Examine the neck of your guitar. You’ll notice there are metal strips running across its entire surface. These pieces of metal are referred to as “frets” on a guitar.
To further explain, the area of the neck from the first strip of metal is referred to as the “first fret”, second strip of metal is referred to as the “second fret”. And so on…
A tab has 6 horizontal lines, each represents a string. The bottom line represents your lowest “E” string, and the top line represents high E string. Note: tabs are kinda upside down, meaning the thick string is at the bottom, note that.
Notice the use of numbers. The numbers simply represent the fret to play. For example, in the illustration above 7 means play at 7th fret. 7 is written on the 3rd string meaning play 7th fret of the 3rd string. Pretty easy!
Note: When the number “0” is used in tablature, this indicates that the open string should be played.
This is the concept of reading tab, at its most basic.
Roseline Kendi
July 22, 2010not so difficult.i swear those tab diagrams look so ‘ngumu i’ve never really gotten around the whole concept.thanks4clearing it all up.
Kelly
July 29, 2010really educative. i love your blog. die hard kamata fan!
Nancy Muriuki
July 29, 2010you’ve really simplified this,i’m enjoying all the reads on this website.