Guitar Tab Reading Guide: How to Read Guitar Tabs Step by Step
Guitar tab notation tells you which string and which fret to press, with no staff and no note names. You can learn to read it in one evening. Below is tab reading step by step and an example that plays itself and lights up each note.
What guitar tablature is
A tab has six horizontal lines, and each line is a string. The bottom line is the thickest, lowest string (low E) and the top line is the thinnest (high e). This is where many beginners get confused: higher on the page means higher in pitch.
The numbers on the lines are frets. Zero means an open string, one means the first fret, and so on. Guitar tablature for beginners is an instruction for your fingers, not a recording of sound. It does not tell you how long to hold a note, so you take the rhythm from the recording or from playback.
How to read a single note
Find the line, then the number. A two on the third line from the bottom means: press the second fret on the fourth string. Read left to right like text. Below is a short example: press play and watch each number light up as it sounds. It is a simple original exercise made for reading practice.
Rhythm in tabs and chords
In plain text tabs the spacing between numbers only roughly shows time. In Riffonic tabs every note has its own place on a grid, and you can switch the sound on. When numbers stand one above another in the same column, they are played together, which is a chord.
A good habit is to listen to the passage first and read the tab second. Then you know the rhythm by ear and the tab only tells your fingers where to go.
Tab symbols: h, p, slides and bends
Letters and marks appear next to the numbers. The most common are h for a hammer-on (the second note is fretted without picking again), p for a pull-off, a slash for a slide, b for a bend, a wavy line for vibrato, x for a muted string and PM for palm muting.
For the full list see guitar tab symbols and how to read guitar tabs, and for each technique on its own: hammer-ons and pull-offs, slides, bends.
Common beginner mistakes
The first mistake is reading the tab upside down, treating the top line as the low string. The second is not checking the tuning and the capo, especially when the tab is written for a different tuning. The third is trying to play without knowing the rhythm of the song.
If a tab feels too hard, slow the playback down and play two notes at a time. You can also write your own short tabs in the riff builder, which is the best way to remember how the notation works.
Try it in practice
Open Riffonic