How to Make Your Own Tabs for Guitar, Bass, & Drums
Making your own tabs (also called "tablature") for guitar, bass and drums allows you to share written musical parts with others in your band or on the Internet. Tabs are an alternative to traditional music notation, and more clearly illustrate musical parts by providing a diagram of the instrument they are written for. You may produce tabs with a tab generator computer program and print them out, or write them manually with blank tab paper.
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Instructions
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Print out tab paper for guitar, bass and drums. Tab paper is printed with lines to represent each string on the guitar and bass (usually six for guitar and four for bass) with lines to represent each component of the drum kit: kick, snare, toms, hi-hat, cymbals and so forth. You may find blank tab paper pre-printed at music stores or print it online (see Resources).
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Label each line on the tab paper for guitar and bass with the string names, starting with the lowest strings from bottom to top. Guitar string lines from bottom to top are: 6E, 5A, 4D, 3G, 2B and 1E. For bass, the string lines from bottom to top are: 4E, 3A, 4D and 1G.
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Label the drum tab lines with abbreviations for the drum components. Drum tablature is not as standard as tabs for guitar and bass, and will contain lines for each drum and cymbal in the drum kit. A small kit with bass drum, snare drum, mounted tom, hi-hat and crash cymbal will be labeled from bottom to top line: (B=bass drum, S=snare drum, MT=mounted tom, HH=hi hat and CC=crash symbol. Due to the varying sizes of drum kits, your drum tab may less or more lines.
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Place the fret numbers that represent the notes on the guitar and bass tabs by writing the fret numbers on the corresponding string lines. For drums, an "x" is used for hi hat and cymbal strikes, with "o" used for drum strikes.
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Write a "legend" at the top or bottom of each tab page to explain the various symbols the musician is likely to encounter. You will need to familiarize yourself with the many various symbols used in tablature for each instrument by studying published tabs or music books. The legend will include instrument tunings, trills, slides, vibrato, note hammerons and pull-offs among others for guitar and bass. Drum symbols will include loose, tight or mid hi hat strikes, flams, drags, rim-shots and others.
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Tips & Warnings
There are a number of inexpensive tab generating computer programs that you may install and produce your own tabs for printing or web publication. This can be a handy alternative to hand-writing tabs, and will give your tabs a professional look.
When writing any kind of music, it is important to have a working knowledge of the instrument, and a realistic idea of its musical capabilities.
Understanding the various symbols used in writing tablature for different instruments is also necessary, so the musicians reading and playing the tabs know what the music should sound like.
Double-check all of your tabs for accuracy by playing them through, and use pencil to make erasures and corrections easy to make.
Be aware of the tuning and capabilities of each instrument to avoid mistakes. Fender style guitars have only 21 frets as opposed to 24 on other guitars, for example, and drummers are limited to two feet and hands. Writing tabs outside of a musician's or instrument's capabilities will make the tabs impossible to play properly.
If you are writing tabs for music you do not own the copyright to, investigate copyright law if you are publishing the tabs in printed form or on the Internet.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit guitar image by Victor M. from Fotolia.com
