[Kirk Lorange]

Guitar Tablature - The Basics

Tablature is another way of notating music. Conventional notation uses a five line staff and key signatures to indicate which notes are which.

Tablature is specific to guitar. It uses six horizontal lines which graphically represent the six strings of a guitar. The image below shows which strings are which. The 'bottom' strings are the lowest in pitch, the thick ones; the 'top' strings are highest in pitch, the thin ones.



The numbers that appear on strings indicate which fret to press the string down to find the required notes. The diagram below shows how they are numbered; if the string is to be played open, it is indicated by a '0', zero.



When talking about music, words like 'up', 'down', 'high', 'low', 'top', 'bottom', 'above', 'below', 'over', ... always refer to pitch, not physical position in space. So the 'high strings' on a guitar are in fact the ones closest to the floor if you're playing sitting or standing; playing 'up the neck' means you're playing up near where the neck meets the body, where notes are high in pitch.

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Below is a simple E chord written in tablature. The diagram above the tab shows the 'shape' of that chord on the fretboard (viewing the neck vertically). So you can see that the numbers on the tablature lines do correspond to the diagram.



Listen to a midi file of this

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The element of time is simple enough ... it moves from left to right. Notes played at the same time, as in the E chord above, are stacked up vertically, either plucked with the fingers, or strummed through quickly with a pick.

Notes played in a sequence spread themselves down the timeline. Below is that same E chord, now played as a series of notes rather than a chord. You can hold the whole chord down and pick each note. It ends with the chord again, all notes played at once.



Listen to a midi file of this

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Here is another one, still the E chord. This time two notes are played at the same time.



Listen to a midi file of this

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Yet another, still the same E chord. This time, pairs of notes from that E chord are played in sequence. Here, you need to use your fingers to pluck them as the notes are on non-adjacent strings. Don't worry if you have no idea how to do this yet ... this lesson is just to show you how tablature works.



Listen to a midi file of this

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The Time Element in more detail

A lot of tablature on the net is written as text and shows no detail for the duration of notes. All it shows is the order of notes within measures. I use a program called GuitarPro to create the Tab for my lessons, and it generates images which in fact do show the durations of notes in an easy to understand way, using -- not unlike conventional notation -- stems to show the differences in note duration.

The tab below shows how. It's just one note, a C note, being played over and over. You have to listen to the midi file to hear how the different graphics translate into sound.

No stem is a whole note, which lasts one whole measure; Short stem is a half note; Long stem is a quarter note; Long stems joined with a horizontal line are eighth notes; Long stems joined with a horizontal line and a little number 3 below are twelfth notes ... or triplets; Long stems joined by two horizontal lines are sixteenth notes.

The time signature shows how the time is structured. This example is 4/4 ... pronounced 'Four Four', meaning that each measure consists of the equivalent of 4 quarter notes. You can see that measures are separated by bars (The word bar is often used in place of measure). This example shows how each measure always adds up to 1. The first is a whole note, the second is two half notes, next four quarters etc.



Listen to a midi file of this

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Continued here