Questions about Tab

Posted on August 2, 2007
Filed Under Tabs - Understanding |

OK…I saw on the main page “When tabs show 7 and a 0 at the same time, what are you supposed to do?” but I can’t find the answer to that question! ok what if it says 1 and 5 how do you play that I would really like to be able to understand it better I can play it easily when there are not 2 notes at a time but i get really confused after. Are you suposed to strum with tabs or are you suposed to just pick one string? this guitar thing has turned out to be more confusing than I thought! Your site is great help though!
- Zoe

Zoe,

I’ll try to answer your question then I’ll give you some general info on tabs:

When tab shows two or more numbers stacked on top of each other that indicates a chord. The notes are to be played (strummed) at the same time. If the tab says 1 and 5, that’s going to be a stretch. Use your index finger on the first fret and your pinkie on the 5th fret. That may be something you need to work up to depending on how well conditioned your hands are. If you are a fairly new player (year of less) that type of stretch may be pretty difficult. Don’t try to hold it for an extended period of time if it hurts.

If the tab indicates one note, pluck it. If there are multiple notes strum.

Here is the info you weren’t able to find on the site:

Tablature (Tab for short) is a kind of musical notation that works very well for guitar and other fretted instruments. Unlike the piano and single note instruments such as the trumpet, flute and clarinet, the guitar can play the same note in more than one location. An “A” note can be played on the fifth fret of the low E string or on the open A string. If you see “A” written on a piece of music, which location will you choose? The location you pick could make a big difference in the ease with which you play that part of the song.

Tab is written on a series of parallel lines, which look like a standard musical staff, but with some significant differences.

A musical staff has five lines and both the lines and the spaces between the lines contain musical information. Tab has six lines, which represent the strings of the guitar. The top line corresponds to the 1st string (the high E string) of your guitar; the next line corresponds to the B string, etc. The spaces between the lines don’t have any musical significance.

Instead of musical notes, tab uses numbers, which are written on the lines. These numbers indicate which string and fret to press down to play the desired note. By playing the fret and string indicated you should be able to get something like the song you are trying to play - assuming that the person who wrote the tab was accurate!

One of the shortcomings of tab is the difficulty in showing time values. A good solution is the combination of musical notation and tab. Much guitar music is written with parallel lines of standard notation and tab. My preference is to concentrate on understanding the notation — it contains the most musical information (time and pitch). I use the tab to clarify where a note should be played if it isn’t obvious from the notation.

There are some kinds of tab, which I’ve found all over the Internet, which look like they were typed out on an old-fashioned typewriter. If you want to read this type of tab, good luck. It gives me a headache. A tab program that I have used for the past several years is Tabledit. You can download a free demo at www.tabledit.com. This is a fairly intuitive program. If you work with it a bit the whole concept of tab and notation will begin to make sense to you. You can download quite a few songs from that site. Tab for several of my song in a Tabledit format is available from www.morganguitar.com.

All the best,
John

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