Tablature – Just What Is This?
Tablature may be a term that you are not familiar with. It is more commonly called TAB. You will often see it accompany the standard notation staff. It is usually located below the notes and all of the TAB note indications follow the regular notes above. Sometimes you will see TAB that is all by itself, that is it doesn’t even have the musical score included with it.

TAB was originally conceived for people that either didn’t know how or want to know how to read music. It is basically a graphical representation of the notes above. Even though you can read TAB easily, you still have to have a basic idea of notation and the timing of notes. More on that later…

Here is a list of items that are different about TAB than the Notation Staff.

The TAB staff is made up of 6 horizontal lines rather than 5.

Each line of the TAB represents a string on the guitar. The top line is the 1st String and the bottom line is the 6th String and – well you can figure out the rest

Each Fret number is represented by a number on the TAB Staff. If the top line of the TAB runs through a 3, it means that you play the First String, 3rd Fret. If you have the 3rd line down that runs through a zero (0) that means you play the 3rd String, Open.

Timing is not usually shown on the TAB. The Whole Notes, Half Notes and Quarter Notes are all pretty straight forward, and you can follow them quite clearly from the notation above. When we get into Eighth, Sixteenth and Dotted Notes, you will for sure, need to reference the notation above to get the proper timing.

The Way I Want You To Play The Above TAB:
When you play by TAB you should look at the number and see what string the number is on. You should then say the String Number and then say the Fret Number.
In the Above 2 measures you would play them like this. Please Say….
First Measure
3rd String; Open
3rd String, Open
4th String, 3rd Fret
4th String, 3rd Fret
Second Measure
4th String; 2nd Fret
4th String; 2nd Fret
4th String; Open

Of course in later lessons we won’t have to say this any more. We are just doing this these first few lessons to make this “Sink-In”so you will remember it much easier.

Here Some Additional TAB Facts:

TAB uses measures just like notation and you have the same beats per measure as the notation staff.

Make it a habit to look at the notes in the notation staff above too. You need to get your timing from this staff as it is not clear in the TAB staff what the note timing is.

OK so this is a very basic primer on TAB reading. We will have a more advanced article to cover much more complicated TAB issues. But you don’t need to be concerned with that until we get there.

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