Reading Tablature is a really simple thing to do. All it involves is counting the frets on the guitar fretboard.
Here’s how a blank guitar tab (short form for tablature) looks:
E |————————————————
B |————————————————
G |————————————————
D |————————————————
A |————————————————
E |————————————————
Now each line (———————-) represents a string. The top line being the highest/thinnest string and the bottom line being the lowest/thickest string.
What does the E, A, D, G, B, and E letters stand for?
Those letters stand for the notes that each string are tuned to (EADGBE being standard tuning. Don’t worry about tunings right now, we’ll get to that after).
Now, let’s take a look at a guitar tab with notes
E |—3–5–7–8———————————
B |—————–5–7–8–10—————–
G |————————————————
D |————————————————
A |————————————————
E |————————————————
Each of these numbers tell you what frets the notes are to be played on. 0 would result on picking an open string, 1 would mean fretting the first fret, etc. In our example above the first four notes are 3, 5, 7, and 8 on the high E string (the thinnest string). So that would mean pick 3rd fret high E, then pick 5th fret high E, etc.
Pretty simple, eh?
Ok, now let’s take a look at some of the symbols associated with tabs and their meanings:
P – Pull Off
H – Hammer On
/ – Slide Up
- Slide Down
T – Tap Note
P.M. – Palm Mute
~ – Vibrato
If you don’t know what some of these terms mean, don’t worry about it right now.
The downfall to tabs on a website or a text document is there is no real way to tell the time signatures. The only way to do this with tabs is to get tablature software.