Once you know how it works, reading guitar tab is very easy. I recently got a phone call from a gentleman who mentioned on the phone that he did not know how to read guitar tablature. This post is for people who do not know how to read guitar tablature. I’ve put together a short video with several exercises that should help you feel very comfortable with reading guitar tab.
Here are the five exercises:
Exercise 1. Each line of the guitar tab represents a string. Here is both the musical notation and guitar tablature of the open 6 strings of the guitar. The bottom line represents the lowest sounding string… the 6th string.
Exercise 2: This is a sample of playing notes as in a scale.
Exercise 3: This is a guitar chord. When every note is on a different string, it might be a chord.
Exercise 4: This is a sample of playing two notes at the same time.
Exercise 5: Here is an example of playing three or more notes at a time.
Thanks, Jean! I’m a slow learner. But I do want to learn to pick out songs.
Liz
Thanks, Jean.
I do not use tab much in my playing or teaching, but several of the students in my free classes at church are quite interested in it. I’ll be sharing your excellent demonstration with them. Thanks again for your good work.
Dennis Coop
Thanks Dennis. I hope it’s helpful. I used to play the Renaissance Lute and everything was written in a tablature format so it was very useful to know.