How to Read Guitar Tablature

You may be asking yourself what is tablature and why do I need to learn it. Tablature is an abbreviated form sheet music made specifically for guitar and bass guitar. While learning to read proper sheet music can take alot of time a patience; "tabs"are a quick and easy way to read and write music. For this reason tabs are found almost anywhere you find guitar sheet music as well as many sites all over the internet. Almost all popular songs can be found in tablature either on the internet or in your local music store.
With tablature you can read what note or chord to play, when to hammer on or off, where to bend and what pitch to bend to, where to slide to, and get a basic idea of the rhythm. It is important to note however that most tablature you find online will not show you the exact rythm of the notes. This makes it necessary to listen to the song for yourself and use your ears to find the correct rythm. This being said lets get to the basics. As I am a guitar player I am going to be describing tablature for the guitar. Bass guitar is however exactly the same concept.

First one needs to understand that there are 6 strings on a guitar. From highest to lowest pitch they are E B G D A E. Think of tablature as a picture of these 6 strings. This would look something like this:

E-------------------------------------------------------
B------------------------------------------------------
G------------------------------------------------------
D------------------------------------------------------
A-------------------------------------------------------
E------------------------------------------------------

The second thing you will need to understand is that there are 22 frets on a standard guitar. Frets are the the verticle metal bars located on the guitar fret board. Frets are what makes the pitch of the notes change when you press down the string in a certain area. In guitar tablature the notes will be represented by numbers on a string. These numbers will tell you which fret you hold down the string in.