How to Read Guitar Tabs for Beginners: Understanding Guitar Tabs
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How to read guitar tabs for beginners: the basics of how to read guitar notes, is a quick overview of this easy method for learning songs on the guitar. Learning guitar tabs is easy and fun! Once you understand how guitar notes are written this way, you can learn tons of songs without the hassle of having to read standard notation.
Is learning basic TABS a little too basic for YOU? Then feel free to move on to how to read advanced tabs, where we learn the 19 guitar tablature markings with which every lead guitarist should be familiar.
Tablature is a system that uses numbers and lines to represent specific places on your guitar's fretboard. By reading guitar tabs, you can play what you see.
Tabs are more visual than reading standard notation because there is less excruciating mental translation involved. It makes sense to guitar players!
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How To Read Guitar Tabs For Beginners
Guitar TAB is written underneath the traditional five line staff and uses six lines to represent the six strings on the guitar. The line on TOP represents the FIRST string, while the line on the BOTTOM represents the SIXTH string. Keep in mind that this is upside down from the guitar itself!
Now let's take a look at the numbers appearing on the lines. These numbers represent the FRETS, where 0 is played open.
Look ahead at the first several notes in the example below. You'll see that there is a 0 on the first string. This means to simply pick the first string open.
The next note is a 1 on the second string. This means press the first fret on the second string. Continue to play the indicated fret numbers on the string lines upon which they occur.
All in all, learning how to read guitar notes is as simple as playing what you SEE on the six tablature lines!
Special Tip: Vertically stacked notes represent chords. When you are reading through your tabs and you come across vertically stacked notes, they should be strummed all at once, starting on the LOWEST string.
Practice Tip: When playing in the span of the first four frets, you should always match up your finger numbers with the fret numbers. This is called playing in the first position. Don't forget that the numbers on the tablature stand for FRET numbers and not FINGER numbers!
Strawberry Cupcake the Groupie says:
"Remember your finger numbers?
Index = 1
Middle = 2
Ring = 3
Pinky = 4
Now don't forget!"
The next example brings us up out of the first position by introducing higher frets. This example is also known as the "four finger exercise" and makes for the PERFECT warm up exercise!
Now Try This Guitar Riff!
Now that we have covered the basics of how to read guitar tabs for beginners, let's try playing through a guitar riff using what we have learned about tablature!
Click image to enlarge:
And there you have it! That about covers the basics of reading guitar tabs. Next, we will look into more advanced techniques and how they are written using special markings and symbols.
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