Hey guys!
I just have a quick question about reading tab... I was never "taught" to read tab. It seemed pretty blatantly obvious how to read it, there are six lines and numbers... (obviously representing frets)...
However, I've decided to take a shot at "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix... only my problem being when i looked at the tab, there were some marks i'd neer seen before... like a p, a /, and all these other symbols, is there a link someone could give me to tell me what they all mean? Thanks
Hi Afo
You didn't say where you got that tab. If you got it from a music magazine, most will have a page explaining tab symbols. If you got it off the internet, you are never really sure what you are going to get.
p usually stands for a "pulled note". This means you pick the first note, but the next note is not picked, it is sounded by tugging or pulling on the string slightly. This will cause the 2nd note to sound.
a usually stands for artificial harmonic. This can be acheived several ways. Usually after picking a note, you let your thumb on your picking hand graze the string. This will cause a bell like chime or harmonic to sound. There are several ways to get harmonics, this method is probably the most popular.
/ usually means to slide up to a note. So if you see 5 / 8, it means play a note at the 5th fret, and then slide up to the 8th. And you want to hear the actual slide sound. The opposite slash would be , this means slide down like 8 5, which would mean to play a note at the 8th fret and then slide down to the 5th fret, again you want to hear the actual slide sound.
Hope that helped.
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
Like Wes said, most GOOD tabs actually explain the terms in a table like this;
Duration Legend
---------------
W - whole
H - half
Q - quarter
E - 8th
S - 16th
T - 32nd
X - 64th
. - note dotted
|-n-| - n-tuplets
Tablature Legend
----------------
L - tied note
x - dead note
g - grace note
(n) - ghost note
> - accentuded note
NH - natural harmonic
AH - artificial harmonic
TH - tapped harmonic
SH - semi harmonic
PH - pitch harmonic
h - hammer on
p - pull off
b - bend
br - bendRelease
pb - preBend
pbr - preBendRelease
brb - bendReleaseBend
n/ - tremolo bar dip
n - tremolo bar dive
-/n - tremolo bar Release up
/n - tremolo bar inverted dip
/n - tremolo bar return
-n - tremolo bar Release down
S - shift slide
s - legato slide
/ - slide into from below or out of upwards
- slide into from above or out of downwards
~ - vibrato
W - wide vibrato
tr - trill
TP - tremolo picking
T - tapping
S - slap
P - pop
< - fade in
^ - brush up
v - brush down
(I copied this from a post by Greybeard in easy songs.)
:D :D :D
Vic
"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)
