There's no way I could possibly learned one-tenth of what I know about fingerpicking without using tablature. I realize that it does not seem to be for everyone, but it did -- and still does -- work for me.

If you can't develop "any rhythm, pace and timing" learning songs from tablature, either you're working from poorly-produced tabs, you don't understand how to read musical time (which is represented exactly the same way in tablature and in regular musical notation), or both. And, there certainly is a lot of bad tablature out there on the internet, which doesn't adequately represent time signatures, note values, etc. Try the tabs available from reputable sources like Stephan Grossman, Happy Traum, Oak Publications, etc. to see what I've talking about.

(To see some excellent tabs for free on the internet, check out the two songs Paul Brady has made available on his website, www.paulbrady.com. Mudcatter Brendy also has some beautiful tabs posted on his website -- unfortunately, I can't remember his URL, or even his real name!)

Also, of course, you need to know how the piece is supposed to sound. Ideally, you should have access to the very recording that was transcribed to produce the tabs, or a recording made *by* the writer *from* his/her tablature. I find that I have to alternate between tab-learning sessions and listening sessions to nail a decent rendition of a diffficult piece; if I work from tab too long at a time, without refreshing my memory of the original intended "sound," I sometimes tend to magnify my weaknesses and errors.

Learning from tablature *only,* without listening to how your playing compares to the sounds you're supposedly trying to reproduce, is indeed something like "painting by numbers." But if tab is used as one of several learning tools, it can be very helpful.

It's fairly common for a piece of tab to represent the most complicated repetition of a song's repeated verse or chorus, or perhaps the instrumental break. The learner is expected to be able to pick up the other simpler versions or repetitions on his/her own. When I first started out, I didn't appreciate this at all -- let me tell a story on myself to demonstrate that I *do* understand your doubts about how well one can learn from tablature:

Very early in my efforts to learn the guitar, I picked up an issue of "Sing Out!" featuring a transcription of Robert Johnson's intrumental break in "Kindhearted Woman Blues." The introductory text pointed out clearly that this was the break only and that you should be able to learn the simpler accompaniment to the sung verses once you had mastered the more-complicated break.

Well, I had never heard the song -- had indeed never even heard *of* Robert Johnson (yet) -- and I was a novice, learning to pick (barefingered) on a cheap but decent nylon-string classical guitar. I learned *something* from that tablature, all right, but needless to say it sounded nothing like Mr. Johnson's classic. What I came up with was a nice parlor guitar exercise: too slow, too rhythmically sedate, and WAY too pretty -- but nevertheless quite musical, and a major step in my development as a player. A step in the right direction, certainly, and something I would never have learned, even so imperfectly, without the help of that tab.