How to Easily Read Guitar Tablature
Guitar tablature makes it a whole lot easier for guitar players to read and write music for the guitar. Guitar tablature or tab for short, displays or represents the frets and strings of a guitar. There are six lines that represent each string of the guitar. There will be numbers that will represent the fret where you push down on the string. If you encounter the number zero on a string, that indicates that you play an open string.
Some tablature is written with a music staff above it. This is so you can look at the notes on the music staff to figure out the rhythm. This is okay if you know how to read music.
If you are reading tablature to try to figure out a song and you don’t know how to read music to understand the rhythmic part of a song, it would be best to listen to a recording of the song so you can figure out the rhythm.
Sometimes, guitar tab will just have slashes on them with the chord displayed above the staff. This is for playing songs rhythmically but you have to know which notes make up the chord. If you see four slashes on the music staff then you know to strum that chord four times in that measure.
As with reading a book, the more you read tablature, the better you will become at it. It does take some practice. The most complicated thing about it, is figuring out which is the top and which is the bottom. The first string is usually displayed at the top of the diagram. The first string on the guitar is the skinny string on the bottom when you are looking down at your fretboard.
Hope this didn’t complicate things too much for you.