TAB - River John Sunset Waltz

Finally made up the TAB for this. Found it easier to write up by hand using the TAB rolling stamp I got from Music Escapades. See demo on my Insta page.

It seems like a good way to use scrap paper, and not use up printer cartridge ink.

Easy way to create a large print, horizontal printable.

I'm not intuitively a TAB user. But I did find that jotting down the tabs to an AABB fiddle tune type of piece was a lot easier than music notation.

Hand generated bc I just don't have the time to learn a new program. But I think it's readable, looks actually ok in pdf viewer.

The pdf indicates 3 pages. But you just need to print the first 2 pages. 3rd is because I couldn't figure out how to clean it up. But I know what to do for next time.

This is kind of a prototype. Free offering in my Google docs. Constructive comments welcome.

Here's the link to it:

TAB, River John Sunset Waltz

Type size & page breaks - hurdles to learning

Who all appreciates big print?

Student who had a concussion last year had trouble focusing with one eye. Made choices for larger print for her.

But who am I kidding, we all appreciate larger print.

Music publishers make obvious choices about print sizes to produce a book more cheaply. Type size and page breaks are not chosen optimally for musicians.

When a complicated section goes over the page or a repeat gores back to Lord knows where, that becomes a node where students give up.

Even lyric sheets could be laid out with clearer breaks between chorus and verse.

AND ONE MORE THING, I don't like sheet music that goes over 3 pages.  Even if taped together, it flops off the stand. I'd rather sheet music run long north to south, in a legal page size type format, if that means it doesn't go over as many pages. But these are the limitations of anything mass produced on paper.

Two pages in total are best. Fair pages are doable, but you have to rig up a support for your stand. I've used a cut down bankers box (example, see next post), a duplo blocks box.They often get recycled on me during a Christmas purge and aren't there when I need them, and the cycle begins again.

If you own your own music, you can copy the master, then cut and paste the copy to  work better for you.

Ultimately when learning a piece, you have to be able to form a 'map' of the piece in your head. That's what large type and thoughtful page breaks allow you to do.

Anyway, that's what I will prioritize in my Patreon lessons: large print & page break that make it easier to internalize a piece.

Full tutorial for this coming later this month,