How to Read Trill on Guitar Tab

Guitar tablature or "tabs" is a great way to read for many beginners. Although rhythm and some other elements are hard to read in tabs, readers can see just what a guitar player is doing in a song because the musical "staff" is the six strings of your guitar and each note is marked by its fret. One thing you can also read in tabs is "trill," the old technique where two sounds quickly alternate. On a piano, you do it by going between two keys. On a guitar, you do trill by holding your finger on a note and taking another finger on and off of another note quickly.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Look for the trill marking that begins with "tr." The "tr" may be followed by a little curvy line, usually at the top of the tab bar, to show you how long to continue trilling.

2. Don't confuse the "tr" for trill with the tremolo technique. Tremolo is different and is marked in tabs with the marking "trem."

3. Find the trill marker and then look at the pairs of notes that show up there. In formal tabs, the note structure should be a fret position followed by another fret position in parentheses. For example, to trill between the 2nd and 3rd fret, the note group on the tab would look like this: 2(3). In rare cases, some also mark it 2-3.

4. Do your trill by playing the first note, then switching quickly between the first and second note. You'll hear the old familiar sound of two notes replacing themselves in a rhythmic way.

5. Find the length of your trills by looking at how the numbers flow. Although tabs have no technical rhythm markings, making it hard to follow rhythm in this kind of notation, you can see about how long your trills should be by looking at what is before and after them.