So, the chances are high that you've read some explanation of guitar tablatures in the past from the previous lessons or somewhere else. However, to get better on a guitar much faster, you need to clearly understand how tablatures work and feel comfortable everytime you see them. Once you accomplish this task, your guitar skills will start to progress with a blazing speed.
The first thing you should know is this lesson works for both acoustic and electric guitars.
There are two different ways of writing down or reading songs. There is the professional way, with all the fancy note symbols and there is the basic, more common way. We'll be learning how to read the basic type. These are called Tablatures. Reading a tablature (guitar tab) is quite simple, and the main advantage of learning to read tabs is that you can find tabs of almost any song or guitar solo.
The basic structure for a tablature (or tab) looks like this:
This may have confused you. Firstly, ignore the letters on the left. You have six lines. Each one of these lines represent a string on your guitar. The bottom line represents the top (thickest) string on your guitar. The top line represents the bottom (thinnest) string on your guitar.
Look at this:
Does that make sense? Now for the frets. This is the really awkward part.
A fret is the area between the two (usually metal) bars on your guitar. If you were told to play the first fret on the top string then you would push down on fret 1 on the top string with your finger and pluck the string.
The first fret is the furthest away from you (closest fret to the head of a guitar). There are usually 21, 22, 23 or 24 frets on a guitar. If you look, they all get thinner as they get closer to the body of guitar. There are also marks telling you what fret is what. There is a dot on the 3rd fret, the 5th fret, the 7th fret, the 9th fret, the 12th fret, the 15th fret, the 17th fret, the 19th fret, the 21st fret and maybe more. This is to help you get around your guitar quicker.
Now to put frets into a tablature:
What this tab is telling you to do is first, to put a finger (the index preferably) on the first fret on the top/thickest string. Then you pluck the string. If you are pushing hard enough onto the fret you shall find that you get a nice, deep note.
Next, you put your next finger (preferably your middle finger) onto the second fret on the top string. Now hit the string. You should get a nice, slightly higher pitched note.
Then you put your next finger (your ring finger) onto the third fret, if you are pushing down hard enough you will find that when you pluck the string you will get a slightly higher pitched note again.
Then you push your next finger (your pinky) down hard onto the top string pushing it down into the fourth fret, pluck the string and you will get another, slightly higher pitched sound. If you followed this carefully you should be getting the idea.
Look at this:
On this one, you are doing the exact same as the last one but you are put your fingers on, and hitting the thinnest string.
You should get a very high pitched sound.
Try this:
Had a good try? If you're stuck, what you're doing is putting your fingers on the third thickest string, the third one away from you. So how about this?
A 0? What do you do with a 0? Fear not! A zero simply means you pluck that string without putting your finger on a fret. This is fret zero, you play open string.