So far I've looked at what notes to play : which string to hit, and where to fret it. Obviously it will be a lot easier to play the TAB for a song you know well than for a song you've never heard of because you will already be familiar with the ryhthms of the familiar song. You should see fairly clearly that the different spacing corresponds to the different note lengths.Į-0-4-2-0-ī-0-0-0. Again, this will depend strongly on the person who wrote the TAB.Īs an example, here are the first few notes of the American National Anthem in TAB. In the example above all the notes are evenly spaced so you can reasonably assume that the notes are the same length (maybe all eighth notes or quavers) but this may not always be true - it depends on who wrote the TAB.Īs a general rule, the spacing of the notes on the TAB should tell you which notes are the long ones, and which are the short and fast ones, but obviously it won't tell you if a note is a triplet or anything like that. TAB should give you some indications of timing. It is usually left up to you to listen to the song to pick up the rhythm. Most often TAB will not give you any information on the note lengths. This is where TAB differs from standard notation. You might ask - How do I know how fast or slow to play this ?Īre all the notes supposed to be the same length ?
Below is a blank bit of TAB with the string names at the left.Į-3-ī-3-3. The top line is the highest pitch string, and the bottom line is the lowest pitch string. These correspond to the strings of the instrument. You start out with 6 lines (or four for bass). TAB is simple to read, and should be simple to write if you want to submit a song you have worked out yourself. Reading Guitar Tablature TAB notation - the basics TAB will (usually) not tell you anything about picking and strumming - you will have to decide for yourself where to use upstrokes/downstrokes and so on. TAB will not tell you which fingers you use to fret which note. TAB will (usually) not tell you the note lengths of the notes - so in most cases you will have to listen to the song yourself, with the TAB in front of you to work out the ryhthm of the notes. However it will not tell you exactly how long or how short they are. TAB will give you an indication of the ryhthm of the piece - i.e it will tell you which are the long notes and which are the short notes. TAB should also give you information on use of capos etc. If this isn't given explicitly, assume normal tuning. TAB will tell you what tuning the piece is in. TAB will tell you where hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, slides, harmonics and vibrato are used. TAB will tell you what notes to play - it will tell you which string to hit and which fret to fret it at. Instead of using symbols like in standard musical notation, it uses ordinary ASCII characters and numbers, making it ideal for places like the internet where anybody with any computer can link up, copy a TAB file, and read it.
TAB or tablature is a method of writing down music played on guitar or bass.
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