Way up yonder on the chattahoochee

• De-ee can use Tab
• Beep-b-beep can use Tab
• Pip can use Tab
• JungleVIP is a straggler on Tab

Tab is this thing that helps you learn how to play songs on a Guitar. It looks like this,

.............................................
...........3.........1...............
.............2.........0.............
......0.0..................0.2.0..
...............3.3.........2.......3
....................33..3.3..........

Each dotted line represents a string on a guitar. Each figure, a fret number. You play the numbers in sequence. If you're a guitar player, you'll know this tab represents Sweet Home Alabama by Lynerd Skynerd. Cep't its hard for me.

When I was a boy, I sang in a Church choir. My parents sent me because they were worried I couldn't read very well and thought singing would bring my written english comprehension up to speed. No one realised at the time measles had wiped out my eyesight from 7 on and I struggled to see text for far too many years. Both from books and chalk and talk.

Far from helping my reading, I believe singing songs in that old choir taught me to perform and develop a musical muscle memory. And, indeed (as Alan Jackson has it) "a lot about living and a little about love"

Anyway, this translated itself into a learning style which is, at once, derivitive and also, probably lazy. Half the time, therefore, I cant be bothered (at all) to work out TAB and will rather watch Jules, hoping the camera lingers on the guitarists' fret hand long enough for me to copy (to some extent) the tune by rote. Monkey see Monkey do style.

Professional guitarists like Beeb b beeb always talk of the anoraks that sit close to the front of the stage gazing fixatedly at them, learning the licks.

My defence is always "a damaged childhood" I hope this is ok everyone.

Conversely, it can be a huge downer watching other players. Just before Christmas, I was at a small concert watching a most famous english guitarist at short range (not Brian May to all you Queen fans who voted them the best ever band on Radio 2 this Christmas-What were you on......it has to be JPG&R doesn't it ?).

Anyway, it was all so easy. A slow, crab handed style that beggered the technique beneath it. And all these guitar gods have massive hands of course. Just in typing this text I can feel all my insecurities as a player rising up from me. My little paws dancing over the keys here.

The point is, Pip, Dee-ee and Beeb-be-Beep all have this thing where they see the tab; which (somehow) makes the right synapses connection and their fingers just do the work. Someone enlighten me on how that can be-or is it just laziness on my behalf ?

JVIP