For Beginners
When it comes to reading guitar tabs, I can understand that it must be a bit confusing to look at guitar tabs at first. I too had to take a very hard and long look at guitar tabs before I started to see what whas going on, when I first started out playing guitar. There are a couple of things that you need to know that will make it easy for you to understand guitar tabs. But I will not only give you the basics and label things for you. I will teach you the first part of a song also as we go along.
I was thinking about what song to go with when it comes to explaining guitar tabs. And I ended up with a song called The Entertainer. This song is not an easy song to learn for a beginner. But we will only use the first part of the song (first 10 seconds to be exact) and actually once you get going it's not that hard. It's something for you to work on and maybe someday you will play the whole thing. Now the song The Entertainer is an old piano rag by Scott Joplin. It's an famous song, you probably have heard it already. A version of the song appears in the video game Gran Turismo 5 as the background music for the "GT Auto" menu screen. In the United States, "The Entertainer" is also commonly played by ice cream trucks, in order to attract attention.
I will show you a video of Chet Atkins performing the song The Entertainer way back in 1975. This video will show you how to place you're fingers. That's a thing when it comes to guitar tabs. They don't show you how to place you're fingers the best way on the fretboard. That's something for you to figure out. But the rule of thumb is to place the fingers so that you can move around on the fretboard with ease while playing. What feels right is usually the right way to play the song.
Chet Atkins performing Scott Joplin's - The Entertainer
I was thinking about what song to go with when it comes to explaining guitar tabs. And I ended up with a song called The Entertainer. This song is not an easy song to learn for a beginner. But we will only use the first part of the song (first 10 seconds to be exact) and actually once you get going it's not that hard. It's something for you to work on and maybe someday you will play the whole thing. Now the song The Entertainer is an old piano rag by Scott Joplin. It's an famous song, you probably have heard it already. A version of the song appears in the video game Gran Turismo 5 as the background music for the "GT Auto" menu screen. In the United States, "The Entertainer" is also commonly played by ice cream trucks, in order to attract attention.
I will show you a video of Chet Atkins performing the song The Entertainer way back in 1975. This video will show you how to place you're fingers. That's a thing when it comes to guitar tabs. They don't show you how to place you're fingers the best way on the fretboard. That's something for you to figure out. But the rule of thumb is to place the fingers so that you can move around on the fretboard with ease while playing. What feels right is usually the right way to play the song.
Chet Atkins performing Scott Joplin's - The Entertainer
Like I said before, we will only use the first 10 seconds of the song. So the below pictures show the guitar tabs for the first 10 secondes. And those 10 secondes I have split up into segments for you.
OK, this is the first part of the guitar tab. If you were to look at the video this would be the first 3 seconds. To make it easy for you to understand what's going on, I have put in an guitar fretboard at the top in this first picture. There you see there is a 12 in yellow on the fretboard and guitar tab. The 12 is the fret number you should start on. Counting down from you're guitar neck with 1 being the closest to the headstock, you should start the song on the 12th fret. Now the string that is pressed down here is you're first string numbered 1. Look at the string number to you're right. This is the thinnest string on you're guitar. So when you see a number on the guitar tab that's the fret. And then look at what string you should be pressing. And when you press the first string on the 12th fret, you will get an E. This should also sound the same as if you where to play the string without pressing anything, because the first string is an E string. The same goes with you're 6th string, that is also an E. If you play both strings, 1st and 6th they should sound the same.
The above guitar tab show you the beginning of the song again. But without the fretboard that I had earlier for explination. If you take a look at the guitar tab you will see that there is a pattern going on here. The only difference is that we have moved up the guitar neck and play more in the middle now. The guitar tab above show you the first 5 seconds of the video.
There is a few things you should know of the above guitar tab. This is the last part. And show the remaining 5 seconds. We have now moved almost all the way up the neck of the fretboard. And start to play on the 2nd fret. But we end up with a zero on the guitar tab. What does a zero mean on a guitar tab you may ask? You see the 1 on the guitar tab and you should know by now that it means that you should play the 1st fret and be on the 5ft string right. So what does zero mean? This means you play an open string. You play the string without pressing down. The zero on the guitar tab above is the 5ft string. So that means you should play the 5ft string without pressing down on the fretboard.
Then you see a bunch of numbers 5567 all at once. Well this is a guitar chord. Wait a minute, there ain't no guitar chords way down on the 5ft fret is there? For a beginner this might look a bit odd. It's actually only an A chord but instead of the usual A, to give the song that little bit extra. This is an A chord that sound a little bit more. Go ahead try it out. Go back and forth between the ordinary A chord and this new one and see what you think. There are A chords all over the fretboard. Not just the ones that you play on the 2nd fret. Same goes for all other chords.
What is this now, you look at the picture above and now there is a A chord but there is something that's wrong. What's wrong with this picture? Well there isn't anything wrong, but this picture above shows finger placement on the fretboard instead. Take the A chord. 1 2 3 means you simply should place you're fingers starting with you're first finger and so on. And this on the 2nd fret for the A chord and play the chord. If I where to make an guitar tab here now and put in a A chord, it would look like this instead.
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So there you have it, pretty simple to understand once you go over it. Now the song The Entertainer that Chet Atkins play above is played in Drop D Tuning. This means that the 6st string that is normally in a E tune, is dropped down to a D tune. So the 6st string sounds the same as you're 4th string. But this you don't have to worry about. Because you only need to do this if you are planning on learning the entire song. If you would like to learn more about how to tune you're guitar in Drop D tuning. Go here Tune Your Guitar in Drop D
I hope it's not been too confusing for you, and that I explained the whole thing so you got to understand guitar tabs and how they work. There are a few more things that I could explain about guitar tabs. But usually if there is something extra like hammer-on and pull-off's on a guitar tab. It would be explained on the guitar tab itself by the author.
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