How to Read Tab on this Site
I'm going to assume you know how to actually read "tab", aka guitar TABlature. I'll be using a lot of tab on this site, so this post is here to explain my specific notation, because unfortunately the web is still amazingly bad at representing music of all kinds, including tab.
Here's my basic tab staff:
T---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's a note on the 5th fret of the 3rd string -- no surprises here, I hope:
T---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A--5------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This doesn't tell you anything about how to play the note. Often that will be up to you, but I have a few articulation marks that will matter in some cases:
|---5-p4--
The 'p' means pull off to the next note. In this case we pull from the 5th fret to the 4th.
|---4-h5--
The 'h' means hammer on to the next note. In this case we pick the note on the 4th fret and then hammer onto the 5th.
|---5-\4--
This means 'slide down', in this case from the 5th fret to the 4th. The 4th fret note wouldn't normally be picked.
|---4-/5--
This just means 'slide up', in this case from the 4th fret to the 5th.
|--+5--4--
The '+' means tap with the picking hand. In this case we tap the fifth fret with a picking-hand finger and then pull off to the 4th. There's no need to mark the second note with a 'p' in this case, since a pull-off is obviously required; in general my aim is to put as little unnecessary clutter as possible in the tab.
Very occasionally I may need to indicate upstrokes and downstrokes for individual notes. In that case I'll use notation like this:
|-⎴5-v4-v5-⎴4-⎴5-v4--
where 'v' means an upstroke and ⎴ means a downstroke. Normally you'll be expected to select your own picking direction, and indeed whether and when to use hammers, pulls or even taps. If no articulation is specified, choose it for yourself.
I never notate rhythms in tab -- if we need rhythms I'll give you traditional dots. You should use your imagination when it comes to playing examples that don't have any rhythms specified, which will be most cases. Don't just automatically play sixteenth-notes all the time.
