Should you learn to read Tab or not? Is it useful, useless, cheating, upside down?  There’s a lot of mixed noise. I’m a fan. Here’s why….

 

What is TAB?

Tab is short for Tablature.  It’s a form of musical notation. It differs from traditional notation as it doesn’t use note values, pitches and a stave / staff. 

Instead it shows a visual representation of the guitar fretboard:  6 lines (one for each string). Numbers to represent the fret number required. Symbols to show techniques – slides, bends, hammer ons etc

It’s a graphic and intuitive way to represent music that has a direct relation to the guitar fretboard. A Map. 

 

Why does Tab exist?

It provides a simple visual way to represent guitar music. Learning to read guitar Tab offers several advantages:

• Visual (graphical) Representation of the Fretboard: Tab directly corresponds to the guitar’s fretboard. The lines represent the strings, and the numbers indicate which fret to play. This makes it easy to visualise finger placement. 
• Great for Self-Learning: If you’re learning guitar on your own Tab can be an invaluable resource for figuring out songs and riffs.
• Accessibility for Beginners: Unlike standard musical notation, which can be complex and require extensive music theory knowledge, Tab is relatively easy to learn. This makes it a great entry point for beginners.   

• Widely Available: Countless songs have been transcribed into Tab and you can find them easily online. This gives you access to a vast library of music.

• Guitar-Specific Techniques: Standard notation isn’t always ideal for showing guitar-specific techniques like bending, sliding, or hammer-ons and pull-offs. Tab can effectively represent these techniques with symbols or abbreviations.
• Speed and Efficiency: Tab can be written and read quickly, making it a convenient way to share and learn songs.
• Quick Learning: Tab is much easier to grasp than standard music notation. You can start playing songs relatively quickly, which can be extremely motivating.
• Cataloguing – Using tab is great If you need to file the lessons you’ve learned so you have a record you can look at and remind yourself of in 6 months time. Or maybe you need to quickly write down a riff or melody.

In essence, guitar Tab provides a practical, user-friendly way to notate music, making it accessible to a wider range of musicians. While standard notation offers more detailed information about rhythm and musicality, Tab excels at quickly conveying the essential information needed to play a song on the guitar.   

The two work together extremely well. 

 

Why is Tab written upside down? 

Well,  It isn’t.

it might appear that way if you’re comparing it to the view you have if you were facing a guitar from the outside looking onwards to (or that someone else was playing) (pic). 

What tab shows is the lowest sounding string (E / 6 ) on a guitar displayed as the bottom line of the tab. This aligns with how you visually see the guitar when you’re holding / playing it and looking downwards at it, with the low strings closer to your head and the high strings further away; (pic)

This is also consistent with standard music notation where lower pitches are written lower on the stave/staff, making it easier to read when comparing the tab to your instrument and to notation. It creates a uniformity. 

 

Questions I’ve been asked….

Can’t I just turn it upside down to read it? Can’t I just write it the right way up and learn it that way? It’s easier…

Obviously, of course you can……if you want to make longer work of it. 

 

Your eyes and your brain get used to reading tab the way it is intended if you familiarise yourself with it (in the same way you can interpret a mirror image of something you see in car rearview mirrors).  

The thing is, it’s a universal language and it’s always written this way. The best thing to do is learn the actual language then each time you see it you won’t have to keep turning it upside down to work it out. 

 

Should you learn to read Tab? 

Whether you should  learn to read tab really depends on your goals as a guitarist and based on the information above looking at what Tab has to offer. 

If you’re planning on being a well-rounded or professional musician ideally, a balanced approach is best. Learning both Tab and standard notation can give you the most flexibility and understanding of music. However, if you’re just starting out or primarily interested in playing popular music, learning tab is a great first step.

Genres like Classical and Jazz guitar prioritise Standard Notation.

If you don’t respond well to written learning materials it may not be a great avenue to go down but on the flipside it may be more appealing due to its graphic, map-like nature.

 

My experiences 

I learned to read tab once I’d been taught a few things on guitar by my friend face to face. After that I had to buy or borrow books (pre internet) and had to learn to read it for the things I was interested in. I had books for my favourite albums – Blood Sugar Sex Magic, Appetite for Destruction, Passion and Warfare…..The way I used it was by listening to the songs and matching the parts up with the Tab if I couldn’t work them out by ear. A priceless combo. 

The desire to learn these songs fueled my progress and a need to get my head around Tab. I then learned to read music notation. I also learned to work songs out by ear.  All of these components have worked symbiotically in my guitar experience. I wouldn’t take one of them over the other. They’re an unbeatable team. 

 

Final Thoughts

 

Tab is an in-road to make reading accessible to a wider range of people

It’s also a great form of record in case you need a prompt of something you learned 6 months ago and can’t remember or you want to communicate a guitar riff or melody to someone else. 

 

It’s a great way to cross-reference and reinforce other sources of input.  You may have picked up part of a song by ear but need to clarify with something else. It may be that just seeing a pattern written down in Tab makes it make more sense to you. We all get different things from different mediums of learning –  written, video, auditory, face to face. Sometimes seeing the pattern written down hits it home.

 

Tab isn’t limited to real time. If you’re learning from a video or listening to a recording you are limited to the speed the instructions are given to you or by the speed of the song. You can read Tab in your own time (quicker or slower). 

 

Points to remember – It isn’t standardised and therefore not all tabs are created equal.  You get some really basic tab variations that lack detail.  If you find a detailed, quality tab (like Guitar Pro versions and those from official publications) they are accurate and clear. They also have the music notation above them so the rhythmic components and notations run parallel. This means you have back-up and can even start learning to read the notes and rhythm notations to widen your knowledge.

 

Is Tab Cheating? No. This comes from a misunderstanding of its purpose.  It is an additional practical medium to use. A valuable resource. The accessibility of tab can help motivate and inspire those who don’t have formal music training to get up-and-running playing riffs, solos and songs. 

It’s a valuable tool for those learning fretted instruments.  Anything that helps people to navigate their way around a guitar is an excellent resource. 

 

My niggles would be:

It’s incomplete – we’ve already mentioned the lack of rhythm direction but it also rarely shows you which fingers to use on either hand. This can really mess people up. 

It’s the long way round – music is an expression of sound, we hear it. When we learn it as a written form we then have to wean ourselves off it to properly commit it to memory and effectively embed the music. It’s easy to get stuck at the reading part of it and never properly learn it. This is ok for a lot of people but if you want to perform or really learn a song you need to ditch the Tab asap and commit it to memory by repetition. 

 

I’m a fan of Tab as much as I’m a fan of capos and picks. It’s a tool but it’s not the only tool.