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What are BrassTabs?

Not a method.

Not a complete guide for how to play a brass instrument.

Not a replacement for reading music.

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BrassTabs help teachers make brass playing fun, with faster results.


You can find out more about BrassTabs by heading to 
https://pbonemusic.com/brasstabs.

Backstage with BrassTabs

When Chris Fower and the team began developing BrassTabs, they wanted to bring brass into the rock and pop band setting. The set out some core aims of BrassTabs:
 

  • Encourage collaboration and performance with music, mainly by ear

  • Create material that is useful in informal learning settings

  • No music reading skills needed

  • Show slide positions and valve combinations

  • Develop basic technical help with “operating” a brass instrument

  • Include an insight into how brass instruments work.

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Out with the old...

This is what a traditional beginner brass score looks like...
 

  • Advanced reading skills needed

  • High technical abilities on instrument needed

  • No real access to creative music-making

  • Doesn’t reflect the experience of being in a band

  • No guide to how you might get the instrument to create these sounds.

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Chris looked at how more established informal instruments presented their music and then decided on the key brass technique elements to incorporate into a new kind of notation.

 

He then entered into a collaboration with the USA charity; “Little Kids Rock” (now known as Music Will) and classroom practitioner, Melissa Rutkelis, who was already developing solutions in Chicago.​

Guitar tabs, done differently

For musicians more tuned in to traditional notation or brass music, here are the basics of guitar tabs:
 

  • Each horizontal line represents a string on the guitar

  • Each vertical line works as a bar line in traditional music

  • The lowest-pitched string (E) is at the bottom and the highest (E) is at the top

  • Numbers represent frets

  • Numbers are stacked to create chords.

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This makes tabs more accessible than standard notation, but there are some limitations:

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  • There is no guide to the rhythm patterns of the music

  • There is no guide to the actual pitch of each note, only the physical placement of fingers on string and fret

  • There is no articulation i.e. strum, pick, slur, hammer on/off etc.

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More advanced tabs do begin to incorporate these missing musical elements but

naturally become increasingly complex. They are difficult to read live and are more for “learning how to play the tune” i.e. memorizing for later performance and trying to “get” parts that you can’t work out yourself.

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Hello, BrassTabs

The first step was to decide to use our harmonics or partials like strings in guitar tabs.

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  • In the graphic, the Blue line represents the low Bb for concert pitch or C for Bb transposing instrument instruments with no valves or in the first slide position

  • The yellow is F for concert or G for Bb

  • Orange is the upper Bb or C harmonic

  • Red is the harmonic that gives us a D in concert or upper E in Bb

  • We next placed guides to where to put your slide or valve combinations on each harmonic

  • We also used barlines, like guitar tabs, to roughly order the notes

  • Just like guitar tabs, we are not giving any guide to the rhythm: that’s for you to listen and copy

  • The tabs are an "aide memoire” or guide chart

  • The tabs do not offer the same information as traditional, written music.

Guitar tabs, done differently

For musicians more tuned in to traditional notation or brass music, here are the basics of guitar tabs:
 

  • Each horizontal line represents a string on the guitar

  • Each vertical line works as a bar line in traditional music

  • The lowest-pitched string (E) is at the bottom and the highest (E) is at the top

  • Numbers represent frets

  • Numbers are stacked to create chords.

​

This makes tabs more accessible than standard notation, but there are some limitations:

​

  • There is no guide to the rhythm patterns of the music

  • There is no guide to the actual pitch of each note, only the physical placement of fingers on string and fret

  • There is no articulation i.e. strum, pick, slur, hammer on/off etc.

​

More advanced tabs do begin to incorporate these missing musical elements but

naturally become increasingly complex. They are difficult to read live and are more for “learning how to play the tune” i.e. memorizing for later performance and trying to “get” parts that you can’t work out yourself.

​

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