Reading Basic Guitar Tabs

Guitar tab is the most common form of notation used by the vast majority of guitarists. Outside a few, predominately academic, groups of guitarists who prefer standard notation and the few styles of music where pure ear training is the norm, virtually all guitarists favor this method. The reason becomes very apparent as songs become more complex, standard notation becomes very confusing and cluttered for guitar parts, while purely learning things by ear runs into issues in that you have to have some sort of access to the teacher to learn a song.

Standard Notation vs. Guitar Tab
There are people that will argue endlessly that one or the other is better. This is pretty much a silly argument, because both have merits and deficiencies where they can be more useful. For example, jazz guitarists are one of the most frequent users of standard notation, and some do it because they think it is superior, but there really is a sound reason why that notation is better for them. Jazz musicians focus on scales and modes and swapping between them mid-song a lot more than most rock music. Standard notation illustrates those ideas a whole lot better than guitar tab. Scale and mode swaps are very easy to spot in standard notation by looking for sharps and flats popping up in the song, but you have to be very familiar with scales and modes to see the same changes in guitar tab. However, a lot of rock musicians pretty much just use the minor pentatonic scale, but their main focus is on guitar techniques used when playing that. Guitar tab illustrates guitar techniques a lot better than generic standard notation will ever be able to do so, because guitarists have multiple techniques and playing positions that do the exact same thing musically, two fairly differently played parts can look virtually the same in standard notation, but be written and played very distinctly different with guitar tab.

It may seem odd that a lesson on guitar tab would spend that much time talking about why it is used, but by understanding the difference between the two, you will have an easier time understanding why and when you should use each of those. Most professional guitar tab you will encounter will also come with the standard notation, as well, which does make the whole debate moot. Being able to read both can be quite nice, but if you have to choose, then a guitarist should focus on the guitar tab. Using standard notation requires making decisions that might be a bit tough for people first starting to learn to play, who should be focused on learning the techniques rather than figuring out when to use them.

Strings
Each line in guitar tab represents a different string. The lowest string is the low E and the highest string is the high e, which makes it easy to remember (not to mention standard notation lines also rise in pitch when going up). The letters in the diagram below represent standard tuning. For alternative tunings, the strings still are represented in the same fashion, but they each represent the note the string is tuned to. Alternative tunings are always indicated at the top of the score, otherwise it is standard tuning.

Fretting
The little numbers of the string represent what fret on the string is held down. There are two common symbols that don’t represent a fret, a “0” represents the open string, which is played without fretting. There is also an “X” symbol representing a muted string. Usually this just means to lightly touch the string without fretting it, so when it is struck, it gives a click sound, but doesn’t ring. Sometimes there will be a note indicating this should be placed close to a harmonic to effect what click noise is made, but this is fairly rare. In the below example, you should play the same thing, just on different strings.

Note Intervals
The example below shows the common note intervals in tab/standard combined notation and pure guitar tab. Combined notation normally doesn’t mark intervals on the tab itself, and relies on using the standard notation for that, but when only guitar tab is written, you do need to include the rhythm on the guitar tab itself. The rhythm notation is basically the same, except for the lack of hollow or filled in circles.

Keep on rockin'!