It's important to know how to play guitar tabs, if you're a guitarist, or you plan on becoming one. Nearly every song you look up on the internet, for guitar, is written in tablature form, or in tabs. You'll notice a bunch of lines, a bunch of numbers. And if you're not familiar with tablature or tabs, you'll think you're looking at a mathematical equation.
What exactly are guitar tabs, or guitar tablature? They're really not that complicated. All you need to know are some basics, and the rest is pretty intuitive.
1. Let's assume you have a guitar. If you don't, get one, because it's easier to explain tabs if you already have a guitar. Get the guitar and sit it on your lap. You'll notice the strings go from lowest on top (or fattest) to highest on the bottom (or thinnest). You won't learn how to play guitar tabs if you're holding your guitar upside down...unless you're left handed. Then you'll have to re-string your guitar. But that's a different lesson for another time.
2. Now look at any tab sheet, or any song with tabs. You'll notice six lines, labelled E, B, G, D, A, and E. These correspond to your strings, from bottom to top. If you were to 'slide' your guitar off your lap and onto the floor, and you looked at your strings, they would be laid out this way, with the thinnest string (High E) at the top. Get it?
3. Unless you know what the numbers are, you won't know how to play guitar tabs. For each string you'll either see an "X" or a number from 0 to 22. Those simply refer to the frets. If you see an X, that means for THAT particular chord, you do NOT play that string. If you see a "0", you play that string, but you play it 'open', with no fingers of your chord playing hand pressing down on it. If you see a number, put your finger on THAT fret of THAT string.
To learn more about how to play guitar tabs, I recommend any one of several online guitar guides. I review them here
Noel Alcoba currently resides in the Pacific Northwest and has been playing guitar for 25 years. You can read about his online guitar reviews here
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