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Question about tabs
I am reviewing the blues shuffle, baseline and boogey. After looking at the tabs on each of these it seems as if they are starting from the bottom up. Is that how you read tabs?
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5 Replies
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Hello @andrewdwashorgmail-com , welcome to TAC. I hope you have a smooth journey here. Tabs are constructed on 6 horizontal lines across the page. Each line represents a string on a guitar. Going from bottom to top, the bottom line represents the loE (6th) string, the next one going up is for the A (5th) string, then the D (4th) string, G (3rd) string, B (2nd) string and the top line represents the hiE (1st) string. Tabs are read from left to right, just like a book. When you see a number on one of the lines, it indicates the fret # (note) to play on that particular string. When you see 2 or more numbers stacked on top of each other (a vertical stack), that indicates that you are to play those notes together at the same time. So a C chord on a tab would have a 3 on the A (5th) string line, a 2 on the D (4th) string line, a 0 on the G (3rd) string line (indicating an open string), a 1 on the B (2nd) string line, and a 0 on the hiE (1st) string line, and those numbers would be stacked vertically on top of each other, and strummed together at the same time.
I hope this helps🙂
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@andrewdwashorgmail-com Welcome to TAC! @Bill_Brown gives a excellent explanation of the strings and how they’re read on the Tab sheet. The difficult thing to wrap our heads around is that the bottom string on the guitar is actually considered the top string, #1, and the string at the top, the low E, is considered the bottom string, #6. The strings are numbered 1 – High E; 2 – B; 3 – G, 4 – D, 5 – A, and 6 – Low E.
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Thankyou
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Generaly no finger is indicated on Tab. Though you will see many other indications on tab such as bends and hammer ons etc….
I found a description of standard notation and tab at Acoustic Guitar Magazine for you. The link is below here but seems to be some odd color and not showing up you should still be able to click it….
Acoustic Guitar Notation Guide | Acoustic Guitar
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