welcome
How to read guitar tabulators
The following tutorial will help to explain to you the basic concept of reading guitar tab. Although it may seem complex, learning to read tab is quite simple, and you should find yourself reading tab easily in no time.
Guitarists are a unique breed. Chances are, if you play guitar, you are either self-taught, or have taken a small number of lessons via a friend or guitar teacher. If you were a pianist, however, you almost assuredly would've learned to play the instrument through years of private study, which would include both music theory lessons, and heavy focus on sight reading.
Nothing wrong with taking the more informal approach to learning music, but it does create some inherent problems when it comes to laborious duties like learning to read music. Learning to sight read takes a reasonable amount of work, without immediate benefit, and it is these sort of duties that self-taught musicians tend to avoid.
It's never too late to learn to read music... if you want to get serious about a career in the music industry, it really is essential. However, guitarists have created their own method of music notation, guitar tablature which, while admittedly flawed, provides a simple and easy to read way of sharing music with other guitarists.
A tab staff for guitar has 6 horizontal lines, each one representing a string of the instrument. The bottom line of the staff represents your lowest "E" string, the second line from the bottom represents your "A" string, etc. Easy enough to read, right?
Notice that there are numbers located smack dab in the middle of the lines (aka strings). The numbers simply represent the fret the tab is telling you to play. For example, in the illustration above, the tab is telling you to play the third string (third line) seventh fret.
Note: When the number "0" is used in tablature, this indicates that the open string should be played.
This is the concept of reading tab, at it's most basic. Now let's examine some of the more advanced aspects of reading tablature notation, including how to read chords in tab.
Reading Guitar Tablature: Chords
This too is a relatively simple process. When the tab displays a series of numbers, stacked vertically, it is indicating to you that it wants you to play all these notes at the same time. Hence, the below tablature indicates that you should hold down the notes in an E major chord (second fret on fifth string, second fret on fourth string, first fret on third string) and strum all six strings at once. Often, tablature will additionally include the chord name (in this case E major) above the tablature staff, to help guitarists recognize the chord more quickly.
The other tablature contains the exact same notes as the first E major chord presented on this page, but it will be played differently. In this situation, the notes in the chord will be played one at a time, rather than all together.
One strum
Here is the tabulator for an Emajor chord, to be played all at once.
Finger picking
Here is an open string chord, each string is played alone with the fret hand being free.
Finger picking
Here is the tabulator for an Emajor chord, to be played one string at a time.