Learn To Play Guitar by Tablature

Understanding How To Read the Guitar Tabs Easily Found Online

Jan 27, 2008

While they may be a lot easier to read than traditional sheet music for beginners, guitar tab users also need to be taught how to read them properly.

When first learning how to play a musical instrument with no musical experience, trying to learn how to read music itself, let alone the actual instrument, turns many people away. Although it’s actually been around for hundreds of years (its origin surprisingly dates back to Europe in the 1300s), the use of guitar tablature seems to have been revolutionized by the internet.

For a beginner guitar player however, being told to play a 3-2-0-0-0-3 is a lot more understandable than being told to play a G chord. But to some, even that seems confusing at first, so here are the basics to learning how to read guitar tabs.

A Little Background on Tabs

The word tablature itself, originates from the Latin word for table, tablature, simply means to put something into a table, which, essentially, is what guitar tabs are. Like music notation, it actually dates back hundreds of years in Europe, and it is believed that they were around for much longer in Asia. In short, guitar tabs are a much simpler way to learn how to play music on the guitar. Tabs are also available for bass guitars, banjos, mandolins and a variety of other string instruments.

Understanding Guitar Tabs

Standard tuning on a guitar is, starting at the lowest note, EADGBE. These notes are represented by a number, for example, is a guitar tab reads 0-0-0-0-0-0 that means that the notes are all open and simply strummed. If a tab reads 3-2-0-0-0-3, it means that on the E string, the string is pressed down on the third fret, the A on the second fret, the D, G, and B strings are all open, and the E string is pressed down on the third fret. This is playing a G chord.

Here, it is written just so that it is easier to see which fret is held down on each individual string. It is often written like this with a few chords written in a row, divided by a couple of dashes, (here there is just one chord). Since many popular songs usually repeat the same chords for each verse and then alternate for the chorus and bridge, it’s easier to write out say three verse chords and then three chorus chords than writing it out individually.

Also, usually this format is used when individual notes are being used. Using the example of the part of the song “Dueling Banjos”, it can be seen how guitar tabs are used for individual notes.

The copyright of the article Learn To Play Guitar by Tablature in Guitar is owned by Alex Keshen. Permission to republish Learn To Play Guitar by Tablature in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.