Guitar tablature (tab) is the easiest and most convenient to read and write guitar music. Students taking acoustic or electric guitar lessons are usually introduced to guitar tab within their first few lessons. But some guitar tutors don’t teach tab, and many guitarists don’t take guitar lessons at all. For these guitarists, the quicker they take steps to become literate guitarists, the quicker they can become great guitarists.

But before learning the basics of guitar tab — a word of warning. These days, it’s easy to find the guitar tabs to almost every song imaginable by searching the Internet. That’s great news for guitarists. Unfortunately, many of these guitar tabs are not completely accurate. This is because most guitar tab is tabulated by amateur guitarists. New guitarists should exercise caution and only use guitar tab from trustworthy websites. Better yet, using professional guitar tab books from music stores guarantees accuracy.

How Guitar Tabs Work
A guitar tab is made up of lines and numbers:

• Lines. There are six lines which represent the six strings of the guitar. These are — from the top of the guitar to the bottom — E, A, D, G, B, and e. The “E” is the thickest string on the guitar; the “e” is the thinnest.
• Numbers. The numbers used in guitar tab represent the frets that left-hand fingers (for right-hand guitarists) are pressed down onto to create notes.

Here is an example of a very simple guitar tab:

e——-1———————————————————
B—————————————————————–
G—————————————————————–
D—————————————————————–
A—————————————————————–
E—————————————————————–

One of the first things to notice about guitar tab is that the strings are written upside-down. The “E” string (the thickest string on your guitar) is at the bottom of the guitar tab, while the “e” string is at the top. It might take new guitarists some time to become used to reading guitar music that seems upside-down at first. A good exercise is to find and name the strings of the guitar, and then locate them on the guitar tab.

The number “1″ on the above guitar tab indicates that a left-hand finger should be pressed onto the 1st fret on the “e” string. The “e” string is then picked with one’s right hand to produce a note.

Below is a more complicated guitar tab, which shows a picked melody, and a strummed guitar chord.

D Chord
e–0-1-2-3——2————————————————-
B—————3————————————————-
G—————2————————————————-
D—————0————————————————-
A—————————————————————–
E—————————————————————–

The numbers in this example are written in two different ways: horizontally and vertically. When numbers are written horizontally, this means they are played one after another. So, the “0 - 1 - 2 - 3″ on the “e” string are notes that are to be picked one after another. The “0″ represents an “open string”; in other words, a string which is played without putting a finger down on any fret.

The numbers that are written vertically are to be played all at the same time. This is how guitar chords are written. The guitarist is required to put their fingers onto each of the frets indicated by the numbers and strum these all at once. The name of the chord — in this case “D” — is often written above the tabulated chord.

Besides lines and numbers, there are also several other symbols that can be used to write guitar tab which indicate various guitar techniques, such as hammer-ons and and pull-offs. Good guitar tab and guitar tab books should explain these symbols for the guitarist.

Being able to sight-read guitar tab is a great skill to develop. The above information should provide the guitarist with a good starting point to being able to read any tab. Thankfully, reading guitar tab is quite simple and becomes second nature very quickly.

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