Wanna make learning your favorite songs easier for you? Tabs will help you do just that!
When you start playing the guitar, learning how to read tabs as soon as possible is a good choice. Period. I’m so glad that I did that when I started. It made learning songs a lot easier for me. In my opinion, tabs are the easiest way to learn songs for beginners.
In this post, you will learn all that you need about tabs. I included photos, and text for you.
To see the full version of this post(with helpful videos and raw tab symbols), check it out at:https://guitaristnextdoor.com/how-to-read-guitar-tabs/
Now, let’s get started with guitar tabs.
Use the table of content to jump to the section you want:
How to Read Guitar Tabs (Basics)
In tabs, you watch guitars fretboard from up, like this:
Heres how it looks like on the paper or screen:
Six horizontal lines represent the six strings of the guitar. Thickest at the bottom and thinnest at the top.
When you look at tabs, those horizontal lines include numbers. Usually from 0 to 24. Those numbers show you which fret you should play/press. 0 is an open string, 1 is the first fret, 2 is the second fret, 3 is the third fret and so on… It looks like this
You play from left to right. So the fret 1 on the left is played first.
That really covered up all the basics. You can now learn songs with tabs!
When you are starting out, you only need to know these basics, but when you learn more and more, you will face more and more symbols.
I recommend that you bookmark this site, go play the guitar and learn new songs. When learning songs from tabs, at some point you will face some unknown symbols, then you can go back here and learn what those symbols mean.
If you want to learn symbol meanings now, keep reading.
Other Tab Symbols
Tablature softwares and raw tabs use a little bit different symbols. I’m going to show you both symbols and meanings.
Tab Software/Modern Tab Symbols
Hammer-on and pull-off
In hammer on, you hammer string with your fret hand without any help or strumming of your pick hand.
In pull-of you pull your finger out of the fret, without strumming with your pick hand.
These two techniques look like this in tabs:
In hammer on here, one of your fingers is already pressing the 10th fret of the B string. Then you hammer the 12th fret with one of your other fingers.
In pull-of you do it in another way around, you pull your finger out of the 12th fret and let the 10th string ring.
Bends
If you want to perform a bend, you raise or lower the string from a certain note with your fret hand. When the tone reaches the sound of one fret forward(example: you bend 8th fret and it starts to sound like 9th fret) it’s called Half bend. If it reaches the sound of two frets forward, it’s called Full bend.
Bends look like this in a TAB:
Slides and Vibrato
In slide, you, play a note from the fret and slide your finger to another fret. In this tab, you play the 4th fret and slide your hand to the 7th fret of the B strings. All this time the string should make a sound.
To perform Vibrato, you vibrate/shake your fret finger after pressing and playing a specific fret.
In TAB these looks like this:
Tapping and Natural Harmonic
When you are tapping, you use your picking hand to tap specific frets. You can use the pick or fingers. This is one of the coolest techniques in my opinion. And it’s relatively easy to learn too, especially the one string tapping.
Natural harmonics are high notes, that sound like a bell or flute. You can play these by gently pressing the fret bar, after that, play the note and release your finger from the stings. There are a couple of different natural harmonic symbols, I’ll show you three different versions.
Tapping and harmonics look like this in a TAB:
Palm Mute and Dead Note
When you are palm muting, you place picking hand at the edge of the bridge and lightly touch the string there.
When you want to play a dead note, you mute the strings with your fret hand and strum the strings. This technique is used on Smells Like Teen Spirit’s opening riff.
Palm-muting and dead notes look like this in a TAB:
Summary
I hope that this guide helped you to get started with tabs. You can easily learn hundreds and hundreds of songs with this basic knowledge. If you have any questions about these symbols, tabs or guitar playing in general, leave a comment below.
Now, please go and play your guitar. Learn new chords. Master new songs. Use tabs and keep rocking!
Teemu Suomala