# Guitar/Tablature

Tablature and standard notation are two ways that musical information is
shared. Sight-reading of standard notation is a requisite skill for
teaching careers, session work, and the theater orchestra. Reading music
increases your knowledge of music and allows you to notate your musical
ideas. Each notation system has its advantages and disadvantages.
Tablature does not convey timing and pitch information as well as
standard notation does though it is more useful for showing bends and to
what degree (1/4, 1/2 or full) they should be executed and other worded
instructions such as pick scrapes and whammy bar effects. For these
reasons many guitar transcriptions for rock, jazz and blues, use both
standard notation and tablature.

## Tablature

You do not need to know how to read music to use tablature. Each string
is represented by a line and on those lines numbers are used to indicate
which fret to press down.

Below is a simple melody in tablature.

![](First-tune.png "First-tune.png")

### Lower Section

In the lower section of the example above, the top line represents the
thinnest string of the guitar (high **e**) and the lowest line
represents the thickest string of the guitar (low **E**). Each number on
a line represents a fretted note on that string. The number zero is an
open string, the number one is the first fret, and so on.

The tab is divided into measures using bar-lines but the duration of the
notes is not indicated. You can figure out the duration of the notes
using the standard notation in the upper section. You can also work out
the note values using the time signature; which in this example is
four-four time. This means that there are four quarter-notes in each
measure. The tempo or style, which is given at the top of a piece of
sheet music, is also an indicator of how a song should be played.

The key signature is not shown in the example. Key signatures show which
sharps , naturals, and flats are to be used; represented by #\'s and
b\'s. Each sharp or flat is shown on their respective line and space
after the time signature.

### Upper Section

The upper section of the example above is in standard notation and shows
that the first bar has eight notes. Each note is represented by an oval
note-head which indicates which note pitch is to be played. A stem with
tails is used to indicate notes duration (how long the note is to be
held). In standard notation only the whole-note is written without a
stem. Because the notes in the first bar are all eighth notes with one
tail they are connected with a single beam as shown in the example. The
beaming of the same notes in a bar allows for easier reading. In a bar
of music with mixed note values a single eighth note would be shown with
a single tail. Sixteenth notes have two tails so a double beam is used
when grouping.

The vertical bar-line after the last eighth note marks the end of one
complete count of the time-signature. Bar-lines are used to show the
pulse of the music and taken overall allows us to describe the form of a
piece of music. The usefulness of using bar-lines to describe form is
self-evident in the twelve bar blues whose title states that a cyclic
group of twelve bars is to be performed. It is common to find musicians
describing one complete thirty-two bar cycle of a jazz standard as a
chorus. The term chorus is used to indicate how many times a song is to
be repeated. A vamp on the thirty-two bar Jazz standard \"Misty\",
written by the pianist Erroll Garner, would by convention start with all
the musicians stating the melody with the following choruses dedicated
to solo improvisation. The last chorus usually has the musicians stating
the melody again without improvisation. The convenience of using the
term chorus can be illustrated by imagining a four piece Jazz quartet
with piano, saxophone, double bass and drums. If each musician is given
a chorus to improvise over and the convention of all the musicians
stating the melody on the first and last chorus is utilized then the
song will have six choruses. The original hit recording of \"Misty\" as
sung by Sarah Vaughan consisted of only one chorus with a four bar
intro. Be aware that four and eight bar codas and intros are very common
in Jazz and Blues and need to be taken into account when working out how
many bars a chorus contains.

In some forms of music there is a strong emphasis placed on the first
beat of each bar. This is easily demonstrated by the Waltz time
signature where the first beat of a count of three is emphasized for the
dancers benefit in accord with the dance steps to be performed. If a
note is tied over the bar-line with a curved tie-line then the note
duration is held over to the next bar. Bars never have more notes in
them than is indicated by the time signature. In the next bar there is a
whole note which is a white oval with no stem. The two vertical black
lines at the end are called a double bar-line indicating that the piece
of music has ended.

## ASCII Tablature

There is a very informal and loose standard of \"Internet Tablature\"
using only ASCII characters. The above example would be written like
this:

```{=html}
<div style="font-family:'Courier New'">
```
`   e---0-1-3-5-3-1-0----|-----------------||`\
`   B------------------3-|-1---------------||`\
`   G--------------------|-----------------||`\
`   D--------------------|-----------------||`\
`   A--------------------|-----------------||`\
`   E--------------------|-----------------||`

```{=html}
</div>
```
It has the same disadvantages of tab and contains much less information
than the standard notation of the upper section. Rhythm can only be
suggested by spacing or by adding symbols above each note (such as Q for
quarter note). Much Internet tablature does not even contain bar lines.
The timing must be discerned by listening to the original piece. This is
the major flaw of online tabs and this style of tab in general.

However, online tabs are often much more convenient than standard
notation for precisely conveying a specific finger positioning.
Especially with alternate tunings
this is a clear advantage.

Common Tab symbols:

  Symbol    Meaning
  --------- ----------------------------------
  h or \^   hammer on
  p or \^   pull off
  b         bend string up
  r         release bend
  /         slide up
  \\        slide down
  v or \~   vibrato
  t         right hand tap
  x         play \'note\' with heavy damping

Chords are often written in the form:

```{=html}
<div style="font-family:'Courier New'">
```
`   EADGBE  EADGBE  EADGBE`\
`   xx0232  x32010  320003`

```{=html}
</div>
```
## Standard Notation

### Notes On The Staff

Here are the notes as they appear in standard notation. The set of lines
and spaces that run horizontally across the page is called the staff
(*plural* - staves). Notes can be written on the lines and in the
spaces. A common mnenomic for remembering the notes of the Treble Clef
is:

*\"**E**very **G**ood **B**oy **D**eserves **F**udge\" and the word
\"**FACE***

![](_Notes_on_the_staff.gif "_Notes_on_the_staff.gif")

The musical alphabet starts at the letter **A** and ends on the letter
**G**. There are twelve sounds in music and seven letters to represent
them. The other five sounds are the sharps or flats of these seven
notes. Each step up the staff is the next letter, so it goes **A**,
**B**, **C**, etc. The first symbol on the staff is always the clef;
which in this case is the treble clef. The word *clef* is French for
*key* and gives you the position of the first note. The treble clef
shown here is also called the G clef. It is drawn so that the note **G**
is indicated as being on the second line.

!The notes on a classical guitar with standard
tuning

