Guitar Tablature: How To Read It

by Yngwie

understanding what the hell guitar tabs were took me ages. i didnt get any help apart from 'the numbers are where you put your fingers'. Reading tabs is one of those things thats only hard until you know how to do it, then its easy as fuck.

okay, first off, each line is a string. the string that comes first is the top e, e or 'little tiny thin string' then it goes through each string to E.

something like this:

   |-------------------------------------| <-top e (e)
   |-------------------------------------|
   |-------------------------------------|
   |-------------------------------------|
   |-------------------------------------|
   |-------------------------------------| <-E

if you dont understand that, imagine your looking down at your guitar and your seeing the strings. Each line represents the strings.

the numbers on each string represents a note played with your finger on a fret. for example, you were to play the E string on the 5th fret, it would be represented by this:

   |------------------|
   |------------------|
   |------------------|
   |------------------|
   |------------------|
   |--5---------------|

the order the numbers come in from left to right represents the order you play the notes. so if you were to play an A minor chord from E to top e one string at a time(a chord played like this is sometimes referred to as an 'arpeggio') it would look like this:

   |------------0-----|
   |----------0-------|
   |--------1---------|
   |------2-----------|
   |----2-------------|
   |--0---------------|

if you were to play the same chord with all strings played at once, it would look like this:

   |--0---------------|
   |--0---------------|
   |--1---------------|
   |--2---------------|
   |--2---------------|
   |--0---------------|

if you dont understand thus far, you're screwed.

Some tabs use symbols to represent different things eg:

/  - slide up
\  - slide down
b  - bend*
p  - pulloff
h  - hammer on
~  - stacatto/multiple bends
o  - palm muted**
x  - muted

most of these symbols are used comonnly, so you see one that isnt mentioned here itll probably be mentioned what it means somewhere.

* - in some tabs instead of a 'b' there is a number followed by a number in brackets. This just means bend the first number until it sounds equal to the following number. eg:

    |-----5(7)-------|

this would mean bending on the 5th fret until it sounds the same as the 7th fret.

** - the palm muted symbol comes at the very beginning of a string which means that throughout the part shown. eg:

   |------------------|
   |------------------|
   |o-------8---------|
   |o-----7---9-------|
   |o---6-------10----|
   |--5---------------|

this means that the 2nd, 3rd and 4th strings are palm muted while playing this riff.

Usually before the strings there is the letters which represents the tuning of each string, so for standard tuning it would look like:

  e|------------------|
  D|------------------|
  G|------------------|
  B|------------------|
  A|------------------|
  E|------------------|

That concludes this rambling of crap. If you found this useful, i say 'yay'. if not, i dont do anything, there are better things to do