Reading Guitar Tabs - Interpreting Guitar Tablature For Beginners
There's a whole world of songs written for you to learn
, and tons of them can be absorbed from reading guitar tabs. Since most guitarists are self-taught without much of a musical background, a short-hand version of sheet music was created since proper musical notation deemed too difficult to interpret.
The good thing is everyone is writing guitar tablature and that means there are hundreds of thousands of songs out there for you to learn. Check out this break-down of a typical guitar tab and how to properly interpret it.
The basic layout resembles your guitar.
The bare "staff" of a guitar tab is actually representing the strings on your guitar. Normally, for sheet music, the music staff just represents the whole steps between musical notes.
For tablature however, we took a more practical approach and related the notation to what the guitarist actually plays.
* The perspective reflects what you actually see.
At first you might think that reading guitar tabs is confusing, but they're written with the guitarist's interests in mind. If you have your guitar across your lap, the closest string to you should be the thickest, followed by the second thickest, etc.
Similarly, guitar tablature is written to reflect this perspective as if you're staring down at the actual strings on your instrument.
* Tunings portrayed may differ.
You can't actually assume that every tuning is going to be in standard however. Notice that the strings might be labeled in the manner of drop 'D' or open 'G' to completely change the difficulty of playing the song.
All the notes correspond to a position.
Now, what really separates reading guitar tabs from reading sheet music is that sheet music provides information about everything except how to actually play a note. Guitar tabs provide information on how to play a note and the position it sits in a progression.
* Chords are lined up.
If you see a group of notes that are lined up across two or more strings, the tablature is alerting you of a chord. Place all of your fingers on the corresponding frets and strum the appropriate strings all at once in this event.
* Single note runs are scattered in a progression.
Typically, single notes run from left to right and the numbers are informing you of what fret to place your finger on the string that it has marked. After a few practices you should be able to pick up on the fret markings very quickly without much hesitation.
Special marks can vary depending on the author.
When reading guitar tabs, you'll usually find only a staff and notes, but sometimes authors like to add their own personal notation. For example, the '*' symbol can sometimes mean palm-muted notes, and '4/5' can indicate a slide from frets 4 to 5.
Once you start diving into only a few guitar tabs, you'll really start to get the hang of it and interpret them faster. Start with some easier tunes for an appropriate challenge and build up your skills from there.
by: Kyle Hoffman
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