Yet another question regarding tab
Posted on August 2, 2007
Filed Under Tabs - Understanding |
How can I read tabs in the guitar!!!!!
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 songs in a Tabledit format is available from morganguitar.com.
Happy exploring, John
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<p>Reading guitar tabs at first is a little confusing because guitar chord grids are facing upwards, while guitar tabs show the music in a sideways direction. </p>
<p>The way I learned to read tabs was to place the tab sheet flat on a table in front of me, with the guitar flat in my lap so that I could quickly and easily refer back from the sheet to the fingerboard. I located the corresponding string where the first number appeared on the tab. The number itself told me what fret to play. So first locate the space (string), then locate the fret (number). Once I got comfortable with that visual, I picked up the guitar and began to play the tabs. After a bit of practice it comes naturally. I don’t know if this helps, but that’s how I figured out how to play guitar tabs.<br />
Jenn</p>
Jenn,
That’s an interesting approach to learning tab. There are many “backwards” things about learning the guitar: Why is the “low E string” located higher (from the floor than the “high E string). Why is going “up the neck” moving your hand closer to the floor, assuming you are holding your guitar at an upward angle, while going “down the neck” means moving your hand away from the floor.
Reading tab is another one of those backwards things and it seems like your solution is a good one. Once your brain makes the proper adjustments, reading tab becomes a pretty straight forward exercise of recognizing strings and fret numbers.
Thanks,
John
how will we know which one to play first
I understand tabs and all but it would be so much easier if the tabs read down the guitar like E,A,D,G,B,E. To me just learning it seems very backwards. If I actually switch the tab around I understand it alot more. How come they are like this?