alex0160

May seem a stupid question, but it's actually really annoying! Are there any methods to learning/memorising tabs faster? It seems to take me ages before I can play without looking at the music !lol
Thanks in advance

mullet_318

if your new, then practice is really the best advice. Just keep playing....and playing and playing...and....playing..

If youve been around the block a few times and still have alot of trouble remebering, you can try to break it down into smaller parts and just practice those until you get them, then string together for the whole song.

If you know your chords well, focus on remebering the progression rather than all the little intricaies. If its a barre or power chord progression, somethimes i just remeber the root note string prog as the shape will carry throughout the song - so like; 7 5 6 8 4 4 instead of
5 3
5 3
6 4
7 5
7 5
5 3 ..and so on

It really depends on the person, and with all due respect, you may just never be a good remeber'er and have to just practce enough that it becomes second nature. Ive always had a good head for numbers so i can remeber long strings of numbers and find tab (number) progressions easier to remeber than chord (letter) progressions.

Another aspect to consider is the food you eat. Some foods DO dumb you down, and i dont mean make you "stupid", just that it slows your brain process, reduces your capacity to remeber and hold onto information in the short term and long term. Google some brain foods, but fatty acids (eggs, fish, etc..) are a good start for boosting memory and try to reduce the amount of high fructose corn syrups (pop, anything processed with sugar in it- has a big impact on your retaining of information) in your diet... and purely speculation but... dont smoke so much pot before practiceing (although that is my favorite time to play as, you may not notice at the time, but will affect how much you remeber hours and days after you learn something

Hope some of this helps but ultimatly just have to play around and see whats works for you

eddiehimself

+1. Not just foods, but if you smoke, drink lots of energy drinks and that sort of thing, that doesn't really help your memory or concentration either. I think the best thing you can do is just to try and learn your way around the fretboard. I don't mean you have to spend hours practising scales or anything, but if you at least have a basic idea of which notes go where, it's going to help you speed up your song learning much more.

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alex0160

Thanks for the suggestions guys! So how long roughly would it take you guys to learn a page of tab?

eddiehimself

I don't use tabs; I generally learn songs by ear.

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Gouwsie

depends on the complexity of the song, but at an average probably about 8- 12 hours or so, stretched over a week