Traditional music notation was created to show what happens on a piano, not a guitar. The guitar's fretboard is drastically different than a piano's keyboard and requires a different sort of notation called tablature. Unlike traditional music notation, tablature doesn't take years to master, it only takes minutes. Tablature gives us a visual representation of the fretboard and tells you precisely where to play on the fretboard.
Looking at a line of tablature is like looking down at your fretboard. The six lines represent the strings:
The high string is on the top and the lowest string is on the bottom like in the picture of the fretboard below:
The open strings are represented by a zero. In the tab example below is a zero on the bottom string. This means to play the bottom string open.
A fret to be played is represented by a number. The frets are numbered like so:
To play the example below you would 1st pick the note on 1st fret of the 6th string, then the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th frets.
Look at the picture of the fretboard below. The red dots show the frets the tab above is instructing you to play.
If you see notes stacked on top of each other, as in the example below, you are to play these notes at the same time.
Notes
- Fingerings (which fingers to use) are not shown in tablature, so most times you'll have to figure them out yourself.
- Tablature is sometimes called "tab" for short.
