Guitar tabs are a type of musical notation that tells the player where to place his or her fingers on the neck of the guitar rather than what note and pitch to play. Many people believe that tabs are a new way to write music, but they have been around for centuries. Many people find them to be much easier to read than traditional musical notation.
Guitar tabs resemble other musical notation in some ways. A staff is made up of six horizontal lines that represent the six strings of a guitar, with the high E string at the top and the low E string at the bottom. One of the lines has a number that indicates which fret should be held down to produce a typical note. A three on the bottom line, for example, indicates that the song’s next note is a G played on the low E string.
On guitar tabs, chords are represented in the same way that notes are. A three on the top line of the staff (sixth string) and a five on the two lines directly below would represent the G power chord. To aid the reader in determining the chord, many tabs will display the letter representation of the chord above the tablature.
Guitar tabs can also be used to write down guitar techniques. Each tab will usually include a key that explains the symbols. Between the two notes or chords, a forward slash is commonly used to represent a slide. In a book of guitar tablature, hammer-ons are often depicted as an arc above and between two notes, with the pull off depicted as a reversed arc beneath them. A tilde symbol () is commonly used to represent a slide.
On the internet, there is a veritable encyclopedia of free guitar tabs. Almost every song ever written can be found in tab form somewhere on the Internet. Many of these sites were once temporarily shut down due to copyright concerns. The reasoning behind this is that many people believed that by making guitar tabs available for free, they were infringing on the rights of the original artists to reproduce their work. The majority of these sites have since reopened under the premise that the tabs are only there to teach people how to play their instrument and are only there as educational tools.