Guitar/Tablature
From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection
It is very important for a guitarist to learn both tablature and standard musical notation. Each has its advantages, and each conveys information the other does not. For this reason, many guitar songbooks feature both standard notation and tablature; some even feature a "tab-staff" variant, where rhythm notation is combined with tablature.
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[edit] Book Tabs
Book tabs are expensive, but they are usually extensive and accurate. With this kind of tab, knowing how to read sheet music is incredibly helpful, because it gives you two ways to figure out a complicated riff. And if you can't read sheet music, now is an excellent time to learn.
In addition to showing you the different notes as they are being played, tablature describes how the notes are played on the guitar by indicating the correct strings and frets. Below is an example of a simple melody done in the style you find in store bought tab books.
[edit] Upper Section
The set of lines and spaces that run horizontally across the page is called the staff, and notes can be written on both the lines and the spaces. Notes are named in a repeating series from A to G, they can also be sharp or flat. Each step up the staff is the next letter, so it goes A, B, C, etc. The staff is divided by vertical lines called bars, which divide the music into even sections.
The first symbol on the first staff of a piece of music is always the clef, which in this case is the treble clef. The clef determines which notes are on what lines and what spaces, and in this case, the note in the lowest space (between the bottom line and the next line) is the note F. It is easy to remember the notes on all the spaces, because they are F A C and E, or face.
The next symbol on this example is the time signature, which indicated how many beats there are in each bar. In this case, the time signature is four-four time, which means that there are four quarter notes in each bar. Often it also indicated how many beats there are in each bar, however this is not always the case, especially for jazz pieces. Time signature represents more of the division of e written notation rather than the music itself. The tempo or style, which would be indicated at the top of a piece of sheet music would be a better indicator of how the song sounds.
Not shown in this example, is the key signature. Certain keys have a certain number of sharps and flats, represented by #'s and b's, and and each sharp or flat is shown on the respective lines and spaces after the time signature.
In this example, the first bar has 8 eighth notes, which is a dot (which indicates the note played), and a line (which indicates the notes duration). Because there are more than one eighth note played beside one another, and they span across multiple beats in the piece, they are connected by a horizontal line.
At the end of the last eighth note, there is the vertical bar line, indicating that the bar has been filled up. If some of the notes were hanging over the bar line, they would be split and the duration of the note is notated on both sides of the bar line. Bars never have more notes in them than as is indicated by the time signature. In the next bar there is a whole note, which is an oval that is not shaded in the middle.
The bar line and the thicker vertical black line mean that the piece of music has ended.
[edit] Lower Section
In the example below in the lower section, the top line represents the thinnest string of the guitar (high E), and the lowest line represents the thickest string of the guitar (low E). Each number on a line represents a fretted note on that string. The number zero is an open string, the number one is the first fret, and so on.
The tab is still divided into bar lines, but the duration of the notes is not indicated. This means you can only figure out the notes if you understand the music notation indicated in the upper section. The tabs in books are usually pretty sparse compared to the written music, and if (for whatever reason) you can not or will not learn to read sheet music, then you still have other easy options.
[edit] Online Tabs
In terms of quality, plain text will never be better than sheet music. Even when images can be used, they are often inconvenient: they take up more space and are difficult to edit. For this reason, there is a very informal and loose standard of "Internet tablature", using only ASCII characters. For example, the above tune would be written like this.
e---0-1-3-5-3-1-0----|-----------------|| B------------------3-|-1---------------|| G--------------------|-----------------|| D--------------------|-----------------|| A--------------------|-----------------|| E--------------------|-----------------||
As with the lower section of the book tab style, this version contains much less information than the music notation in the upper section. Without the standard notation (staff), rhythm can only be suggested by spacing, or less commonly by adding symbols above each note, such as Q for quarter note. Much Internet tablature does not even contain bar lines; timing must be discerned by listening to the original piece. This is the major flaw of online tabs, and this style of tab in general.
However, online tabs are often much more convenient than standard notation for precisely conveying a specific finger positioning. Especially with alternate tunings, this is a clear advantage. The easy access also allows for spur of the moment learning, which for printed books is limited by your local guitar shop's inventory and your wallet.
Some common symbols to appear in online tabs (and this is by far an incomplete list):
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| h or ^ | hammer on |
| p or ^ | pull off |
| b | bend string up |
| r | release bend |
| / | slide up |
| \ | slide down |
| v or ~ | vibrato |
| t | right hand tap |
| x | play 'note' with heavy damping |
Chords are often written in the form:
EADGBE EADGBE EADGBE xx0232 x32010 320003
There are hundreds of tabs for popular music freely available at the On-Line Guitar Archive (OLGA). These can serve as an excellent starting point for beginning guitarists.
TabWiki also has hundreds of free tabs and allows you to add and edit them as well for continual improvement.
