How to Read Guitar Tablature

How to Read Guitar Tablature

Classic Guitar Experience

For Electric and Acoustic Guitars

-Alan Arnell

Tablature (or Tab) is a number system for reading notes on the neck of a guitar.  Usings tabs do not require the guitarist to learn or have the general knowledge for standard music notation.  Tabs are great for the beginner who wants instant gratification playing his or her guitar.

The fundamental difference between the two systems is that standard music notation is a visual representation of the pitch and duration of the notes of a piece of music, while guitar tablature is a set of fretboard fingering instructions that enable you to locate and produce those notes.

Standard notation provides complete musical information, and some guitar-specific fingering suggestions can be added as small numbers next to the notes,  It's more meaningful visually. With enough practice, you can hear the music in your head just by seeing and recognising the note patterns.

It takes a great deal of time and hard work to learn and master standard notation. That's not really a weakness, though. Learning any musical instrument also takes years.

Yet, tabs are quicker and easier to learn, however that tab player will mostly be playing the beat of the song by ear and the tab will tell you where to finger each note.

If you want to be a serious and/or possibly a professional musician you will need to learn how to read standard music.  However, if you want to learn a song fast and have fun in a low rent sort of way, tablature is your way to go.  Besides there are more songs written as tabs online for free .than traditional music notation.

When I started to learn guitar in the mid 1960’s, no one I knew or that taught me guitar presented tablature to me.  I learned regular music notes.  It was not until the late 1970’s that I was introduced to reading tabs by my future wife.  Parallel to my guitar experience she had learned tablature, however it was written upside down to today’s style.  I had to relearn how to read tabs like a beginner when I started downloading tabbed songs to play off of the internet in the late 1990’s.  Until I had access to that free music source I bought song books.  My first was “Beatles complete easy guitar”  I have totally wore out one book of that title and halfway through wearing out my second book.  

The tablature method was specifically designed for the guitar.  Most music for guitar is available in tab.  Tablature is a crucial and essential part of you guitar playing fun.

Tablature Explained

The six lines of the tablature staff represent each of the six strings.  The top line is the thinnest or highest pitched e string.  The bottom line is the thickest or lowest pitched E string.  The lines between the two E strings are the 2nd through the fifth strings or A, D, G, B  respectively.  

The numbers placed directly on these lines show you the fret number to play the note at.  Sometimes, at the bottom underneath the staff, is a series of numbers.  These numbers show the player which hand finger you should use to fret notes.

Chord Tabs

Guitar chords can also be written in tab.  If there are several numbers stacked together in a column, those notes should be played or strummed at the same time.  Since the fingerings are shown on the chord written above the standard, many times they are not tabbed out on the music score.  

Additional Instructions

[ / ]  Side-example -9/10- means to slide to it and strike it

[ V ] vibrato- a rapid, slight variation in pitch by moving the string up and down.

[ b ] bend

[ bd ] prebend-bring down

[ p ] pull

[ h ] hammer

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