Glad to have you back here for beginners guitar lesson part seven on guitar tablature. If you happened to miss last weeks lesson, make sure you check out Guitar Chords part two.
Guitar Tablature (also called guitar tabs) is an old form of music notation, which made its way back into modern guitar teaching in the 1980s. Since many guitarists are self-taught, reading musical notation was out of the question.
As always, we have included an audio track of today’s lesson just to make it that little bit easier for you to learn the guitar. It also helps those up and coming guitarists who don’t like to read!
Audio Lesson by Matt McKay – Guitar Tablature
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Although musical notation should eventually be learned by every serious guitar player, Guitar Tablature makes it easy to learn the tunes of other musicians, and relay your own musical creations in the meantime. Other instruments have their own set of tablature, including drums and other stringed instruments, but tablature has its own language, unique to each instrument.
Blank Tablature Staff for Guitar
The six horizontal lines represent the 6 guitar strings. The bottom of the tablature staff is the 6th, or low E string (the thickest string), continuing upward to the A, D, G, B and the 1st, or high E string (the thinnest string) on top of the staff.
Numbers placed on the tablature lines represent the fret and string you will place your finger on. The 1 in the example tells you to place your finger on the first fret of the second (B) string. The 2 tells you to place a finger on the second fret of the fourth (D) string. The 3 tells you to place your finger on the 3rd fret of the fifth (A) string. The O tells you to play that string open.
C Major Chord in Tablature Form
The problem with tablature, like standard musical notation, is that it will not always be specific in what fingers to use. That is why we discussed fingering in guitar lesson 3. In the first guitar position, which is the open, and 1st through 4th (and sometimes 5th) frets, the 1st finger will always play notes on the first fret, the second finger on the second fret, the third on the third, fourth finger on the fourth and fifth. This fingering only applied to playing single notes, as it is not possible to use this fingering method for guitar chords.
Also in the example, note that the numbers are stacked on top of one other. This number array tells you that all notes are to be played at the same time, which normally denotes a chord or other multiple note grouping.
Here is an example of guitar tablature where the notes follow one another. This would be how a scale, melody, or solo is written:
Begin by playing the 5th fret on the low E string, the 3rd fret on the low E, back to the 5th fret on the low E string. Continue on to the 3rd fret of the A string, the 5th fret of the A string, and so on.
There are other Guitar Tablature marks which we’ll talk about in future guitar lessons, but we’ve covered the basics. Hope this was helpful, and we’ll talk with you next time!
Scotty Smith and Matt Mckay
Learn The Guitar Lessons © 2009
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
A good in-depth article, I like how you included a little bit of detail about tablature’s origins and popularity. One thing I think you could have done with including is the articulation notation – i.e. how bends/hammer-ons/pull-off’s/slides etc translate to tablature.
Glad you enjoyed the article on guitar tablature Chris. Stay tuned and you will see plenty more lessons that will include bends and slides etc. Over time we will include all the info you need to become a first rate guitarist!
I appreciate this free tutorial. I am a young teen always wanting to learn to play, but could never afford lessons or a guitar. Appreciate this whole TuT greatly! Thumbs up to you two.