How To Read Guitar Music
By Gen Mason
If you knew how to read music for instruments like a piano or a violin, you would think that you would be able to read music for a guitar. This is not the case as guitarists have made up their own form of music notation.
The first thing is that you should know about how to read guitar music is that the tab staff for guitar has six lines. Each line represents a string. The first line is the E string. The second line is the B string. The third line is the G string. The fourth line is D string. The fifth line is the A string. The sixth line is the low E string.
What you put on the lines is numbers. Each number represents a fret. If you put 7 on the line number 4, this means that you put the 4th string with the 7th fret. If there is a zero on the lines, this means that you should leave the string open.
For example, there are zeros on the first, second and sixth line. There is a 1 on the third line, a 2 on the fourth line and a 2 on the fifth line. You are going to strum all six strings at once. Your fingers should be on the third string with the first fret, on the fourth string with second fret and the fifth string with the second fret. You can tell that you have to strum all six strings all the numbers vertically lined up together.
How do you know how to play one string at a time? The numbers will not be vertically lined. For example, there will be a 0 on the sixth line. The next number will be to the right of the first number and the next number will be to the right of the last number. It will look like the numbers are rising into the air. On a line graph, it would look like a rising trend.
These are more notations that you should know.
When you see h, it means that the hammer on the guitar should be on. It should be in the space between the lines. For example, you should see 0h9. The h would be in the space.
When you see p, it represents pull off. It will also be in the space between the lines. You should see something like 7p6.
Instead of p or h, you sometimes might see a ^.
String bends are indicated in different ways. It could be a b in the space between the lines. When you see something like 6b8, this means that you should bend the sixth fret until it sounds like the eighth fret. It is sometimes written like 6b(8). You can just eliminate the b and write 6(8).
When you put an r, it means that you should turn a bent note to its unbent state. If you see 7b9r7, this means that it is a not on the seventh fret bent up to the ninth fret, then returned to the seventh fret again.
The problem with this method of notation is that it doesnt tell you the rhythm of the song. It does not tell how long to hold each note. The only way you would know the rhythm is by actually listening to the song. You will find that some guitarists try to put stems to indicate what the rhythm is.
The other obvious problem about guitar notation is that only guitarists can read it. If you are not a guitarist, you will not be able to read it and you will not be able understand it. This makes it difficult for guitarists to communicate with other musicians.
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Gen Mason is a guitar player from |