What is a guitar tab?

Question

I've played guitar for 43 years, yet I've never heard of a tab.

Answer 1

It's guitar music, shown not on treble/bass clefs, or with just chords, but shown as fingering on the strings. It shows everything you need to do with your fingers, except the timing, so you still need to be familiar with the song in order to use tabs. Wow, harder to explain than I thought! Here's an example (Hotel California by the Eagles):
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/e/eagles/hotel_california_tab.htm

Answer 2

Tab is short for tablature wich is the OLDEST form of written music there is.

Simply: each line of tab represents a string. Therefore, guitar would have 6 lines. The numbers on the lines represent frets. The BOTTOM line is the low "E" string and the top line the high "E". Simple to the point anyone can play anything. GOOD STUFF

Answer 3

Good for you! The fact that you can play and have never used TAB indicates you might have a brain!

TAB is short for tablature. Tablature is the outdated incomplete and practically useless system of notation used by musically illiterate guitarists. It shows six lines to indicate the six strings of a guitar. Each line has a number which indicates which fret to play. Musicians gave up TAB five hundred years ago when Italian musicians invented standard notation. The system was heralded throughout Renaissance Europe as the best method for communicating musical thought.

It is hilarious to watch morons use TAB because they can't read the music which is usually included directly underneath the TAB. They poop their pants when I wrest the guitar from their feeble hands and simply READ the MUSIC.
("How'd ja do that man!")

Tab is incomplete because it does not show time duration of notes. That's why they always include the standard notation with it. What a waste of paper! And it's all because guitarists are too lazy or too stupid to count to eight or learn the alphabet up to letter "G."

Tab does not show the names of notes either. It reduces music to a robotic regurgitation of fret and string-numbers through tedious trial-and error memorization. Blech! What a nuisance!

TAB obfuscates musical understanding. Even if a skilled and knowledgeable guitarist were to use tab, it is impossible to glean any harmonic understanding directly from it. Only after you understand music can you acquire any theoretical insight from TAB, and then only if you already know the theory! What a catch 22!

NOBODY except the weakest guitar players use TAB..

For some reason, guitarists perpetrate the myth that reading music is difficult. It is not. It is a thousand times easier than reading TAB.

Standard notation shows everything necessary to play a piece of music. It does that simply and beautifully. Even the most complex melodic arcs are instantly recognizable. Chords and progressions are clear and unambiguous. Phrasing, fingering, dynamics, tempo changes, articulations and more are all included. TAB shows none of that.

TAB indicates nothing but strings and fret positions. TAB is ugly too.

Using TAB at all immediately labels you as a crummy ignorant incompetent musician. Even if you cannot read music, do not use TAB. It sucks and so do all the guitarists who use it. You are better off playing by ear than using TAB.

Instead, spend ten minutes with a competent teacher and learn to read music. In thirty minutes, providing you are not an idiot, you will be able to read music OK.
If you practice reading and writing music for fifteen minutes a day, in six months, you will be very comfortable reading music and you will understand music much better. Play music professionally by reading music for a few years… you will be an expert sight-reader and a thousand times more competent as a musician!

If you really like the idea of looking like a dumb *** to every other musician on the planet, go ahead and use TAB. If you think there is some magic to memorizing fret positions by numerological coordinates, go ahead. With TAB, you can struggle for thirty years and still never know how to play “Come to Jesus”, on a saw, in whole notes. TAB can never teach a player how to solo or think musically. Tab cannot help anyone learn music theory or be creative. If you use only TAB, you can never be anything more than a copycat. Tab cannot help anybody learn to solo over chord changes. However, it is everyone’s right to choose that pathetically ignorant retarded system if he wants to.

For those of us who love real music, for those of us who want to learn and play the easy way, standard notation is the fastest simplest notation that exists.

That must be the reason why ALL COMPETENT MUSICIANS USE STANDARD NOTATION.

No real musician has any use for TAB.

It’s your choice…

Answer 4

It's a form of guitar music notation. Tab is short for tablature. There are six lines. Starting at the top, first string, second string and so on. The numbers tell you what fret to hold down on each string. Hope that helps.

Answer 5

Technically, tabliture is a series af numbers on six dotted lines representing the fret numbers. It's mostly used by people who can't read music at all (pathetic), like metal guitarists and to some extent beginners.

Answer 6

a system that uses lines to represent strings, instead of using lines as a musical staff

they use numbers on these lines, representing each string...a 0 represents an open string, and a 1 represents fretting the 1st fret, etc...

it is pretty cool...especially for those who can't read music

much popular music comes in tablature format nowadays

Answer 7

Only the best invention ever!!!!!!!!! I've been playing since December, and i love guitar tabs. Ahhh... They're like notes i guess... Hm.. I dont know how to explain.

Answer 8

Short for tablature, and your very behind if you don't know what it is.

It's basically short hand for guitar notation, you have 6 bars, each representing a guitar string, like this:

e|----
b|-----
g|-----
d|-----
a|-----
e|-----

Numbers are written on the bars, the numbers represent which fret/note to play.

e|----7-
b|-------
g|-------
d|------
a|------
e|-------

for example, in the one above, you play the 7th fret on the high e string.

a chord would look like this:

G

e|-----3
b|-----0
g|-----0
d|-----0
a|-----2
e|-----3

Theres also symbols to represent articulation, like a 5/7 would mean slide 5 into 7, 5b7 would mean bend 5 to 7 or 5p7 would mean 5 pull of to 7 and same with a hammer on (5h7)

Answer 9

really? its a way of writing music, tablature, you use 6 msuic lines each one representing a string on teh guitar and instead of notes you use #s to indicate teh fret to play ont aht string. its a much better and more concise way to write music

Answer 10

its sheet music for a guitar put for picking and solos