Music Basics - How To Read Guitar Sheet Music As Tabs (Tablature) for Absolute Beginners
Posted: Wednesday, January 06, 2010
by Connor Davidson
Before you start to learn to play the guitar you should learn to read guitar tabs. When you see your first tab it will look totally alien and very complex. Thankfully, it's actually incredibly simple: all you need is some basic knowledge of the guitar and how to count.
I'm going to split this article into two sections: the guitar and the tab. The guitar section will tell you what you need to know about the guitar body (if you already know about frets, skip the guitar section) and the tab section will apply your new knowledge to a tab.
The Guitar
For this article I'm going to assume that you're using a conventional 6 string guitar.
To read a tab you need to know about frets. The frets are marked by lines on the guitar neck. Before the first line you have what is known as the first fret. After the first line and before the second line we have the second fret and so on.
The Tab
Here is an example of guitar tab:
From PBGuitars
The lines represent the guitar strings. The line on the top of the tab represents the bottom string on the guitar and the line on the bottom represents the top string on the guitar.
The numbers written on the line represent the fret. So, if the there is a three on the third line it means third string third fret. The number indicates the fret you put your finger on and the line the number is on tells you which string to pluck.
To play the first note on the tab you would put your finger on the first fret and the second string (from bottom of the guitar).
That's all there is to reading tab. All you have to do is get your hands on some a get playing.
Connor Davidson is a UK based writer. He writes on wide variety of topics with his main interest being science, maths and engineering.
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You can keep up to date with his writings by following him on twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Connor_Davidson.
Feel free to reprint these articles on your website by using the reprint button. If you have any questions or comments please post them below - I read all comments.
You can keep up to date with his writings by following him on twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Connor_Davidson.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)At this late date (I'm 57), I bought a gutar book for learners. I was happy for your information.Good for you.Thanks for the comment.
This would be very helpful for beginners to use a quick guide, so well done in being informative. Plus, it's well written.Thanks for the comment.
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