How to Read Guitar Tab
Six lines, a few numbers, every riff you want.
Guitar tab is a picture of the neck: six lines for six strings and a number for the fret. Once you read it, any riff is a few minutes away. The examples here use A minor pentatonic, A C D E G.
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Six lines, and the top one is the thin string
Each line is a string. The top line is the high e, the bottom line the low E — upside down from how you look at the guitar, but the right way up from how you hear it. A number on a line is the fret to press; 0 means the open string; an x means the string is muted and only gives a click.
- Top line = high e, bottom line = low E.
- The number is the fret, not the finger.
- Numbers stacked in one column are played together — that is a chord.
Read left to right, like a sentence
Tab is read from left to right, one column at a time. A riff like 5–8 on the low E, then 5–7 on the A is A, C, D, E: the first four notes of A minor pentatonic in the box at the 5th fret. Plain text tab shows which notes, not how long they last — that is why you listen to the song while you read.
- Read one column at a time, left to right.
- Most rock and blues tab sits in the box at the 5th fret.
- Text tab has no rhythm; Guitar Pro files and the recording do.
From the page to your hands
Learn a riff in small pieces: two or three columns, play them until they are clean, then add the next. In More Than Modes you can open a Guitar Pro tab (.gp or .gp5), watch it play on the fretboard with sound, and loop the bars that trip you up — the tab and the rhythm on the neck at the same time.
- Two or three columns at a time, then join them.
- Say the fret numbers out loud the first few times.
- Hear the tab played back before you trust your reading of it.
Tab is just strings and frets: top line is the thin string, the number is the fret, and you read it left to right. The rhythm you take from your ears.
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