I'm very new to the guitar. I've been practicing for about 1 month. I'm studying a book I got when taking lessons about 8 years ago. Took about 10 lessons. Now I'm studying what I learned then and trying to expand on that with the guitar noise website. I know one pattern of the major diatonic scale and would like to learn others. I see lots of examples in tab. The problem is that I don't fullly understand how to read tab and haven't been able to find any examples online. My goal is to learn what I can on my own and when I feel stuck, take some professional instruction. How about it? Can somebody give me a comprehensive explanation on reading guitar tabs? Much appreciated to whoever can help:) -Aitch
Welcome to GN!
make sure and drop by the "meet & greet" forum and introduce yourself
this should help with the tab reading :wink:
http://guitar.about.com/library/blhowtoreadtab.htm
#4491....
Here's another good site for reading and writing TAB.
Denny
The basics are quite straight-forward:CROSSROADS BLUES (version originale) / ROBERT JOHNSON
Open G tuning (D G D G B D) played with bottleneck
[ without bottleneck ]
D|---/12--/12------------------------|----------------------------|
B|--------/12--/12-------------------|----------------------------|
G|------------------12--10--/3--0---|------0--0--0--0--0--0--0---|
D|-----------------------------------|------3--3--3--2--2--1--1---|
G|-----------------------------------|---0------------------------|
D|-----------------------------------|------3--------2-----1------|
Usually starts with the title of the piece, the original artist and very often the person who tabbed the piece.
Here, the piece is played in open G tuning and, here, the pitch of each string is given, starting at the lowest, fattest string going up to the thinnest string.
The tab, itself, is a diagrammatic representation of the fretboard, the thinnest string at the top and the fattest at the bottom.
The remainder is the tune shown as fret positions on strings, so the first note is played on the first string at fret 12, followed by a note on fret 12 of the 2nd string, back up to the 1st string at fret 12, down to the 2nd/fret 12 again, then down to the third string at fret 12, then 10, then 3, etc.....
You may have noticed that there were some lines before and after notes. There are a number of other musical notations and you'll find them at the end of a lot of tabs, like this:
Duration Legend
---------------
W - whole; H - half; Q - quarter; E - 8th; S - 16th; T - 32nd; X - 64th; a - acciaccatura
+ - note tied to previous; . - note dotted; .. - note double dotted
Uncapitalized letters represent notes that are staccato (1/2 duration)
Irregular groupings are notated above the duration line
Duration letters will always appear directly above the note/fret number it represents the
duration for. Duration letters with no fret number below them represent rests. Multi-
bar rests are notated in the form Wxn, where n is the number of bars to rest for. Low
melody durations appear below the staff
Tablature Legend
----------------
h - hammer-on
p - pull-off
b - bend
pb - pre-bend
r - bend release (if no number after the r, then release immediately)
/ - slide into or out of (from/to "nowhere")
s - legato slide
S - shift slide
<n> - natural harmonic
[n] - artificial harmonic
n(n) - tapped harmonic
~ - vibrato
tr - trill
T - tap
TP - trem. picking
PM - palm muting
n/ - tremolo bar dip; n = amount to dip
n - tremolo bar down
n/ - tremolo bar up
/n - tremolo bar inverted dip
= - hold bend; also acts as connecting device for hammers/pulls
<> - volume swell (louder/softer)
x - on rhythm slash represents muted slash
o - on rhythm slash represents single note slash
Misc Legend
-----------
| - bar
|| - double bar
||o - repeat start
o|| - repeat end
*| - double bar (ending)
: - bar (freetime)
$ - Segno
& - Coda
Tempo markers - <E/E./Q/Q./H/H.> = BPM(8/16=s8/s16), where s8 = swing 8ths, s16 = swing 16ths
Hope that helps
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Sweet:) Thanks for all the help! And so quickly:) I'll be sure to drop by the M&G forum to say "Hi" when I can... I have a 20 month old son so between that and work, I fit in what I can with the guitar but it is my only hobby, so I hope to accomplish more this go round. Thanks for all your replys. aitch
