#9: How to read guitar tabs? Part 1

Around me I'm hearing the question from some fellow guitar players how to read Guitar Tablature. Because I'm blogging now anyway, I decided to give a short tutorial on how to play Guitar Tabs.

This is how an empty guitar tab looks like:

|------------------------------------------------------------- 1st string  - e

|------------------------------------------------------------- 2nd string - B

|------------------------------------------------------------- 3rd string - G

|------------------------------------------------------------- 4th string - D

|------------------------------------------------------------- 5th string - A

|------------------------------------------------------------- 6th string - E

Now let's add some notes, giving us a simple Emajor chord, strummed once.

The numbers in the tab indicates a fret. So in given example you'll need to stroke all 6 strings.

|-------0----------------------------------------------------- 1st string  - e

|-------0----------------------------------------------------- 2nd string - B

|-------1----------------------------------------------------- 3rd string - G

|-------2----------------------------------------------------- 4th string - D

|-------2----------------------------------------------------- 5th string - A

|-------0----------------------------------------------------- 6th string - E

We continue adding a non-barré Gmajor chord

|-------0------3---------------------------------------------- 1st string  - e

|-------0------0---------------------------------------------- 2nd string - B

|-------1------0---------------------------------------------- 3rd string - G

|-------2------0---------------------------------------------- 4th string - D

|-------2------2---------------------------------------------- 5th string - A

|-------0------3---------------------------------------------- 6th string - E

So first we start of with an Emajor, then go with a Gmajor, and now we end up with an Amajor chord

|-------0------3------0---------------------------------------- 1st string  - e

|-------0------0------2--------------------------------------- 2nd string - B

|-------1------0------2--------------------------------------- 3rd string - G

|-------2------0------2--------------------------------------- 4th string - D

|-------2------2------0--------------------------------------- 5th string - A

|-------0------3---------------------------------------------- 6th string - E

When you want to play an A-chord, you 'll only need to play 5 strings, which the tablature also inducates, since no Fretnumber on the low E-string is given. Some tablatures will put up an X in their tabs if you don't need to stroke the string. So following tablature is exact the same.

|-------0------3------0---------------------------------------- 1st string  - e

|-------0------0------2--------------------------------------- 2nd string - B

|-------1------0------2--------------------------------------- 3rd string - G

|-------2------0------2--------------------------------------- 4th string - D

|-------2------2------0--------------------------------------- 5th string - A

|-------0------3------x--------------------------------------- 6th string - E

If you play the chords in our tablature, you'll notice we just tabbed  the well known 'Smoke on the Water' intro, by Deep Purple.

When you see a tab like this, you're required to stroke the strings óne by óne:

|--------------------------0----------------------------------- 1st string  - e

|----------------------0--------------------------------------- 2nd string - B

|------------------1------------------------------------------- 3rd string - G

|--------------2----------------------------------------------- 4th string - D

|----------2--------------------------------------------------- 5th string - A

|------0------------------------------------------------------- 6th string - E

This was part one! Part two comes later with some effects that are written in tabs like harmonic's, pull-off's etc.