Saturday, July 19, 2008

classical guitar tabs

By paul green

Guitar music has it's own form of notation, called a tab, or tablature. Tabs are different from standard musical notation because they do not use staffs, ledger lines, key signatures, or notes. For this reason, acoustic guitar tabs are beneficial because they allow you to learn how to play the instrument without also having to learn to read music. Tabs may also be used as notation for other stringed instruments.

Acoustic guitar tabs are a form of visual musical notation . The acoustic guitar tab has a diagram of guitar strings. The first string is the top one and the sixth string is the bottom, these are represented by the lines. There are numbers on the lines which tell you what fret to play. An open string is represented by a zero (0). A muffled string is noted by an X.

In case you don't know what a fret is, it's the space between two of the metal bars on the long "neck" of your guitar. Most acoustic guitars have from 21 to 24 of these frets. Their dots are just there to help you in positioning your fingers.

Check out acoustic guitar tabs and you'll notice that the numbers run all in one line, indicating which fret to use on the one string you're plucking. Those numbers tell you that you're supposed to be playing each of them individually. If there's a number on each line and the numbers are on top of each other, then you're supposed to play the notes simultaneously, strumming away on all six of your strings.

When reading acoustic guitar tabs, you may come across things like, hammer-on, pull-offs, bends and slides. A hammer-on may be represented by something such as "7h9," with the "h" being the notation for the hammer-on. A pull-off would be noted in the same way, with a "p" instead of an "h." A bend is noted by a simple "b" and a slide would be represented by a "/."

After understanding how to read tabs, surf online for easy acoustic guitar tabs and pick a familiar but simple song and practice playing it. You will be amazed at how easily you can read tabs, even while it takes a bit of a time to familiarize yourself to read and play acoustic guitar tabs.

Listening to a song while you are trying to learn it makes it simpler to learn. Details and rhythms that you think you remember will pop out and help you. Learning the guitar using acoustic guitar tabs makes it quite a bit more fun. It won't take long to learn several songs, and you will be able to play them for your friends at parties, or while you're alone so you can enjoy them in private.

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