How to read "Tablature" music.
It's easier than you think. [Intermediate Beginner Lesson]
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Reading Tablature music can be a little confusing. Lines, numbers, strange nomenclature - what does it all mean, and how are you supposed to play this weird language on your guitar or bass guitar? Tablature is what I refer to as,"Notation Short-Hand". Learning how to play notes in Tablature instead of traditional staff notation, eliminates the guesswork as to where you play the notes on your guitar. This article is an introduction to learning basic Tablature, and how it can be very beneficial in practicing your songs.
Intermediate Beginner Lesson
What is Tablature?
In the diagram below, you will see two different groups of lines. The top group of lines is the standard staff in treble clef. Next to it, you see the time signature in 4/4 time. This is where notes are placed in traditional music. Notice, there are five lines and five spaces in staff reading. Each line and each space between the lines, represents the placement of a note or notes.
Below the staff lines, you see a group of six lines with the word TAB written vertically on the left. How many lines are there for Tablature? Six lines! What do you think those six lines represent? I'll give you a hint - how many strings do you have on your guitar? Six strings!
Question: Okay, so how do we know which line is for which string on the guitar?
Answer: The top line represents the first (high E) string. The second line represents the second string, and so on. The bottom line represents the sixth (low E) string.
Reading Tablature Notation
The next diagram is where and how we place the notes that will be played on these six strings. In the treble clef staff section, you can see the notation placed for the corresponding numbers below on the Tab;ature section. Each of the notes on the staff become numbers on the Tablature lines. The very first note is the lowest note on your guitar - the sixth string "E". It is written as "0" because it is an "open string" note. That "0" is placed on the sixth line to indicate that you would play the open sixth string "E" note. The next note "F" is written as a "1" on the sixth string, representing the note you would play on the first fret of the sixth string.
The numbers on the Tablature lines represent the frets on your guitar. If there is no number, that means the string does not get played. If there is a "0", that means you play that open string. Any note "1" or higher, represents the fret note to be played on that string.
As you can see, I placed the actual names of the notes at the bottom of the diagram, to help you understand the corresponding notes as numbers on the Tablature lines and the notes in the staff.Â
How to read Chords in Tablature.
Okay, so reading chords is a little bit different in comparison to single notes. If you notice in the next diagram below, the notes are "stacked" on top of one another. This means that the notes are all played together, just like you would normally strum a chord. I outlined each of the seven "triad" chords in the key of C Major to give you an idea what chords look like in Tablature.
Let's take a look at the first chord - The "C" major chord. Counting from the bottom line (the sixth string), we can see that there isn't a number on that line. What do you think this means? Do we play a note or not play a note? There's no number to indicate a note, so we don't play the sixth string. The fifth line has a "3" on it. That means you play the third fret of the fifth string. If you already know your open-string "C" major chord, the rest of the structure of this chord is pretty easy to understand.
In this diagram, each of the seven triad chords in C Major are represented in three different ways: The name of the chord at the top, the staff notition of the chord and the Tablature numbers for each of the chords.
What do bigger chords look like in Tablature?
In the next diagram, you can see I have added "7's" to all of the previous triads. Not much has changed except for a few of the numbers.
What about Bass guitar Tablature?
As you can see in the diagram below, the bass guitar normally uses only four strings, unlike the guitar which uses six strings. The exact same rules apply to the bass Tablature as they do with guitar Tablature. The only difference is, unless you're playing jazz music, you probably won't be playing very many chords on the bass guitar.
The Four Tricks
I have been calling the manipulation of notes on the guitar as tricks. These four "tricks" are: "Sliding", "Vibrato", Hammer-on/Pull-off's" and "Bending".
You can see in the four diagrams below, just exactly how you would read these four tricks in Tablature notation. Each trick requires a different nomenclature to indicate the manipulation of the notes being played on the guitar.
Sliding
You can see In this diagram that there are some notes on the first and second strings. The first note is a "3" which represents the high "G" note on the third fret of the first string. The next note has a "5" to represent the high "A" on the fifth fret of the first string. If you notice, you can see that there is a short line before that number "5". That short line is pointing from down to up - meaning you would move from the previous note "G" to the next note "A", by "sliding" to the "A" note. You can also see in the progression of notes that there is also another short line that points from up to down. This means that you would slide from that note down to the next note in the progression.
Vibrato
See that "squiggly line" above a few of the notes? Those notes are played with a "vibrato". Vibrato means that you rapidly move the notes up and down to manipulate the tone of that note with a sort of "shaking" effect.
Hammer-on/Pull-off
Now, we see "H" and "P". These letters represent Hammer-on and Pull-off. Think of a hammer-on/pull-off combination of triplets.
Bending
Bending notes is a very common trick used in blues and rock music. A note can be "bent" a little or a lot depending on the manipulation of the note being used.
These four tricks require some guidance by someone who can show you in person. You may need to search online or YouTube for further analysis and visual examples on how these tricks are played on the guitar. This article is about reading what these four tricks look like in Tablature music.
Hopefully, this lesson helps you better understand how easy it is to read Tablature and how it can be a very useful tool in your progress to become a better guitarist.
You can download a FREE version of the Power Tab Editor here.