“Are guitar tabs easy” might seem like a full question, but it’s really not. It’s an incomplete question. So in this article we’ll fill out the question with a little more detail and hopefully answer the questions you have about guitar tab.
What are guitar tabs?
Guitar tabs–also called tablature or tab–is a simple system of musical notation that guitar players use to learn songs, melodies, solos, and more without the need to understand more complicated standard musical notation. Tab charts feature six horizontal lines, each of which represents a guitar string. Numbers written on each line indicate what fret to play on the corresponding string.
What makes guitar tabs easy to read?
Tabs are a simple way to convey the sequence of notes in a piece of music. They’ve been purposely constructed to make them easy to read and understand.
How tab works
The top line of tab represents the thinnest string (High E on a guitar in standard tuning). The bottom string represents the fattest string (Low E). Vertical lines mark the end of one measure of music and the beginning of the next.
Melodies and sequences
The fret numbers on tab occur in sequence in order to convey a melody. So, if a line of tab has the numbers 2, 5, 0, the guitarist knows to play fret 2 followed by fret 5 and then fret 0 (the open position) on the target string.
Let’s say those same three numbers exist sequentially, but on different strings of the tab. For example, say the 2 sits on the first line, the 5 a bit later on the second, and the 0 later still on the third. This tells the guitarist to play fret 2 on the first string, followed by fret 5 on the second string, and finally fret 0 on the third.
Harmony notes and chords
Fret numbers also often occur horizontally, or stacked on top of one another on different strings. This tells the guitarist to play the notes simultaneously.
For instance, say the tab shows the the top three lines with the number 0 on the highest line, 1 on the next line, and 0 on the third line. These three numbers appear in a stack at the same time on each string which tells the guitarist to play the three notes at the same time. This plays a simple C chord.
For more information on simple chord forms:
It’s easier than you think to learn how to play a chord on guitar
Other tab embellishments
Tab may also contain other notations that provide instruction for the player. Symbols or notation exists to indicate string bending, sliding from one note to the next, hammer ons, pulloffs, muting, and more.
Is learning to use guitar tabs easy?
The tab system was designed to be easy to learn. And it really is quite straight forward. The most difficult part involves learning the symbols for the embellishments mentioned above.
It doesn’t take long to get used to reading tab and understanding the basic ideas being conveyed. But the simplicity of presentation doesn’t automatically translate to making guitar tabs easy to use. I’ll talk more about that shortly.
Are guitar tabs easy to find?
Yes, as you might expect, the Internet makes guitar tabs easy to find. Many different sources for tab exist online in sites dedicated to the purpose of providing tab.
Here’s a list of a few popular tab sites:
Many guitar training websites and teachers also supply tab with their lessons, so you can find tab that way too.
Bookstores and your local library most likely also carry several books that provide tab for popular songs. All of this does indeed make guitar tabs easy to find.
Are guitar tabs easy to work with?
Now the “Are guitar tabs easy” questions become a little more complicated to answer. The question, “Are guitar tabs easy to work with?” contains some challenges.
While guitar tab really is pretty simple and the information they convey straight forward, that doesn’t necessarily translate to “easy to work with.” Especially for beginners–who are most likely to use tab in the first place–it can be difficult to read the tab and play at the same time.
It’s easy to lose your place
If you constantly need to look to the tab to see where to place your fingers, then look away to your guitar to actually place your fingers, it takes time. When you’re constantly shifting your focus from one to the other, learning from tab can be a very tedious process.
It’s especially easy to lose your place in the tab if you’ve had to look to your guitar. And that can be massively frustrating. You’ll want to develop a technique that works for you so that you don’t have to look back and forth constantly.
For instance, maybe it’s best to try and see a measure at at time, then go play it.
Computer challenges
Because you can so easily find tab online, you’ll often–maybe most often–deal with frustrating computer issues. For instance, it’s quite frustrating to be intently studying your tab only to have your screen saver kick in and shut your display off because you haven’t moved the mouse for 30 seconds.
It’s also an exercise in frustration to have to scroll constantly because you decided to view the tab on your mobile. It’s challenging enough to keep your guitar working without having to worry about your mobile too.
The good in tab
Tab provides an easy way for guitarists to learn new songs. And since guitarists are notorious for not reading traditional music notation, we need something that we can easily decipher and turn into music on our instruments.
Learning to use guitar tablature can give a new guitarist a bit of a boost when it comes to learning a new piece. If you’re having trouble figuring out how to play something like a solo or lead line, tab can crack the nut for you and get you playing faster.
Tab can be easily found and in general comes from a good place where guitarists attempt to help other guitarists. It’s a sharing, helping culture that we could use more of in this world. If you surround yourself with players like that, you’ll find a generous community where people try to help each other accomplish their goals.
The bad in tab
Unfortunately, not everything in Tabland smells like roses and tastes like chocolate. Tab has a few dark sides too.
Tab doesn’t convey note value
If find that one of my biggest frustrations with tab comes from the incomplete information it provides. Tab lacks a critical piece of information that exists in traditional music notation: note duration.
Traditional music notation contains very precise information on how long each not should last. This enables an accomplished musician adept at reading music to accurately play a piece of music without ever actually having heard that music.
Without traditional music notation, we’d only be guessing at what the composers of centuries ago intended for their music to sound like. With notation, we have a pretty accurate idea of how the music sounded when played by the original composer 300 years ago.
Tab does not offer this same benefit. Since tab doesn’t include any indication of note length, it doesn’t stand alone as a vehicle for recreating the music with accuracy.
This means that if you don’t have a reference recording, or someone familiar with the music to play it for you, you have no way to know whether you’re playing the piece properly.
Tab doesn’t covey the groove of the music
Besides note value, tab lacks another critical piece of information. Tab can’t convey the feel of the music. Tab alone won’t give you the “groove”.
You really need to have a recording of the music you’re attempting to learn through tab. Without that reference, you won’t know note duration as I said earlier. But just as critically, you won’t know the feel you should put into the music.
Tab is often inaccurate
One thing that makes guitar tabs easy to find also makes them susceptible to error. Most online tab sites allow and encourage anyone to upload their guitar tab to the site.
While this builds a very cool community of guitarists all out to help one another learn favorite songs, it comes at the cost of quality. While each of these players likely has the most honorable intentions at heart, not everyone possesses the skill to create high-quality tablature.
As a beginner guitarist, it will be virtually impossible for you to figure out which tab you can trust as accurate and which contains errors.
Are guitar tabs easy to move away from?
This might be my biggest hesitancy with guitar tabs. Once you get hooked, you learn to rely on them. They provide an easy shortcut to learn the music you want to learn.
Once you get used to taking that shortcut, you may find it quite difficult to devote the time and effort it takes to learn songs on your own. After all, what’s the point of putting in the time if someone else has already done all that work?
Is learning from guitar tabs a good idea?
So, what’s the verdict? Are guitar tabs easy?
Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground. Hopefully you have a better understanding of tab and what it means for you as a player.
But I think that “are guitar tabs easy?” is not the right question. A far more important question is “Is learning from guitar tabs a good idea?” So, what’s the answer?
No. Or…yes. Uh…maybe?
I’m going with “maybe”. Whether you should learn and use guitar tab depends. It depends upon your answers to a few more questions that only you can answer.
First and foremost, what are your goals as a guitar player?
Do you want to remain a hobbyist?
You should really consider this question carefully. Do you simply want to play as a hobby guitarist? Someone who just knows a bunch of songs that you can sit around and play either on your own or at a party?
If so, then tab could be great for you. It can help you learn a lot of songs quickly. And perfect accuracy or your personal creative touch might really not matter that much when you’re leading a sing along around the campfire.
For you, tab can get you playing a lot of songs quickly.
Do you want to develop as a guitarist?
If this is you, then be careful with tab. If you really want to get serious about playing guitar and you want to get as good as you can be, tab won’t get your there.
When you rely on tab, you take a shortcut. While shortcuts might seem great in the moment, in the long run, they can really hurt your musical development.
Every song you learn through tab gets marked down as one more lost opportunity for you to develop your ear for music. One less chance to reap the high rewards of slogging through the muck until you break through with success at cracking a song’s “code”.
Guitar tabs serve as a crutch. They’re like taking the escalator instead of walking up a flight of stairs. They might help get you to your goal faster and easier, but you won’t have strengthened your muscles along the way.
And just like walking those stairs, once you’ve gotten yourself into shape, you will actually find that it’s faster and easier to do it the “hard” way. And so much more rewarding!
If you have the goal to become a great guitarist, then resist the temptation to take the easy way. You will never regret taking the time to properly develop your musical ear.
Conclusion
The question “Are guitar tabs easy?” can’t be as easily answered as you might think. Many aspects come into play.
You can easily learn to read guitar tablature. But it may not be quite as easy to learn from it as it seems.
It’s easy to find guitar tab. But, unfortunately, you won’t know for sure whether the tab you’ve found accurately portrays the song you want to learn. Many well-intentioned guitarist write tab that contains varying degrees of inaccuracy.
Learning from tab has both good and bad aspects. Whether you should use tab to learn music may depend upon your personal goals as a guitarist.
The question, “Are guitar tabs easy?” may not be the right question to ask. Should you use guitar tab to learn new music? That’s the question you need to answer for yourself.