Guitar Tabs

Reading Guitar Tabs

All guitarists have asked the same question, either themselves or to others. Should I learn how to read guitar tab notation? The answer is yes, you should. A lot of music nowadays is written down in the form of tabs, so that you don't have to listen to the song and learn it by ear. Learning how to read tabs is quite easy. However, reading them on the spot and playing it on your guitar is the real trick. Let's start with the basics for now.

How do you read tabs?

Look at the following:

E --------------------
B ---------------------
G ---------------------
D ---------------------
A ----------------------
E ----------------------

That's a tab staff. I bet you've seen that before. Now look at the following:

E --------------------
B ---------------------
G ---------6-----------
D ---------------------
A ----------------------
E ----------------------

That means, play the 6th fret on the 3rd string. Simple enough right? This follows for any note you see on a tab staff. If you saw a number 12 on the 4th string, you would play the 12th fret of the 4th string. Obviously, real songs will have many notes like that on tab staffs. As an exercise, play the following:

E --3--------------2-
B -----5------7--------
G ---------6-----------
D ---------------------
A ----------------------
E ----------------------

That was just random, so it doesn't really sound nice when you play it, but hey, the point is to show you how to read tabs right!

Reading Chords

E -----2--------------
B -----3--------------
G ---- 2--------------
D ---------------------
A ----------------------
E ----------------------

If you see something like that, it means you play all the notes together. Play the above. You'll notice that it is a D chord. This type of notation can be used to show any group of notes. For example, a G power chord:

E --------------------
B ---------------------
G --------------------
D ------5-------------
A ------5--------------
E ------3---------------

Problems with Guitar Tab

The main problem with guitar tab is that you can't show the timing. Thus, you have no way of knowing how long to hold each note, unless you listen to the song. There are people who attempt to rectify this by putting stems (a way of showing time in sheet music) on the numbers, but it is quite hard to read. Also, other musicians can't read guitar tab. This makes it extremely hard to communicate with another member of your band, such as the keyboardist.

Special Notation

Almost all tabs have some kind of special notation. Let's look at some:

Hammer on / Pull off

A hammer on is commonly noted as a h. So, if you want to tab picking the 7th fret, and hammering onto the 8th fret, it would look like this on the tab staff: 7h9 A Pull off is commonly noted as a p. For example, if you want to tab pulling off from the 6th fret to the 5th fret, it would look like this: 6h5

Bending

Bending is shown with a b on tab staffs. For example, 5b6 means you bend the 5th fret till it sounds like the 6th fret.

Slides

A / signals that you slide to a note from another. For example, 7/9 means your slide from the 7th fret to the 9th fret. If you get something like the: /9, it means you slide to the 9th fret from any fret on the string.

Vibratos are noted by ~~~~

String mutes are noted by a x Click here to go back from guitar tabs to the homepage