How to Read Guitar Tab
Tablature (or tabulature/tab) is a form of written music for guitar. It is displayed as instrument fingering rather than musical pitches or note lengths.
Tab is short, easy to read, easy to write notes for the guitar (acoustic or electric). Some people consider tab as a cheats way to write music. A big difference between tab and musical notation is, with tab, you will need to know how the song goes in your head before you attempt to play it. – This is because-
- It usually uses spaces rather than actual musical notes for timing.
- Many tabs are created freely by guitar players like yourself and may contain slight errors, ie; they are not official musical documents and they are the writers own interpretations of the songs.
- Sections that contain double digits (eg. 12) could be mistaken as two separate notes (eg. 1, then 2)
The positive aspects of tabbed music far outweigh the negatives however as you are about to find out.
- Tabs are (for the most part) completely free. They are created by other guitar players and uploaded to one of many free Tab Resources.
- They are quick, simply, and easy to read.
- They are common, there are thousands of tab resources out there, not much chance of not finding a song.
- Plus many other reasons I will let you find out for yourself.
Ok, Lets get started:
The first thing you will notice are the 6 lines. These represent your 6 strings. They go from your high E (little string) which is the top line, down to the low E, bottom line.
e|--------------------------------------------
B|--------------------------------------------
G|--------------------------------------------
D|--------------------------------------------
A|--------------------------------------------
E|--------------------------------------------
So it’s upside down is it?
- Think of it like this, it is a written-down version of the neck of your guitar from the view of yourself, the player.
Example:
Tab is read from left to right in a timeline fashion (just as standard music is read). Now, if we start putting some music on there, things start to come to life. You will notice that instead of musical notes, numbers are displayed as notes.
e|---------------------------5-6-8------------
B|---------------------5-6-8------------------
G|-----------------5-7------------------------
D|-----------5-7-8----------------------------
A|-----5-7-8----------------------------------
E|--------------------------------------------
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The numbers represent the frets of your guitar. The above example is the D minor scale in two octaves, and as mentioned above, you would read this left to right. – Playing the A string (or 5th string) first, playing on fret 5, then 7, then 8, then moving to the D string, and so-forth.
Note Timing
As you will hear, the previous example was in one straight timing. As (most) songs have a little more complex timing, Tab writers often distinguish timing between notes by the amount of space between them. This brings me back to the point of having to know generally how the song goes before learning its tab. – See below.
e|---------------------5-68-------------------
B|-----------------56-8-----------------------
G|--------------57----------------------------
D|---------5-78-------------------------------
A|-----57-8-----------------------------------
E|--------------------------------------------
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Pretty simple concept huh?
Most tablature writing software will take a more accurate approach and use an automatic musical notation bar to display things like timing/note lengths.
The above example was taken from “Power Tab Editor 1.7″, an awesome piece of free software for writing, learning, playing back tabs. But more about this later. This example plays the same as our previous example. – It simply displays quarter and half notes in the musical notation rather than using spaces.
Bars and Repeats
Bars in music are sections of notes divided by the time signature. So a standard 4/4 time signature song would have 4 whole notes per bar. More about time signatures here.
A bar is written down as a ‘|’ between the notes, see below example:
e|-------------|---------|-------5-|-6-8------
B|-------------|---------|-5-6-8---|----------
G|-------------|-----5-7-|---------|----------
D|-----------5-|-7-8-----|---------|----------
A|-----5-7-8---|---------|---------|----------
E|-------------|---------|---------|----------
Chords
Ok, That’s all well and good, but how would a chord progression be transcribed?
Using the rule of the left to right timeline, a chord is simply displayed as multiple notes in a row. Helpful tabs will also display the chord name underneath. See below.
e|-----0----0----2----2-----------------------
B|-----0----0----3----3-----------------------
G|-----1----1----2----2-----------------------
D|-----2----2----0----0-----------------------
A|-----2----2---------------------------------
E|-----0----0---------------------------------
-------E---------D---------
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So you’ve learned the basics of tab, yes, it’s that easy! Now you want to find free downloadable guitar tablature for your favorite song, right?
Punch into Google the songs name or artist in quotations followed by “guitar tab”.
Example: “Paradise city” guitar tab
Your results should find dozens of free guitar tab resources with this song in their directories. Simply follow the links to see the tab. It is recommended you constantly play/pause the song in different sections while you learn this tab and just take your time with it. You will find that there may be various versions of the tab with different ratings or reviews. On average, most guitar tabs contain slight errors, and some may be way off. These errors are usually pretty easy to pick out while learning the song.
More about reading and writing tab in How to Read Guitar Tab: Part 2. Here you will learn how to tab various intricate guitar licks.