How to Write and Understand Guitar Tabs

What good is creativity without an outlet?  About as good as words without a language.  Tabs are another way of writing music that works especially well for guitar.  In this instructuable, I will teach you how to read, write, and understand tabs so you can put "words" to your auditory ideas without tedious memorization of traditional sheet music.  It's surprisingly simple and rewarding.

Step 1: Know your guitar

First, before learning to play music, a basic understanding of your instrument it fairly necessary.  Picture a guitar sideways- with the head of the guitar to the left and the bridge farthest to the right.  The vertical lines on the neck of the guitar are called the frets.  The strings, in order from top to bottom (or small to big, high to low) are a high E note, a B note, G, D, A, and lastly a low E.  The mnemonic that helped me when I was learning was Every Bad Guitar Doesn't Actually Exist.
Knowing this just makes understanding what other people are talking about, guitar-wise, a lot easier.

Comments

[gneal]

Do you have an instructable for learning violin? I've found some good online resources, but I'm always open to more!

[355374]

When I was learing guitar, my teacher taught me: Easter Bunnies Go Dancing At Easter! This really helped me. I have never forgotten the string names now!

[Jusamies]

You'll be screwed when you try alternative tunings =)

[hemley]

 is that electric guitar made by cort?, because it looks exactly like mine

[Tunesrlife]

The head on mine says fender.
But it's a very common design- the red strat.  I'm not surprised.
Hope you're putting it to good use :)

[JAZ97]

lol cool we got the same amp :)

[reubyjay]

thank you so much for this it opened up way more playing for me

[PKTraceur]

A fun song to start with, that is semi-easy for a beginner is the Lost Woods Theme from Zelda.

www.chordie.com/chord.pere/www.guitaretab.com/m/misc-computer-games/48968.html

Chordie also has some tab songs.

[mayan guitarist]

I have been playing guitar for quite some time and i feel that is imperative that when one journeys into the realm of more complex musical thought one must have, at least, a basic understanding for traditional sheet music. Tab is a great place to start but one should seek out a more traditional approach as time goes on and ones skill increase. Also this can be done without a teacher there are various sites such as 8notes.com that provide assistance with this task. Anyways, cheers, great instructable, but I would just like to stress the importance of not letting tab become your only means to retrieve music from text.

[Tunesrlife]

Always great to hear the opinions of a fellow guitarist. 
I, myself, have a very basic knowledge of traditional sheet music (you know, FACE, every good boy does fine.) 
But, with an interrest in rock and roll culture, I am contiunally surprised by the ammount of creatively gifted and famous musicians who haven't a clue how to read a note.  There is a 'cultural' aspect of rock 'n roll that seperates... say... classical, country, genres like that. Tabs are more accessable in the rock 'n roll genre than any other.  Personal preference, I suppose. 
Learning sheet music defenatly makes sharing with others easier.  I would be interrested in finding some patterns in sheet like I have in tabs.  An aspiration for another day.
By no means did I mean to imply "don't learn sheet," because, honestly, I would like to be able to sight read, but it just doesn't come naturally to me.
Keep on playing :)  Thanks for the comment

[Sylvanus]

Excellent instructable, I wish this had have been on hand when I was learning to read tableture. You do a great job of not only providing information, but realistically sounding enthusiastic and encouraging.

[LuminousObject]

That's a good explanation. I had the same problem as you where i started off with the easy tabs and then on the harder ones, I saw the letters and stuff and I was like, 'What the heck?'.