Re: [Harp-L] Sheet Music vs Tab

[JPavlik@xxxxxxxxx]

I've been playing at an advanced-beginners or beginning-intermediate 
player level for awhile now. My most recent advances have been because 
I've been teaching myself to read music. For years people have been 
stressing to me the importance of knowing where the notes are on the harp, 
now I finally have a good solid reason to learn and the ability to correct 
myself. Tab also doesn't really describe rhythm the way standard notation 
does. Licks and runs that don't make any sense to me tabbed-out all of a 
sudden scream at me from the page and I can immediately set to practicing 
them. Also, knowing a definite pacing count allows me to mentally fit the 
lick into parts of a song before I ever decide to practice the lick in 
jams. 

I've been teaching myself country-blues harmonica, one of the cores of 
which is the ability to build off of either the guitar or vocal melody. 
The ability to read music has allowed me to be a lot faster at that than I 
would be if I had to rely solely on my ears. 

The harmonica is still an expressive, passionate instrument and I can see 
why some might consider standard notation to be too limiting but to me, 
notation is just marks on a page and are only as limiting as you allow it 
to be. I still dirty up notes that the notation says to hit clean; I still 
syncopate or add eighths when the notations says to stay on the beat or 
use quarters and so on.

I've found reading music invaluable.
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 I've only been playing harmonica for a couple months now, and aside
from some time spent jamming I've been playing tab that entire time. I
recently decided to pick up piano again so I got out all my sheet
music. On Billy Joel's Piano Man there is music written for harmonica
and I used that to learn to read for harp. To me, the sheet music
version of me playing sounds far better than reading the tab. Has
anybody else had a similar experience? Also, I'd like to ask if anyone
has a favorite book of music that they play harp to.
Thanks, Brandon