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Beginner's Guitar lesson 5What is a TAB?Tabs (tablatures) are a way to write and read music to be played on guitar.It's quite easy to read, because instead the symbols of standard music notation, it uses ordinary ASCII characters and numbers, making it ideal for the guitar beginner. Though, it will give you much less of all the useful information than a sheet music will deliver.
The Guitar Tabs BasicsWhen reading a tab notation, you'll find yourself in front of 6 lines. They are one for each strings of the instrument. The top line is for the first string, the highest pitched and bot-tom one on your guitar, when it's hold at playing position, and the bottom line is the sixth string.Here you have a blank tab with the string names at the left. Those names are the notes sounded by each open string.
E---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To show you where to fret a string (in what fret that string shall be pressed) with your left hand fingers, we write numbers on the lines. If you find a zero, it means that you must play the open string. You'll read, from left to right, the order to play the notes. The following tab tells you to play the sequence of notes (E, F, F#, G, G#, A) on the bot-tom sixth string, by pressing it down, a fret at a time, starting with the open string.
E--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haven't you played it yet? Come on! Go play it! Could you do it? Great! Now, you played one note a time. When you must be told to play two or more notes together, they are written on top of one another. In the next example we have a G chord.
E----3---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, this means that you must play all these notes together, as a chord. Sometimes, you will see the same chord written this way:
E--------3------------------------------------------------------ It means that will play all notes not together, but one slightly after the other, starting at the bottom string, so that each string is plucked slightly later than the previous one, taking care that all notes ring together. We call that an “arpeggio”. You could also play the same arpeggio, just by strumming all strings with your right hand, from sixth to first, using your thumb finger or the nails of any or all the other fingers. If you ask yourself about how do you know how fast or slow to play each note, or whether all the notes are supposed to be the same length, this is where tabs are much less informative than sheet music. Generally, tabs won't let you know about note lengths. Usually, you’ll have to find it out yourself, listening to the song to get the rhythm. However, some little information about timing is given to you. In the example above all the notes are evenly spaced, so you can think that all notes are the same length. As a rule of thumb, the spacing of the notes on the tab should tell you which notes are longer, and which are shorter and faster. Of course, it will always be much easier to play the tab of a song you know, than the tab of a song you've never heard before, as you will be familiar with the rhythms of the song. So, if all you want is learn to play or sing your favorite song quickly and easily, tabs are your way. See you in the next lesson. Now, let's go for Beginner's guitar lesson 6!
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