It amazes me that the over use of the tab system for playing guitar has never before, that I know of anyway, been equated to painting by numbers. While it's fine for the amateur player and garage band hack, it has increasingly been brought into the real world of music. Some of you may remember all those tad polls and squiggly lines, clefs, staffs and bars, Italian words like legato, staccato and all those other ato's. They were fine for us and with the right teacher, (which is increasingly hard to find, but that's another article), they were even fun. It seems to me that this wonderful teaching tool called tablature has been abused in this immediate satisfaction world that now seems to exist. Not to mention the spitting in the face of Segovia, Chet Atkins, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, Tal Farlow, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, have I made my point yet. Tab hackers cannot be compared with us, the true musicians. It is the responsibility of us as teachers to not give in to the pressures of easy play guitar or any instrument for that matter. The guitar and piano have become the most abused of these systems due to the numerical and patterned designs of the instrument. True professionals should be insulted by the rash of infection within our craft of ineptly trained players who in times of old would have been confined to play only at family gatherings and high school summer bashes of drunken teenagers who copped some beer and weed. It's not to say that it's not nice for them to play that way. I'll even give them an occasional an "how cute." Heck, I've been told by well- meaning but misinformed parents to "just let them play and have fun, they don't need to learn theory". Personally I think it's fine that some learn and play this way, as long as you confine it to old aunt Bessie and grandma or even some bucket of blood in the Keys, but kindly do not include yourself as one of us. You are not. If you can't read music, know little to nothing about theory, then you are not a musician. I'm not trying to be harsh here, I'm only trying to protect the craft I've struggled to perfect, both playing and especially teaching. I've found that the ones that don't care or are just lazy simply will not learn any faster, with or without the tabs. The real tragedies are the ones who do care or come to care later on and then it's even harder to learn theory. You go from this easy paint by numbers format and learning cool songs like Sweet Home Alabama, Smoke on the Water to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Yea, that'll work. Guess what? You've just ruined what could have become a fine musician, amateur or not, and wasted all the money in lessons up to that point. Not to mention the cost of the dust-gathering instrument which, by the way, does not make a good clothes line like exercise machines. Most importantly, you've given another blow to the true craftsmen, the musician. Kindly do not succumb to this practice, hire a real professional with a lot of great references and pay him the extra bucks, it's worth it.