Guitar tablature commonly called guitar tabs, helps beginners learn to play songs real quick. Learning how to read guitar tabs is important because these show you where to play the note on the guitar. Once you know how to read guitar tabs, you don’t need to learn how to read traditional musical notations.
You only need basic knowledge of guitar strings and frets to be able to read guitar tabs. Guitar tabs or tablature is a visual representation of the notes in a song. The standard guitar tab consists of six horizontal lines, where each line stands for the six strings on the guitar.
There are six guitar strings starting from the high e (the thinnest string) followed by B, G, D, A and E (the thickest string). There are 20 frets in an acoustic guitar.
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When you see a tablature like the one in the snippet below. The left side of the tabs are the strings, starting from the thinnest string at the top – the high e. The numbers on the tab represent the frets.
So in the above tablature, the guitarist has to play the third fret on the fifth string. So he will press the third fret and pluck the fifth string. 0 represents open string. So the guitarist will play the fourth string without pressing any frets. Then the second fret on the third string and so on and so forth.
Sometimes the tabs are also written like this: 5-1/3-4/1-0/2-5. Here the number to the left of the ‘-‘ is the string number. The number to the right is the fret number. So 5-1 means 5th string and 1st fret. 3-4 means third string and fourth fret.
Reading symbols in guitar tablature
There are a few common symbols which every beginner guitarist should be aware of. Most symbols refer to specific playing techniques. Lets look at each of these since knowing them can change the sound of the guitar.
Hammer
G (3) —-3h2———————————-
B (2) ——————————————–
E (1) ———————————————-
h stands for ‘hammer’. If a ‘h’ is inserted between two notes, then it means you need to perform a hammer. Sometimes a ‘^’ is also used in place of ‘h’. In the hammer technique, the first note is played normally. Then you have to tap down on the second note and not pluck the string. So in the above example, you will play third fret on third string normally and then just tap the second fret on the third string and not pluck it.
Pull off
G (3) —-3p2———————————-
B (2) ——————————————–
E (1) ———————————————-
p stands for ‘pull off’. If a ‘p’ is inserted between two notes, then it means you need to perform a pull off. Pluck the first note while using another finger to fret the second note. Then, quickly lift the finger fretting the first note. The second note will sound.
Sometimes a ‘^’ is also used in place of ‘p’. When the second note is lower than the first you have to perform a pull off. If the second note is higher than the first, then you have to play the hammer.
Slide and Reverse slide
In the slide technique, you need to play the fret and then slide your finger forward or backward depending on the notes.
G (3) —-7/9———————————-
In the above example, you need to play the seventh string on the third fret and then slide your finger forward to the ninth fret on the third string. When ‘/’ symbol is used it means you have to slide forward.
G (3) —-5\3———————————-
In the above example, you need to play the fifth string on the third fret and then slide your finger backward to the third fret on the third string. When ‘\’ symbol is used it means you have to slide backward. This technique of sliding backward is also called reverse slide.