much of a difference between
him learning a C chord or a scale off of a tab than if I showed him,
finger by finger, how to play it.
Plus, the more you learn, the less reliant you become. I used to
prefer full, in-depth tabs, but now I tend towards the sparse ones--
"A-D-E-D, solo in Am" leaves a lot more up to the person learning
from the tab than a note-for-note transcription. I'm still not very
good, but that's more than what I need to be able to fake my way
through "Louie, Louie."
I'll be the first to admit there's drawbacks, though. You can find a
tab for the guitar solo from the New York Dolls' "Chatterbox" online
somewhere, but it's not going to show you how to play it with the
attitude that Johnny Thunders originally did. Sort of like how, to
bastardize a quote from Spinal Tap, seeing a Dick Dale riff on paper
tends to understate the hugeness of it.
OLGA has a few two-dozen page Neil Young tabs. I see no point in
flawlessly learning something like "Cortez the Killer" or "Down By
the River" (which I don't have the memory for in the first place) and
in the process completely abandoning the spontaneity present in the
original performance, but apparently some people do.
Some people also like to finger-tap and play classical music loudly
on electric guitar. Me, I prefer The Sonics. Tabbing's just as
subjective, though. It works for some, it doesn't for others.
Now if only someone could tab the Eddie & the Showmen version
of "Scratch."
-Warren
