A confession

[Austin]

I don't tend to like the way tab replaced sheet music. It gets on my nerves. I'm slowly starting to accept that this is the case, but it still irks me. People say that sheet music is inferior to tab for banjo sometimes... That really grinds my gears. Anyway, That's my public service and announcement.

[Steve Harrison]

Hi Austin, I have to admit to being with you on this. Prior to taking up the banjo in the mid 1960s, I was already a competent sight reader having had piano accordion lessons (I still play) as a youngster. I used to play mainly traditional music and I took the tunes I played on the squeeze box, figured out where the notes were and transferred them to the banjo very much by trial and error. I began classic style in the late 1970s when I was given a pile of music, which included  Grimshaw and Moreley  tutors, from a retired banjo teacher. To date, I've written over 800 arrangements for classic banjo, most of which were taken from piano scores. Although I don't use tab, I do add fret numbers and position markers above the notes to help anyone who may find it useful negotiate the scores.  Due to the large number of arrangements, it's not  possible for me to memorize all of them  and my annotation is useful to me as an aide memoir for tunes I don't play very often....Steve.

[Joel Hooks]

There are two common responses that I get when I bring up musical literacy for banjo:

1. "Can I read music?  Not enough to hurt my playing".
2. "Can I read notes? Hell, there are no notes to the banjo. You just play it".

Both of these are often presented as humorous "jokes" and delivered tongue in cheek. 

No. 2 was on the back of the Pete Seeger banjo information book with the attribution of "Reply made by old-time banjo picker, interview around 1850, and asked if he could read music." That sort of vague citation has people claiming it as a quote from various sources not limited to but including Uncle Dave and Earl Scruggs.

Neither of these are particularly useful, non the less they are used by banjoists who are obviously sensitive to the fact that they are illiterate.

One will also run into "arguments" against reading music for banjo.  The main points people will bring up are:

1. Lute music was written in TAB (what this has to do with banjo music, I do not know).
2. Duplicate notes are found in different positons on the banjo fingerboard, therefore TAB is superior to notation.
3. The banjo has the octave G "drone" string so TAB is superior.
4. Standard notation does not convey emotion or give all the info needed.
5. "Old time" banjo uses "alternate tunings" (scordatura) which makes notation too difficult to read. 
6. Bluegrass is "roll" based and all those notes are confusing with notation.

Obviously every one of these are fallacies which do not need explanation to anyone who has read the first few pages of the 100+ classic era banjo tutors.  No. 5 is the only point with any creditability but there is a standard notation solution for that too. 

I believe much of this boils down to the anti-intellectualism or "dumbing down" movement.  With the banjo, a lot stems from the academic "folk revival" having a hyper focus on a tiny faction of rural musicians.  This, with a "back to basics" nostalgia, supported the concept of the "self made man" or "lone frontiersman" who relies on his own hard work, innovation and wit to survive.  A very romantic concept.

Many are also quick to point out successful professional musicians that do not read, a list that is quite long.  This is confusing to me because what other industry would allow for this?  Imagine applying for a job as an engineer and not knowing how to read and write numbers.  Or being an actor that could not read scripts.  Imagine where we would be if authors could not read or write their native language. 

That said, Bela Fleck, Tony Trischak, Earl Scruggs, and on and on, all have been very successful using TAB and "ear" only. 

One should also consider that "Bluegrass" and "Old time" are their own unique things, with their own tradition.  "Old time" champions the Simple Simon "by ear" method and Bluegrass uses both TAB and "by ear" (well, I guess they both use both, but old time slants towards ear as a point of pride-- again, that nostalgic self reliance image).

I recently read an interview with Chet Atkins and he had this to say:

"Yes I do read music... I know of no other thing that has helped me more in playing guitar. I learned to read out of necessity, and having this ability certainly helped build my confidence"

Sadly, more banjoists do not feel this way.  But they tend to get by just fine without notation and for sitting in a circle in a parking lot or campground and playing AABB tunes over and over again behind the fiddle the system works fine.  Many old time banjoists will tell you that it is more about the socialization than anything. 

That is okay, there is room for everyone. 

[Jody Stecher]

i started playing banjo in the late 1950s when I was 12, having started guitar a year earlier. I learned by ear, I had 2 successive guitar  teachers who taught by ear. Both were musically literate but did not think that reading from the page was the best starting place for beginners, especially for children.  I learned banjo by trying to replicate what other, older,  kids were doing. I had a copy of the second (yellow cover) edition of Pete Seeger's book on how to play 5-string banjo. I found the tab in that book to be confusing. I found TIM (thumb, index, middle) to be useful in the abstract but not in the context of an actual piece of music.

Over the years I have been exposed to many musical traditions, each with its own approach to musical literacy.  I found that the many disparate types of music whose practitioners call what they do "old-time music"  are  part of a big "family" of what is known sometimes as folk music and sometimes as traditional music. Under that umbrella are musics whose practitioners are universally musically literate, others which are entirely non-literate, those who are mostly literate, mostly non-literate, and most interestingly to me who has been a teacher since age 14, those who take the approach that learning by ear first and then, before too long, using staff notation produces the best results. Not one of these traditions uses tab. The raga music of North and South India (2 very different musics) has a kind of musical shorthand that is used as a memory aid, to be consulted from time to time. The phenomenally sensitive and skilled instrumentalists, vocalists, percussionists, and composers, who can discern minute differences in microtonality, in phrasing, in timing etc, and reproduce it easily, would consider anyone who actually looks at a printed (or hand-written) page during the act of making music to be incompetent at best and at worse to be insane. There is nothing "Simple Simon" about learning by ear. Unless, of course (?) one is learning dumbed-down music by ear.  

There is indeed romantic nonsense in taking pride in ignorance. Here are two facts though. 

1) Every type of music in the world has a segment of its practitioners who are certain that their way of music making is he best and everyone else is wrong. This is short-sighted.  

2) Being able to learn by ear does not make someone morally superior. It does make them musically superior to someone who can only play by the page. All the great note readers I have met and heard are perfectly capable of reproducing a heard melody on their instrument without the abstraction of the page.

  Music is not the same as language but in some ways is similar.  Imagine a very young child learning to speak by reading! That's not how it works. The baby learns through total immersion and that is how young musicians who are part of a living musical tradition first learn music. They imbibe it through their environment.

I have been a professional musician since my teens. One of the fields I have been part of is Bluegrass Music. I have met most of the great first and second generation bluegrass banjo players.  Not one who was born before 1950  learned from tab. ZEE-RO.  Some of them learned to write tab in order to meet a demand from a deluded student body.  Earl Scruggs did not read or write tab. Bill Keith was fluent in staff notation and tab. He was a great ear player as well. 

I have also been a professional teacher since my teens. I have taught so many hundreds of private students ("one to one"). If the classes I've taught for over half a century are counted then I have taught thousands.  Clear patterns are easily discernible:  those who learned an instrument first via staff notation have an advantage in most areas. Their reading abilities did not harm them. Where they are typically at a disadvantage is in discerning chord changes and harmony. Not all are like this. Most have been.  Those who first learned by ear learn more quickly by ear than those who did not. They have a difficult time relating what is seen on the printed page to how they perceive music. And that is because so much of what comprises music cannot be represented on a page. Once they learn to read staff notation-- if they learn--- they find it "broadens their horizons".  It allows them to perceive in more ways than one. Nothing of their ear skills are lost.   Those who 'learned" entirely via tab are the slowest learners.  Easily 80% of tab-only players have been musically crippled by relying on this medium. There are notable exceptions but exceptions is what they are.

Back when I was first learning to play the kids and adults I knew who read staff notation  played like automatons. The music of the ear players was flowing and expressive. Based on the limited sample to which I was exposed I formed the idea that reliance on staff notation hurt one's musicality. Later I met note readers who played well and I changed my opinion.   When I tried to learn staff notation I had trouble at first because I mistakenly thought that key signatures were fractions and that seemed bizarre. Once that error was put to rest I found staff notation to be a brilliant storage medium whose chief advantage was that the shape of the notation was literally a map of the shape of the melody.  Tab doesn't do that. 

I have also been involved my whole life in what is called "Old Time Music" (of the type[s] from the southern states of the USA).  No one in that broad field who learned to play in the music's natural setting (home and community) learned banjo from the page. Tab was unknown.  Staff notation was for piano and  brass band etc.   And many learned to read and play to some extent the music which is historically associated with staff notation.  But not banjo.  Among those who are called for better and worse "revival" musicians some used tab at first but abandoned it when discovering its biggest shortcoming: the majority of existing tab, then and now, is wrongly notated. It is dumbed down and a false representation of the tune.  I can't emphasize that strongly enough.  The problem with all tab, including flawless tab, is that it is typically practiced in isolation and does not impart skills of rhythm and phrasing. 

Which brings me to the dreaded circle phenomenon in both the self-described bluegrass and old time worlds.  To quote Bill Monroe who was speaking about another topic "That ain't no part of nothin'  "   All the bluegrass musicians I first encountered as a teen, both down south and up north played (when not on stage) standing (occasionally sitting) as close to each other as possible, without hitting someone in the head with a peghead or poking someone in the eye with a fiddle bow. Close enough to smell and Close Enough To Hear Everything.  They gathered in an unruly clump. It was the same in the old-time world with the exception that there seemed to be more seated music.  There was never a circle.  

The circle seems to have been introduced at music camps. It is a way for the student to hide. The cannot hear what the person across from them in the circle is doing so they feel safe as they assume (usually correctly) that they cannot be heard. In this context it true that the phenomenon is more of a social event than a musical one.

Now, about alternate tunings:  This is a problem with staff notation only if that system is taken to primarily be a way of representing fingering. It should be obvious that this is not so. What fingering do vocalists use?

Staff notation is a representation of melody, rhythm and harmony.  Fingerings are indicated separately in a way that I find well more than adequate.   

One more point: Some old-time banjo players first learned to play plectrum banjo. They learned to read staff notation early on.  Walt Koken first learned that way, He is one of the most able old-time banjo players to have ever lived. His old-time credentials are impeccable and his playing is as unique as his many compositions.  He developed a three line type of notation. One line is staff, one is basic tab, and the third is all about fingers and pull-offs and hammers and slides.  It is one way to learn from the page but for me there is too much for my eye to take in if I try to read and play in real time. But that's not what it's for. It's for storage and learning.  I mention Walt because of what he said to me about the idea that there should be no notation for banjo. He said that it implies that the banjo is not a musical instrument.

TOUCHÉ

Joel Hooks said:

There are two common responses that I get when I bring up musical literacy for banjo:

1. "Can I read music?  Not enough to hurt my playing".
2. "Can I read notes? Hell, there are no notes to the banjo. You just play it".

Both of these are often presented as humorous "jokes" and delivered tongue in cheek. 

No. 2 was on the back of the Pete Seeger banjo information book with the attribution of "Reply made by old-time banjo picker, interview around 1850, and asked if he could read music." That sort of vague citation has people claiming it as a quote from various sources not limited to but including Uncle Dave and Earl Scruggs.

Neither of these are particularly useful, non the less they are used by banjoists who are obviously sensitive to the fact that they are illiterate.

One will also run into "arguments" against reading music for banjo.  The main points people will bring up are:

1. Lute music was written in TAB (what this has to do with banjo music, I do not know).
2. Duplicate notes are found in different positons on the banjo fingerboard, therefore TAB is superior to notation.
3. The banjo has the octave G "drone" string so TAB is superior.
4. Standard notation does not convey emotion or give all the info needed.
5. "Old time" banjo uses "alternate tunings" (scordatura) which makes notation too difficult to read. 
6. Bluegrass is "roll" based and all those notes are confusing with notation.

Obviously every one of these are fallacies which do not need explanation to anyone who has read the first few pages of the 100+ classic era banjo tutors.  No. 5 is the only point with any creditability but there is a standard notation solution for that too. 

I believe much of this boils down to the anti-intellectualism or "dumbing down" movement.  With the banjo, a lot stems from the academic "folk revival" having a hyper focus on a tiny faction of rural musicians.  This, with a "back to basics" nostalgia, supported the concept of the "self made man" or "lone frontiersman" who relies on his own hard work, innovation and wit to survive.  A very romantic concept.

Many are also quick to point out successful professional musicians that do not read, a list that is quite long.  This is confusing to me because what other industry would allow for this?  Imagine applying for a job as an engineer and not knowing how to read and write numbers.  Or being an actor that could not read scripts.  Imagine where we would be if authors could not read or write their native language. 

That said, Bela Fleck, Tony Trischak, Earl Scruggs, and on and on, all have been very successful using TAB and "ear" only. 

One should also consider that "Bluegrass" and "Old time" are their own unique things, with their own tradition.  "Old time" champions the Simple Simon "by ear" method and Bluegrass uses both TAB and "by ear" (well, I guess they both use both, but old time slants towards ear as a point of pride-- again, that nostalgic self reliance image).

I recently read an interview with Chet Atkins and he had this to say:

"Yes I do read music... I know of no other thing that has helped me more in playing guitar. I learned to read out of necessity, and having this ability certainly helped build my confidence"

Sadly, more banjoists do not feel this way.  But they tend to get by just fine without notation and for sitting in a circle in a parking lot or campground and playing AABB tunes over and over again behind the fiddle the system works fine.  Many old time banjoists will tell you that it is more about the socialization than anything. 

That is okay, there is room for everyone. 

[Trapdoor2]

Like Joel said, there's room for everyone.

I read notation (I took piano lessons as a kid). I sight-read for violin, viola and cello. These are, for the most part, single-line instruments, very few chords. I've tried to sight-read notation for banjo (and guitar). Nope, not for me. Notation is too ambiguous for instruments that have multiple choices available for a given pitch. I also hate having to read fingerings as well as the notes. I like a clean sheet of tab, thank you.

I'm also an engineer. I like efficiency. I find modern tab to be more efficient at delivering information for fretted instruments. Full stop.

[Jody Stecher]

Whoops, I meant TIME signatures, not key signatures.

Jody Stecher said:

When I tried to learn staff notation I had trouble at first because I mistakenly thought that key signatures were fractions and that seemed bizarre. 

[Jody Stecher]

One of the beauties or advantages of staff notation over tab is that the reader/user is free to apply whatever fingering he/she wishes. As a map of melody it empowers the player.  Tab or fingering notations are useful to indicate a composer's intention or to convey in a transcription exactly what  a particular player did on a particular occasion. The latter is descriptive notation whereas tab tends to be prescriptive. 

Anyway one of my points about tab in a bluegrass context is that most of the best players do not use it, many do not know how to read tab, and for those who do use it, it is not their primary means of learning, and it is not their only way of reading and writing music.  Of all the very skilled bluegrass  banjo players with whom I have performed and recorded I have met only one who seemed to actually *like* tab, rather than tolerate it. That is Tony Trischka. But he likes it as a way of notating how he will play a certain passage of a piece of music he is in the process of learning. So he is not playing while reading someone else's decision about how a passage or entire tune should be played. He is reminding himself about his own decision.  

Trapdoor2 said:

Like Joel said, there's room for everyone.

I read notation (I took piano lessons as a kid). I sight-read for violin, viola and cello. These are, for the most part, single-line instruments, very few chords. I've tried to sight-read notation for banjo (and guitar). Nope, not for me. Notation is too ambiguous for instruments that have multiple choices available for a given pitch. I also hate having to read fingerings as well as the notes. I like a clean sheet of tab, thank you.

I'm also an engineer. I like efficiency. I find modern tab to be more efficient at delivering information for fretted instruments. Full stop.

[Trapdoor2]

Tab doesn't force you to play just those notes, Jody. It is just a different method of transmission. Just as you progress and learn to improvise or make different choices from notation, you do exactly the same with tab. Most of the traditional tab players I know don't play anything note-for-note from any written source. They use their ears and their knowledge to do whatever they want, once they have the tune in their head.

I tend to not care what "the best players" do. My experience with great players has been that they did their own thing...and they're usually adamant that it is "their way or the highway." I avoid people like that. Show me how you do it, voice your recommendations...and let it go at that. I can handle the decision whether to use or discard that info.

For traditional music, I'm like Tony T. (and I had lessons from him...many years ago). I need reminders. I play hundreds of tunes but have never been able to remember how "that one" goes. I open up my tab, play a few notes and then off I go.

With Classic Banjo, I follow the dots (via tab)...but I'm not slavishly following the notation's fingering. When I'm creating a tab I don't hesitate to find more comfortable positions for me. When we're all playing the same exact music, who cares what somebody is reading from?

[Jody Stecher]

You are the exception, Marc. Good to know that you don't slavishly follow the tab fingering indications.  Most of the hundreds of tab users I have met do.. They play only what is on the page.   I agree that One Size Fits All does not and cannot work. I have not found that the great players I have met are like that at all. They understand that there is no regulation size hand or brain. What I have found is that a few, just a few, geniuses are the opposite: they don't want anyone else to know how they are playing and are reluctant to impart to anyone just exactly what they are doing. They don't want anyone else to do it like they do. I'm talking about technique. When it comes to How Does This Tune Go, then yeah, they all want everyone to learn it "right" before any changes are made.

Trapdoor2 said:

Tab doesn't force you to play just those notes, Jody. It is just a different method of transmission. Just as you progress and learn to improvise or make different choices from notation, you do exactly the same with tab. Most of the traditional tab players I know don't play anything note-for-note from any written source. They use their ears and their knowledge to do whatever they want, once they have the tune in their head.

I tend to not care what "the best players" do. My experience with great players has been that they did their own thing...and they're usually adamant that it is "their way or the highway." I avoid people like that. Show me how you do it, voice your recommendations...and let it go at that. I can handle the decision whether to use or discard that info.

For traditional music, I'm like Tony T. (and I had lessons from him...many years ago). I need reminders. I play hundreds of tunes but have never been able to remember how "that one" goes. I open up my tab, play a few notes and then off I go.

With Classic Banjo, I follow the dots (via tab)...but I'm not slavishly following the notation's fingering. When I'm creating a tab I don't hesitate to find more comfortable positions for me. When we're all playing the same exact music, who cares what somebody is reading from?

[Austin]

I did read the whole thing, but I wanted to say that notation can be kind of difficult to just pick up and sound musical.

Jody Stecher said:

i started playing banjo in the late 1950s when I was 12, having started guitar a year earlier. I learned by ear, I had 2 successive guitar  teachers who taught by ear. Both were musically literate but did not think that reading from the page was the best starting place for beginners, especially for children.  I learned banjo by trying to replicate what other, older,  kids were doing. I had a copy of the second (yellow cover) edition of Pete Seeger's book on how to play 5-string banjo. I found the tab in that book to be confusing. I found TIM (thumb, index, middle) to be useful in the abstract but not in the context of an actual piece of music.

Over the years I have been exposed to many musical traditions, each with its own approach to musical literacy.  I found that the many disparate types of music whose practitioners call what they do "old-time music"  are  part of a big "family" of what is known sometimes as folk music and sometimes as traditional music. Under that umbrella are musics whose practitioners are universally musically literate, others which are entirely non-literate, those who are mostly literate, mostly non-literate, and most interestingly to me who has been a teacher since age 14, those who take the approach that learning by ear first and then, before too long, using staff notation produces the best results. Not one of these traditions uses tab. The raga music of North and South India (2 very different musics) has a kind of musical shorthand that is used as a memory aid, to be consulted from time to time. The phenomenally sensitive and skilled instrumentalists, vocalists, percussionists, and composers, who can discern minute differences in microtonality, in phrasing, in timing etc, and reproduce it easily, would consider anyone who actually looks at a printed (or hand-written) page during the act of making music to be incompetent at best and at worse to be insane. There is nothing "Simple Simon" about learning by ear. Unless, of course (?) one is learning dumbed-down music by ear.  

There is indeed romantic nonsense in taking pride in ignorance. Here are two facts though. 

1) Every type of music in the world has a segment of its practitioners who are certain that their way of music making is he best and everyone else is wrong. This is short-sighted.  

2) Being able to learn by ear does not make someone morally superior. It does make them musically superior to someone who can only play by the page. All the great note readers I have met and heard are perfectly capable of reproducing a heard melody on their instrument without the abstraction of the page.

  Music is not the same as language but in some ways is similar.  Imagine a very young child learning to speak by reading! That's not how it works. The baby learns through total immersion and that is how young musicians who are part of a living musical tradition first learn music. They imbibe it through their environment.

I have been a professional musician since my teens. One of the fields I have been part of is Bluegrass Music. I have met most of the great first and second generation bluegrass banjo players.  Not one who was born before 1950  learned from tab. ZEE-RO.  Some of them learned to write tab in order to meet a demand from a deluded student body.  Earl Scruggs did not read or write tab. Bill Keith was fluent in staff notation and tab. He was a great ear player as well. 

I have also been a professional teacher since my teens. I have taught so many hundreds of private students ("one to one"). If the classes I've taught for over half a century are counted then I have taught thousands.  Clear patterns are easily discernible:  those who learned an instrument first via staff notation have an advantage in most areas. Their reading abilities did not harm them. Where they are typically at a disadvantage is in discerning chord changes and harmony. Not all are like this. Most have been.  Those who first learned by ear learn more quickly by ear than those who did not. They have a difficult time relating what is seen on the printed page to how they perceive music. And that is because so much of what comprises music cannot be represented on a page. Once they learn to read staff notation-- if they learn--- they find it "broadens their horizons".  It allows them to perceive in more ways than one. Nothing of their ear skills are lost.   Those who 'learned" entirely via tab are the slowest learners.  Easily 80% of tab-only players have been musically crippled by relying on this medium. There are notable exceptions but exceptions is what they are.

Back when I was first learning to play the kids and adults I knew who read staff notation  played like automatons. The music of the ear players was flowing and expressive. Based on the limited sample to which I was exposed I formed the idea that reliance on staff notation hurt one's musicality. Later I met note readers who played well and I changed my opinion.   When I tried to learn staff notation I had trouble at first because I mistakenly thought that key signatures were fractions and that seemed bizarre. Once that error was put to rest I found staff notation to be a brilliant storage medium whose chief advantage was that the shape of the notation was literally a map of the shape of the melody.  Tab doesn't do that. 

I have also been involved my whole life in what is called "Old Time Music" (of the type[s] from the southern states of the USA).  No one in that broad field who learned to play in the music's natural setting (home and community) learned banjo from the page. Tab was unknown.  Staff notation was for piano and  brass band etc.   And many learned to read and play to some extent the music which is historically associated with staff notation.  But not banjo.  Among those who are called for better and worse "revival" musicians some used tab at first but abandoned it when discovering its biggest shortcoming: the majority of existing tab, then and now, is wrongly notated. It is dumbed down and a false representation of the tune.  I can't emphasize that strongly enough.  The problem with all tab, including flawless tab, is that it is typically practiced in isolation and does not impart skills of rhythm and phrasing. 

Which brings me to the dreaded circle phenomenon in both the self-described bluegrass and old time worlds.  To quote Bill Monroe who was speaking about another topic "That ain't no part of nothin'  "   All the bluegrass musicians I first encountered as a teen, both down south and up north played (when not on stage) standing (occasionally sitting) as close to each other as possible, without hitting someone in the head with a peghead or poking someone in the eye with a fiddle bow. Close enough to smell and Close Enough To Hear Everything.  They gathered in an unruly clump. It was the same in the old-time world with the exception that there seemed to be more seated music.  There was never a circle.  

The circle seems to have been introduced at music camps. It is a way for the student to hide. The cannot hear what the person across from them in the circle is doing so they feel safe as they assume (usually correctly) that they cannot be heard. In this context it true that the phenomenon is more of a social event than a musical one.

Now, about alternate tunings:  This is a problem with staff notation only if that system is taken to primarily be a way of representing fingering. It should be obvious that this is not so. What fingering do vocalists use?

Staff notation is a representation of melody, rhythm and harmony.  Fingerings are indicated separately in a way that I find well more than adequate.   

One more point: Some old-time banjo players first learned to play plectrum banjo. They learned to read staff notation early on.  Walt Koken first learned that way, He is one of the most able old-time banjo players to have ever lived. His old-time credentials are impeccable and his playing is as unique as his many compositions.  He developed a three line type of notation. One line is staff, one is basic tab, and the third is all about fingers and pull-offs and hammers and slides.  It is one way to learn from the page but for me there is too much for my eye to take in if I try to read and play in real time. But that's not what it's for. It's for storage and learning.  I mention Walt because of what he said to me about the idea that there should be no notation for banjo. He said that it implies that the banjo is not a musical instrument.

TOUCHÉ

Joel Hooks said:

There are two common responses that I get when I bring up musical literacy for banjo:

1. "Can I read music?  Not enough to hurt my playing".
2. "Can I read notes? Hell, there are no notes to the banjo. You just play it".

Both of these are often presented as humorous "jokes" and delivered tongue in cheek. 

No. 2 was on the back of the Pete Seeger banjo information book with the attribution of "Reply made by old-time banjo picker, interview around 1850, and asked if he could read music." That sort of vague citation has people claiming it as a quote from various sources not limited to but including Uncle Dave and Earl Scruggs.

Neither of these are particularly useful, non the less they are used by banjoists who are obviously sensitive to the fact that they are illiterate.

One will also run into "arguments" against reading music for banjo.  The main points people will bring up are:

1. Lute music was written in TAB (what this has to do with banjo music, I do not know).
2. Duplicate notes are found in different positons on the banjo fingerboard, therefore TAB is superior to notation.
3. The banjo has the octave G "drone" string so TAB is superior.
4. Standard notation does not convey emotion or give all the info needed.
5. "Old time" banjo uses "alternate tunings" (scordatura) which makes notation too difficult to read. 
6. Bluegrass is "roll" based and all those notes are confusing with notation.

Obviously every one of these are fallacies which do not need explanation to anyone who has read the first few pages of the 100+ classic era banjo tutors.  No. 5 is the only point with any creditability but there is a standard notation solution for that too. 

I believe much of this boils down to the anti-intellectualism or "dumbing down" movement.  With the banjo, a lot stems from the academic "folk revival" having a hyper focus on a tiny faction of rural musicians.  This, with a "back to basics" nostalgia, supported the concept of the "self made man" or "lone frontiersman" who relies on his own hard work, innovation and wit to survive.  A very romantic concept.

Many are also quick to point out successful professional musicians that do not read, a list that is quite long.  This is confusing to me because what other industry would allow for this?  Imagine applying for a job as an engineer and not knowing how to read and write numbers.  Or being an actor that could not read scripts.  Imagine where we would be if authors could not read or write their native language. 

That said, Bela Fleck, Tony Trischak, Earl Scruggs, and on and on, all have been very successful using TAB and "ear" only. 

One should also consider that "Bluegrass" and "Old time" are their own unique things, with their own tradition.  "Old time" champions the Simple Simon "by ear" method and Bluegrass uses both TAB and "by ear" (well, I guess they both use both, but old time slants towards ear as a point of pride-- again, that nostalgic self reliance image).

I recently read an interview with Chet Atkins and he had this to say:

"Yes I do read music... I know of no other thing that has helped me more in playing guitar. I learned to read out of necessity, and having this ability certainly helped build my confidence"

Sadly, more banjoists do not feel this way.  But they tend to get by just fine without notation and for sitting in a circle in a parking lot or campground and playing AABB tunes over and over again behind the fiddle the system works fine.  Many old time banjoists will tell you that it is more about the socialization than anything. 

That is okay, there is room for everyone. 

[Jody Stecher]

Of course. Expert readers can pick up anything printed and play it with perfect rhythm and expression. I can't. I study the page measure by measure. Eventually I become familiar with the entire piece and when I look at the page it's just as Marc (Trapdoor2) describes with printed tab: it's a reminder. I'm not reading and I'm not Not Reading. 

It's also hard to just look at tab and sound musical. It's hard to sound musical playing from memory too.

Austin said:

I did read the whole thing, but I wanted to say that notation can be kind of difficult to just pick up and sound musical.

[Austin]

I can't really learn anything about how it's meant to sound musically directly from the page. Yet...

Jody Stecher said:

Of course. Expert readers can pick up anything printed and play it with perfect rhythm and expression. I can't. I study the page measure by measure. Eventually I become familiar with the entire piece and when I look at the page it's just as Marc (Trapdoor2) describes with printed tab: it's a reminder. I'm not reading and I'm not Not Reading. 

It's also hard to just look at tab and sound musical. It's hard to sound musical playing from memory too.

Austin said:

I did read the whole thing, but I wanted to say that notation can be kind of difficult to just pick up and sound musical.

[IAN SALTER]

The conversation is now at the point where the complex subject of musicality has to be considered.