Tablature

In order to do the lessons on this site... one needs to learn the concept of tablature. Tablature, or "tab" for short, is the guitarist's way of reading music. Well, it's like musical notation only it's made out specifically for guitarists. First we must learn which note is which on the guitar....

Tab is actually really easy to read. It is a much more simplified and direct way of reading music for guitarists than music notation. However, unlike music notation, tab is absolutely uncomprehensable to non-guitar playing musicians. A tab bar consists of 6 lines with numbers. Each line represents a string on the guitar and the numbers represent the numbers of frets away from the end of the neck the note should be held on a string. When no note is held down but the string is played open, this is presented by a "0"

As you can tell, it's almost as if you are looking at the guitar upside down! Instead, the high E string is located at the top of the chart with the low, coiled E string at the bottom.... this is because even though it may seem more practical to notate the strings in the same order as they appear on the guitar, it is actually, in theory, more logical to to place the lower bass notes at the bottom of the chart with the higher notes ascending to the top. This is why it may appear that the guitar has been turned upside down when reading tabs.

The chord you are looking at above is the C chord. A chord is played when more than one note is played at once. As you can see the A string is being held down on the 3rd fret, the D string on the 2nd, the G is open and the B string is held on the first fret. As these four notes are all played on the same beat, they form a chord, C major. This is what has happened in the yellow highlighted area. In the blue highlighted area, these same notes are being picked but on different beats. Therefore, even though all the notes in a chord are being used, the chord itself is not actually being played. This is called an Arpeggio.