How to read tablature? How to read tablature for guitar?

Every beginning guitar player wants to play his favorite song. Because of this, perhaps, many people take the instrument in their hands. However, choosing the parties themselves is a very difficult task for a beginner, especially if you do not know the notes. Here, tablatures come to the aid - simple and understandable.

How to read tablature?

These forms of musical notation are purely guitar, they do not exist, for example, for a piano, since the main way to convey information about a musical work here is the digital notation of frets. Below we will look at how to correctly read tablature. And immediately it is worth noting that this is the most simplified way of transferring musical symbols, which everyone can master.

Main Features

And yet, how to read tablature? To begin with, it should be understood that this form of musical notation has never been the main means of reading music, and will not be.
All professional musicians, and guitarists in particular, play only on notes or simply by ear. Tablature only helps the beginner to better navigate in finding the right notes and the principles of building chords and intervals. It is very simple and convenient, but far from perfect, it does not have the ability to show a lot of the musical elements that are present in the notes. It should be remembered during the training, and, in addition to using tablature, try to devote time to the gradual development of musical notation.

Advantages and disadvantages

The main advantage of this form of musical notation is in simplicity and convenience. You do not have to think about where that note is and what kind of string you need to clamp. To understand how to read tablature, it's enough to know the numbers and remember some characters. However, there are quite a few shortcomings, the most important of which is the lack of the duration of notes. Of course, for different lengths, the numbers will be at different distances, this will give an approximate idea of the duration, but it will not form a clear picture. Then how to read a tablature correctly? The answer is simple - after listening to this song before, or having notes or a rhythmic drawing of a song. In addition, the tablature can not specify the size of the measure, the tempo and many other quite important musical elements.

The arrangement of strings

The tablature depicts six guitar strings, numbers corresponding to the numbers of frets, as well as various symbols showing different tricks of the game. From the left edge you will see six letters. This is a Latin notation for notes that can not always be indicated in some tablature reading programs, such as Guitar Pro. The picture below provides a tab for the standard guitar system. The strings are arranged from top to bottom, at the top there is the first - the thinnest and highest in sounding string (notes, or E), from below - the thickest and the lowest, the sixth (also mi, but lower by two octaves). Then the second string is a note of si, or B; The third is a note of salt, or G; The fourth is re, or D; And the fifth is A, or A. Latin notations should be known, they will not only allow you to understand how to read tablatures for a guitar, but also help in reading chords.

Basic notation

Now about the notation itself. As for the figures, everything is clear here - they correspond to the number of frets. The number 0 is a string in the open position, when no fret is clamped. The figure 1 - the first mode, 2 - the second, and so on. When the numbers on the tab stand together, in the same vertical line, this means that they all need to be extracted at the same time. But sometimes there can be other symbols: different crosses, arrows and others. They appear when using different game techniques. A cross, instead of a number, means a muffled sound, in which the fret is not completely clamped - the guitarist only
Touches the string in the right place. There is another drawback of tablature: the cross itself does not mean any harmony, and you will have to guess where to take it, judging by the remaining figures on the tablature. An upward arcing arrow means a string lift, or band. To remove the band, hit the string and pull it up or down with your left hand. The number in the arrow indicates the interval to which you want to extend the band. If it costs ½, you need to pull the string to a halftone, or one fret. The word "full" means a brace on a whole tone, or two fret.

The next symbol is glissando, in other words, glide. It usually looks like this: (\), or like this: (/). As it was already possible to guess, it means slipping from one harmony to another, while the string continues to sound. Glissando can meet in the form - 7 \ 2--, this means that you need to hit the string on the seventh fret and move to the second, without drowning the string. There is one more symbol - legato, on tablature is usually denoted by the letters p and h, which means the descending and ascending legato, respectively. It looks like --3h5--. To extract it, you need to hit the string on the third fret and put the finger of the left hand on the fifth fret, without muffling the string at the same time. In addition to all these signs, there are also many others, you can memorize them already in the course of training the game.

Bass Tablature

By the same principle, bass tablatures are built, only on them there will be no upper two strings. String can be added down, depending on their number on this instrument, as well as those elements that are used only when playing the bass guitar. For example, a blow is blind, which is denoted by the letter S. Blind is a special technique in which a musician punches the string with his thumb so that it strikes against the neck. The blind is mostly found on bass tablatures and very rarely on simple guitar, while the technique of playing blindly on a conventional guitar is radically different. But in general, bass tablatures are nothing special from ordinary ones, so the question of how to learn to read a tablature of this type should not arise.

Guitar Pro

Find any tablature easily enough, many are posted directly on special sites. However, there is a very convenient program in which you can not only read tabs, but it's easy to write them yourself. It is called Guitar Pro, all beginners and already able guitarists are recommended to install it on your personal computer. With this program, you will not have more questions about how to read tablature. It is simple and convenient to use, very quickly absorbed, has many functions. In it along with the tabs there are also notes of the composition, which means that there will not be a problem of determining their duration. In addition, directly in the program tabs can be listened to thanks to specially pre-recorded midi-files. In addition to guitar tablature, Guitar Pro works with notes for piano, for various orchestral instruments, bass guitars and even with parts for drums. So you can safely write in this wonderful program whole symphonies.

Finally

Having mastered all the above principles of building guitar tablature, you will facilitate and accelerate your training. These forms of notation will not give you complete knowledge of the musical grammar, they will only help you to learn any songs and games without problems. In general, just for this purpose tabs are intended. For beginning guitarists it is recommended to quickly master them and go further in studying music, and use such forms as an auxiliary tool.