Tabs and notes question

I am brand new and having fun working my way through Core Level 1. I have a question about tabs and notes. As I learn to play the practice tunes and riffs should I be memorizing the actual notes being played or just learn the songs by the tabs? Is that important at this point? Wondering if I need to back up and learn what the actual note is when I see a specific tab on the music sheet. If I stop and think about which string and fret the tab indicates I can convert to a note, but I cannot do that quickly in my mind at this point. Thanks...

Have a read through this thread:

http://www.guitartricks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32615

It's a common question that people have. Eventually, your question will be more in line with what that guy asked in his thread. That is, whether or not you should learn to read standard notation, or if tablature is good enough.

In the ends it depends on what your long terms goals are. Whatever they are, it's best to start preparing for them right now. Actually, you should apply that mentality for everything in your life. Not just guitar.

Yeah. If you're going to do it, starting now is good. You can take your time and pace yourself that way. If you ever want to play or maybe even write for anything other than guitar or bass, then you may want to be able to read notes. In my own metal band experience, I wanted the lead guitarist to do a solo over a certain riff that I wrote and if neither of us new what key it was in, he wouldn't know what scale to use for his solo. :)

Originally Posted by: k5mrI am brand new and having fun working my way through Core Level 1. I have a question about tabs and notes. As I learn to play the practice tunes and riffs should I be memorizing the actual notes being played or just learn the songs by the tabs? Is that important at this point? Wondering if I need to back up and learn what the actual note is when I see a specific tab on the music sheet. If I stop and think about which string and fret the tab indicates I can convert to a note, but I cannot do that quickly in my mind at this point. Thanks...

Knowing what notes you are actually playing will be very important at a certain point in the future, for now you should take small steps and focuss on "bigger thinks" on the macro level, for example learn where all the notes are on the E string, later on the A and D and after that all the others.

This will be a great basis for what you will need to do after that!

Let me know how it works and whether it helped!

Greetings,

David