One of the misconceptions when you're first learning guitar is that you have to
read standard music notation to be able to play anything and that couldn't be
any further from the truth because guitar has a very specific system of notation
called tablature.
It's actually quite exact and quite descriptive and it matches the guitar
perfectly. And that's exactly what I'm going to show you in this lesson.
How to read tablature.
This is just one lesson in a series where I'll take you from zero to guitar
player in 30 days by teaching you the four super fund skills that'll get you
hooked on guitar. Before you get started,
you'll need to download the tabs course guide and 30 day checklist to get yours.
Just click on the link in the video or visit 30 days to play.com so first let's
look at the tablature staff. The tablets.
Your staff consists of six lines and conveniently enough,
the guitar has six strings.
So each of those lines stands for a guitar string.
So when you're looking at a sheet of tablature and you're looking at the
tablets, your staff, the line on the bottom,
the line that's actually closest to you when you hold it is your low eastern
conveniently. That's the string that's closest to you when you hold the guitar.
So when you're looking at that tablet's, your staff, that lowest,
that low line is your low east string,
and then it goes a d, g, B,
and then you're high e. So the high e string is at the very top of the tablets,
your staff. So that's just the staff itself, those lines,
Sanford strings lowly at the bottom, high e at the top.
The next thing you're gonna see on tablature is numbers. Okay?
And those numbers correspond to the fret that is going to be held down on that
specific string. So if you look at the tablature,
you'll see a three on that bottom line.
That means you're going to be holding down the third fret on the low east
string. That's what a single note will look like.
Now you'll also run into stacked numbers.
So you might see something like this. If you look at your tab,
you'll see that there is a three on the bottom line,
a two on the second line to the bottom,
and in a zero on that, a third line to the bottom.
So you have third fret of the low eat second front of the A and zero on the d
string. Well, what does that mean? That means those strings are played together.
So if you look at the tablature, that second example, the three to zero example,
that's gonna sound like this playing the e, the a and the d string,
I'm fretting them as the numbers indicate on the tablature. And Voila,
there you have it.
The last thing you're going to see in tablature is a big row of numbers.
Generally speaking, that should send up a flag in your brain that says, okay,
that's a chord, meaning you're playing.
Usually all six strings are all five strings.
If you look at the example in the tablature you have there, you'll see that the,
there's a three on the bottom line, a two on the a string open,
d open g, third fret of the B string.
And then third fret of the high e. They're all stacked on top of one another.
And that means you'll play them as such. Okay? So you've got single notes,
some notes played together all at once, and then a full chords.
So those are the three most common examples you're going to run into.
Now I will say this, you're going to see other kind of a um,
indicators on there. Maybe some slashes, some letters and things like that.
We'll get to those later.
You can absolutely look at a piece of tablature knowing what you know now and
start to put your fingers in the right places and play the right strings.
And that's exactly what I want for you. So go forth and read tab.
This is just one lesson in a series where I'll take you from zero to guitar
player in 30 days by teaching you the four super fund skills that'll get you
hooked on guitar. Before you get started,
you'll need to download the tabs course guide and 30 day checklist to get yours.
Just click on the link in the description or visit 30 days to play.com.