Learn to Read Guitar Tabs in Five Minutes

This lesson will introduce the basics to reading and playing guitar tabs. As you read, make sure to play the examples given so that you'll understand it better. After you finish this lesson, be sure to learn the next lesson guitar strumming patterns.

Why You Need to Know How to Play Guitar Tabs

Guitar tabs were the first way of writing music for the guitar and it is still extremely popular. You can find guitar tabs for almost any song by doing a search online for the name of the guitar song you want to play with the word "tab" after it. So if you want to play your favorite songs whether you like country, punk, or rock and roll, you'll need to learn how to read tabs. This lesson is designed to give you a basic understanding. You'll need to learn the lesson on advanced guitar tabs in order to play more than very basic songs.
How are Guitar Tabs Created

Most of the online guitar tabs are created by people who just listen to a song and pick out the notes and chords; because of this, online guitar tabs vary in quality and accuracy. For example, you might get a guitar tab for Ozzy Osbourne’s “Dreamer” but when you play the tab version, it might sound quite different from the real sheet music version. Now you know how to play simple guitar tab songs!

Guitar Tab Notation

There are two main ways to write or notate guitar music: sheet music or tablatures. Tabs were actually the first method musicians used to record guitar music. A Tab is simply a diagram of the six strings of a guitar. It is a two dimensional system. The x-axis is indicates time while the y-axis indicates the string. The numbers in a tab represent the fret where you should place your finger. So to indicate the note low F, there would be the number 1 written on the bottom or lowest string:

E|-----------|
B|-----------|
G|-----------|
D|-----------|
A|--0--------|
E|-1---------|

To indicate that an open string should be played, a zero is placed on that string, in the above tab it shows an open A string needs to be played after the F. So the above tab is showing the strings of a guitar with the smallest string on E on top and the lowest string E on bottom. Below are the tabs for “Mary Had a Little Lamb”:

Mary Had a Little Lamb

E-4-2-0-2-4-4-4-2-2-2-4-4-4--4-2-0-2-4-4-4-4--------
B----------------------------------------------------------------
G----------------------------------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------

Go ahead and try playing the song and you’ll know if you’re doing it right because you’ll recognize the melody.

Practice the C Scale Written as a Guitar Tab

Below you can see a tab of the C scale written in tabs. Practice it a few times before moving on to the next section.



What Tabs don’t Tell You

As you can see, most guitar tabs don’t tell you how long you should play each note, this is one of the biggest disadvantages of guitar tabs. Most guitar tablature is written for the standard EADGBE tuning, unless the author of the guitar tab indicates otherwise. Tabs also don’t depict which finger needs to be used to play a note. Another downside of tabs is they fail to show rhythm or strum patterns. In order to make a guitar tab sound good, you need to listen to a recording of the music and then use the guitar tab for the notes while you use your ear to pick up on the rhythm, note timing, strumming pattern, and pick pattern.

Basic Guitar Tab Lesson Conclusion

In conclusion, tabs are a way of showing a guitarist where to place his fingers on the fret board and which strings to play. Proper guitar tabs actually have notation to indicate the count for each note and the strum pattern but it is usually more difficult to read than regular guitar sheet music. The internet has a plethora of guitar songs for which people have written tabs.