This post will guide you through reading and writing a guitar tab properly. After reading this post try to write and play your own tabs as a practice exercise...Enjoi...
TAB is simple to read, and should be simple to write if you want to submit a song you have worked out yourself. The idea is this: you start out with 6 lines (or four for bass). These correspond to the strings of the instrument. The top line is the highest pitch string, and the bottom line is the lowest pitch string. Below is a blank bit of TAB with the string names at the left.
E----------------------------------------------------------------B----------------------------------------------------------------G----------------------------------------------------------------D----------------------------------------------------------------A----------------------------------------------------------------E----------------------------------------------------------------
Numbers are written on the lines to show you where to fret the string with the left hand. If a zero appears, this means play the open string. Like standard musical notation, you read from left to right to find out what order to play the notes. The following piece of TAB would mean play the sequence of notes (E F F# G G# A) on the bottom E string by moving up a fret at a time, starting with the open string.
E----------------------------------------------------------------B----------------------------------------------------------------G----------------------------------------------------------------D----------------------------------------------------------------A----------------------------------------------------------------E---0--1--2--3--4--5---------------------------------------------
OK so far? Here we have notes being played one at a time. If two or more notes are to be played together, they are written on top of one another, again just like standard notation. In the next example we have a G bar chord.
E----3------------------------------------------------------------
B----3------------------------------------------------------------G----4------------------------------------------------------------D----5------------------------------------------------------------A----5------------------------------------------------------------E----3------------------------------------------------------------
So this means play all these notes together as a chord. You might see the same chord written like this:
E--------3--------------------------------------------------------B-------3---------------------------------------------------------G------4----------------------------------------------------------D-----5-----------------------------------------------------------A----5------------------------------------------------------------E---3-------------------------------------------------------------
Which would mean strum the same shape starting at the bottom string, so that each string is hit slightly later than the last string, but all notes will ring together. Below is am example of the same shape again, but now the gaps between the notes are bigger - so you would probably pick the strings separately instead of slowly strumming the shape.
E------------------3----------------------------------------------B---------------3-----3-------------------------------------------G------------4-----------4----------------------------------------D---------5-----------------5-------------------------------------A------5-----------------------5----------------------------------E---3-----------------------------3-------------------------------
You might ask: "How do I know how fast or slow to play this? Are all the notes supposed to be the same length?"
This is where TAB differs from standard notation. Most often TAB will not give you any information on the note lengths. It is usually left up to you to listen to the song to pick up the rhythm. However don't despair. TAB should give you some indications of timing. In the example above all the notes are evenly spaced so you can reasonably assume that the notes are the same length (maybe all eighth notes or quavers) but this may not always be true - it depends on who wrote the TAB.
As a general rule, the spacing of the notes on the TAB should tell you which notes are the long ones, and which are the short and fast ones, but obviously it won't tell you if a note is a triplet or anything like that. Again, this will depend strongly on the person who wrote the TAB. As an example, here are the first few notes of the American National Anthem in TAB. You should see fairly clearly that the different spacing corresponds to the different note lengths.
E-----------------------0--------4--2-0--------------------------B---0--------------0---------------------------------0-----------G------1------1----------------------------1----3----------------D--------2-------------------------------------------------------A----------------------------------------------------------------E----------------------------------------------------------------
Obviously it will be a lot easier to play the TAB for a song you know well than for a song you've never heard of because you will already be familiar with the ryhthms of the familiar song.
2.1 Other Symbols Used In Tab
So far I've looked at what notes to play: which string to hit, and where to fret it. I've mentioned how to get an idea of note lengths by looking at the spaces between notes on the TAB, but this can only be a rough guide. You will always have to check with the original track to work out details of the rhythm. A lot of other imprtant information can be included in a piece of TAB. This includes hammer-ons, pull offs, slides, bends, vibrato and so on. The standard practice is to write extra letters or symbols between notes to indicate how to play them. Here are the letters/symbols most often used:
h - hammer on p - pull off b - bend string upr - release bend/ - slide up\ - slide downv - vibrato (sometimes written as ~)t - right hand tapx - play 'note' with heavy damping
That last one, the x, is used to get a choppy, percussive sound. You usually use your fretting hand to lightly damp the strings so that when you pick the note it sounds dead. Note that the use of 'x' is totally different from the use of an 'x' when giving chord shapes. For example if you wrote the chord of D, you would see:
EADGBExx0232
where the 'x's mean do not play this string. In tab it is implicitly assumed that a string is not played if it is not marked. So the same chord in TAB would be:
E-----2---------------------------------------------------------B-----3---------------------------------------------------------G-----2---------------------------------------------------------D-----0---------------------------------------------------------A---------------------------------------------------------------E---------------------------------------------------------------
with no 'x'. The x is is only used in TAB to represent a heavily muted string which is picked/strummed to give a percussive sound.
There are a number of other symbols for things like whammy bar bends, pick scrapes and so on. There seems to be no particular standard way of writing these - details should be given in the TAB to explain what the symbols mean. Bass TAB will probably need a few extra symbols to cope with the different techniques used in bass playing - for example slapping and 'popping' the string with thumb or middle finger. You could use 's' for slap and 'p' for pop as long as you wrote them underneath the lines of tab to distinguish them from slide and pull off which would be written on the lines of tab.
RohiT\m/
