How to read tab

How to read Tablature for guitar

This short video helps you understand how to read tablature, or tab. Tab is a convenient and simple to understand means of writing things down for guitar, so that you know which notes to play, which order they come in, and where to find them on the guitar. You don’t need to be able to read conventional music notation to understand and play tab straight away.
Most people find that once they understand how it works, tab is quite straightforward. It’s very useful to be able to read tab because you can then play all kinds of pieces, melodies, riffs and other things.
Tab is like a diagram of the fretboard. There are six horizontal lines on the page and each of these is a visual representation of the strings. On guitar, the thinnest string is called string 1, and the thickest is string 6.
The top line of tab depicts the first/thinnest string, and the lowest line depicts the sixth/thickest string.
The numbers simply tell you which box or fret you put your left hand finger on to create each different note. Check out this video for an introduction to tab. If you watch it first and then try to play along with it, you will soon find that you can understand how to read tab and you’ll be playing melodies and riffs all over the place. Don’t worry if you don’t understand it straight away; feel free to view the video a couple of times. You can get help in your next session if you have any questions.