Music news paper

Most guitarists in the world have no idea how to read conventional music notation and thankfully they don’t have to learn since the majority know how to play tabs. Tabs is sort for tablature and is thankfully a simple method of writing down exactly what notes should be played in a guitar piece.

If you don’t already know about tabs then you will be pleased to know that it will only take you a few minutes to understand the method exactly and will then be able to start learning your favourite guitar piece. Unfortunately even though you know how to play tablature it wont speed up the process of learning that complicated riff that sound so easy on the CD recording.

The notation of tablature is very simple. It consists of 6 lines on the page and each line represents a string of the guitar. The top line corresponds to the top string or rather the highest note string of the guitar and the bottom line is the lowest note. The bass string of the guitar is of course the top string when you look down at it but that is the last bit of confusion when learning about tabs.

It is simplicity itself how to understand tabs. Reading from left to right the music is written on the 6 lines by numbers showing which fret must be pressed in order to create the note. If a chord is to be played then the notes of the chord are shown as numbers on the strings written in one vertical line.

You just start placing you fingers to stop the frets as shown reading which line and which number. It is a little bit of slow process at first but after a short period of practice you will learn how to read the tablature very easily soon you will be able to do it without thinking at all.

One problem with tabs is one that is always pointed out by the educated people who can already read conventional music notation. There isn’t any information to show the speed of the music and how long to play each note. This can be a problem and even though you know how to read the tabs, it is very difficult to play a piece of music that you haven’t heard. Thankfully most of the time it is no problem since we all try to learn music that we already have on a CD or mp3.

Another slight problem for beginners when they learn is that a lot of the time they don’t know which finger to use. The 3rd string/line may have a 4 written on it but which finger should you use to play it. This is really just a matter of experience and most often it is just what feels most comfortable.

So now you know how to interpret tabs you will be able to proceed with all the thousands of choices of available music on the internet.

How to play tabs is probably the easiest problem for guitar beginners to overcome and although you now know how to play tabs you still have a lot of work practicing the guitar.