How To read Guitar Tab
Guitar Tab is simply guitar music. It is a simpler way to represent notes on a piece of music than standard notation, and also relates better to guitar, so for those reasons I find it very useful for teaching guitar as do many many other guitar teachers.
Part 1 - How to read the guitar strings
The first thing to remember when reading Guitar Tab (tablature) is that the strings appear upside down. On Paper the thickest string on your guitar (E) will be the bottom line.
Start from the bottom of the guitar tab.
The horizontal lines represent the strings of your guitar.
E-A-D-G-B-E are their names from thickest to thinnest.
The easiest way to remember this is:
E at
A pples
D aily
G et
B etter
E yesight
However when reading Guitar Tab you will need to read from bottom to top. Try reading the same rhyme upside-down:
E yesight
B etter
G et
D aily
A pples
E at
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Part 2 - How to read single notes
Guitar Tab tells you what notes to play in which order by placing numbers on the horizontal lines (strings).
The numbers represent the Frets on your guitar neck. For example: Fret one of the guitar neck equals the number 1 on a piece of guitar tab music.
This example tells you to play one note, on each string, one after the other, because each number appears following the last.
Guitar Tab is read from left to right in the same way as if you were reading a book.
Reading one letter after the other would form a word. Reading one note after the other on a piece of guitar tab would form music.
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Part 3 - How to read "Tabbed" chords
The previous examples have shown how guitar tab displays single notes. This example shows you how guitar tab represents a chord.
To play a chord you attempt to strike more than one note at the same time. On guitar tab this is shown as multiple numbers (notes) in vertical alignment with each other.
Looking at the example on the right, the individual notes of the chord are Tabbed one after the other as single notes.
After the single notes, the same notes are tabbed to represent a chord, appearing inline with each other. This is how chords are represented in guitar tab.
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