How to Read Rakes on Guitar Tabs

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. The rake technique is kind of what it sounds like; the player draws a pick across a series of strings, but mutes the strings with his right hand.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Look for a note at the top of the tab bar that says "rake." This will clue you in that there is definitely a rake technique that writers want you to use.

2. Find a series of x marks. These are your raked notes. These x marks should be on successive strings, either ascending or descending.

3. Put your right hand just in front of the bridge and mute the strings that have the x notes on them before you play the notes that are marked x (and they're marked x because they won't have any resonant tone). You mute the strings by making contact, so that when you play the strings, you don't hear a resonant note but just a kind of blunt, clicking percussive sound.

4. Pick through the strings notated by x in your tab. You should hear this muted sound.

5. End on a resonant note. Most rakes have an "end note" directly after the x marks that is a regular, tonal note marked with a fret number. Have your finger on this fret of this string so that when you rake your pick across, you will end up playing this note last. The rake movement has to be done pretty quickly to be effective, and it has to end on the resonant note.