The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm a pack rat,was digging through some boxes today and found an old book someone gave me when I was a kid in the 40's,It's a book on how to play the Hawaiian Guitar,Shows a guy in a strait chair playing a flat top with a raised nut,Some of the songs are,Forget Me Not,Turkey In the Straw,Aloha Oe',Darling Nelly Gray,Hawaiian Fandango,The tuning is A major,The tab for the songs are the same as today,The book says,Copyright 1924,Wm.J.Smith Music Co.Inc,N.Y.Was just wondering how far back tab as we know it goes.Any one know?DYKBC.

By the way,this was the first time I ever saw tab,I raised the nut on my little Stella guitar and learned those songs,had a lot of fun doing that.DYKBC.

Tablature first appeared in Europe around 1300... Lute tablature.



As far as steel guitar tab, most of the 1920s books had notes only, as far as I know. Oahu Publishing really expanded steel tab from the late 1930s through the early 60s.

Dang! That looks surprisingly similar to what is used today.

I feel there is a predilection amongst academic types not to use, nor to encourage the use of, tab because it isn't... well, academic enough (I guess.) I know there was a time when GIT and Berklee wouldn't allow students to use tab although I don't know if that's still the case.

Anyway, I'm not smart enough to go the academic route so I use anything that works

My favorite tab story was told here on the Forum a couple of years ago:

Back in the 1930s the Oahu company was sued for fraud. The plaintiff claimed that the Oahu courses did not teach students how to read music, just tablature. Oahu's lawyers brought a lap steel and a tab book into court, and within 5 minutes they taught the judge how to play a song! ... and they won their case.

Tab is an incomplete system of music notation, because it doesn't account for rhythm and phrasing. But standard notation is also incomplete for multi-stringed instruments like guitar, and especially steel guitar, because it was designed for instruments with one-to-one correspondence between the written notes and the notes on the instrument. With the multiple positions for every note on guitar and steel guitar, some kind of notation is required beyond standard notation. The obvious, and commonly used way to deal with this is to print standard notation above tab. That is complete. That is what is printed in the number one guitar magazine, Guitar Player. And that is the way it is written in some of the best steel guitar instructional material. Any music school academic who doesn't understand that is showing his ignorance of the whole multi-stringed fretted instrument family.

I agree, David. Very well said!