Lesson 1. How To Read Guitar Tablature

Welcome to lesson 1 on how to read guitar tablature. In this lesson the basics of reading guitar tab will be explained. Learning to read tab privides a simple way for you to learn to play the guitar. It does have its limitations however, which will be discussed in a later lesson. 

Guitar Tablature Basics

A tab staff graphically represents the guitar fingerboard. Each horizontal line represents a string. The bottom line represents the low E or 6th string and the top line is the high E or 1st string. The numbers on the lines represent frets. Take a look at the example below.

In this example you see the number 5 on the 4th line which reresents the 4th or D string. This tells you to play the note at the 5th fret on the 4th string. As you can see this is a very simple way to know exactly where to play on the guitar.

That does for this lesson on guitar tablature basics. In the next lesson you will learn how tab is used to notate chords. If you have any questions you can contact at bob@learn-guitar-online.com.

Click here for guitar tablature lesson 2.