Reading Tablature

The Goal: To learn how to read gui­tar tablature

Although gui­tar music can be read in tra­di­tional musi­cal nota­tion, there is a mod­ern method used to read gui­tar music called Tab­la­ture. As much of an advo­cate as I am for learn­ing how to sight read tra­di­tional music, I can­not deny the ease of use and ben­e­fit this sys­tem of tab­la­ture is when it comes to learn­ing gui­tar. It is for this rea­son that we are start­ing with tab­la­ture rather than tra­di­tional notation.

Tab­la­ture rep­re­sents each of the six strings of the gui­tar with hor­i­zon­tal lines and rep­re­sents which fret to play on the appro­pri­ate string with a num­ber telling us which fret to place our finger.