How do I read guitar tablature (tabs)?
Guitar tablature (TAB) is a visual guide to the position of a note on the fingerboard. Think of it as a street directory for notes!
Tablature lines: there are six lines representing the six strings. The bottom line represents the thickest string; it is the lowest pitched string. The top line represents the thinnest string; it’s the highest pitched string. You may at first feel this is ‘upside-down’ but it’s not. The graphic impression (the shape) TAB creates is of low sounding notes on the bottom lines (strings), graduating up to high notes on the top lines (strings). If anything is upside-down, it’s the guitar!
Tablature numbers: numbers placed on the lines represent the fret you need for the note being described. A ‘zero’ represents an ‘open string’ (just pick the string as it is). Any higher number tells you what fret to hold the string down at. ie: the lowest line with a ‘3’ on it tells you to hold down the sixth string (the thickest) at the 3rd fret to create the intended note. A ‘zero’ placed on the second top line is telling you to play the ‘open’ 2nd string. A ‘9’ placed on the top line tells you to play the first string at the 9th fret, and so on.
TAB rhythms: this is where TAB shows it’s limitations. Basic crotchet and quaver rhythms can be displayed clearly with simple stems and beams. More complex rhythms that include rests and syncopation tend to look messy, even incomplete. Short examples are worthwhile but full pieces can look messy to the eye and are not easy to read ; TAB doesn’t flow the way notation does.
Why is it hard to read TAB? The fundamental problem with tablature is that it involves too many numbers. When we include numbering our fretting fingers 1 to 4, then add rhythm counting into the mix, our brain ends up swimming in a numbers soup! We become overloaded with numbering. Beyond short, straightforward examples TAB becomes less useful the more complex the music becomes.
But wasn’t TAB used for hundreds of years in the past? Yes, it’s the original way of writing organized, printable music for fretted string instruments and the origins of it date from at least the 15th century. It wasn’t superseded by modern notation until the late 18th century but, it’s important to appreciate most music written for guitars and lutes before the 18th century was short and relatively simple by today’s standards. Also, the common guitar types of those centuries were mostly smaller, with less strings and less frets. Early guitar music rarely extends beyond the 8th fret on the 1st string, and much of it was written for five-string guitars (some of it even for four-string instruments). Also, of the surviving literature we see that the majority of printed pieces from pre-18th century were less than 24 bars length. Early guitar styles suited TAB whereas the music of the Baroque Lute gradually became more longer and more complex, leading eventually to recognition of the limits of TAB writing. By the time music publishers started printing sheet music for the new classical guitar style early in the 19th Century, TAB had became archaic; all new classical guitar music was printed in standard notation and remains so as the professional norm.
What brought TAB back into use? The electric guitar, an instrument with 21 to 24 frets. Rock/Blues lead guitarists of the 1960s - ‘70s were exploring the whole range of the new, longer fretboards and teachers and publishers were finding traditional notation challenging for notating this new music in a way that didn’t make it look too difficult for learners. Also, describing the nuances of the string bending, and micro-tonal pitch embellishments that had become fashionable was proving difficult to display accurately in notation. It can be done but tends to look too complicated. So TAB was revived in the 1970s to help electric guitarists learn their favourite solos. In the internet era TAB became simplified by the ascii text TAB style that can be produced on a number keypad. This created a devolved version of TAB that is difficult to use for anything more than short examples of really basic, repetitive music. If you are wondering why some of the TABs you find online are difficult to get the gist of it’s because ascii text TAB is actually too simplified to be accurate.