How to Read Guitar Tabs

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Derek Tarnow. I've been playing guitar for twelve years and I teach and perform. Now what I'm going to talk about in this segment is how to read guitar tab. Guitar tab is something to be very careful with when you're learning how to play guitar because it is really easy to read and it's accessible. It's on the Internet, all over the place if you search your favorite rock and roll song or your favorite pop tune or whatever. Chances are, you're going to come up with 30 different guitar tabs for it. That's all well and good but if you're going to learn guitar, you should really learn the note names and how to read music and all that as well just so you can later apply it to other things that you learn on guitar. Not just how to play one song. You can learn, you know, a chord and then when you see that chord later, you'll know what it is and you'll be able to apply it to that song. Or, if it's like a rift or whatever, there's a lot of notes that are repeated in like several other rifts. So anyway, that's all the bad stuff I'm going to say about guitar tabs. But, anyway it is good because it's easy. Anyway, as you see here, we have six different lines. These represent the six different strings of the guitar. It's really easy to see if you have a guitar. It's actually up-side-down kind of. If you were to flip the paper side ways, like my paper is guitar is sideways, like this. You can see this is the low E string and you lay it down and that's why it's laid out the way it is. Just because that's just how it happened. Anyway, this is the low E string, this is A, D, G, this is the high E string. Whenever you're reading guitar tabs, you're going to see numbers. Those numbers represent the frets you're suppose to play. So if you see zero, that means to play the open string. So let's say, there's a zero on the E string right there. You play open E. Very simple. If there's a 1, you play the first fret which is F. If there's a 2 play the second fret, F sharp. 3 that's G on the third fret. And, the same applies to all the other strings. Another thing that makes guitar tab kind of dangerous is that a lot of times, especially if you're getting it off the Internet, is that there's not rhythmic indications. So, if you haven't heard a song before, you won't be able to play the song because you won't know how it goes. Nevertheless, that's guitar tab. It's easy and it's a good way to learn your favorite song."