How to Read Tabs

Guitar tablature is the unofficial language of guitar music online. It is an essential skill for guitarists who want to learn the guitar online and can be picked up very easily. Furthermore, being able to read tabs gives you one of the quickest and easiest ways to start playing the guitar.

Guitar tablature is divided into bars (horizontal lines) with a set number of beats (usually 4 beats) per bar. Each horizontal line represents a string of the guitar. The top most line represents the 1st string of the guitar (thinnest string ~ high e) while the bottom most line represents the 6th string (thickest string ~ low E).

Notice that there are numbers on the horizontal lines. These are fret numbers that indicate which fret to play on the given string. In this example. The 1st note is a 0 which indicates an open string (strike the string without pressing any frets). The next note is played by fretting the 2nd string at the 3 fret and so on. The main drawback of guitar tabs is that they do not provide the duration of the notes. Unless you have a software like Guitar Pro 5, you've got to figure out the timing of the tabs yourself in most cases.

The above melody is the intro to “Mary had a little lamb”. Try and play it on the guitar.

Download Guitar Pro 5

Most guitar lessons in this website usually come with a guitar pro 5 file (.gp5). Guitar Pro is used to facilitate teaching the guitar as this useful tool enables you to HEAR and SEE how a guitar tab is played in real time. Get your free download of Guitar Pro 5 with this link.

Let's take a look at how tablature are shown in Guitar Pro 5. This tool does wonders to understanding how tabs are play and I strongly encourage you to download the software.

 Download .gtp5 file or mp3 file ( Right-click Save Target as... )

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Changes Made to Lesson

paulgian

Sorry for the confusion, I had changed the lesson to make it more understandable.

The initial purpose of the full lesson was to give a brief overview on what tab symbols mean.

I divided this lesson into 2 parts for easy understanding.

The 2nd part of the lesson can be found at this link.

http://www.guitarplayerworld.com/Advanced_Guitar_Tab_Reading.html

Thanks for the feedbacks and we will continue to improve on our guitar lessons.

Paul

Posted at 10:00:pm 03/23/10

hmmm.

lena

yeah, i agree with the comment before mine. the first lesson was easy to understand. this was very confusing. there is no way to understand what these terms are referring to or how to do them. i am discouraged and feel like leaving this site. :(

Posted at 6:05:pm 03/23/10

Dani

First half of article was helpful. I know nothing about guitars so the second half was very confusing. I have no idea what string bending is or vibrato or any of the common guitar symbols listed in the article, and no idea how to do them after reading it:(

Posted at 1:10:am 03/23/10

how

how doou hammer the note

Posted at 5:20:pm 03/14/10