How to Read Music Fast All You Need to Learn How to Read Music Fast and Easy

David Joel asked:


Tablature
How to read guitar tabs

Tablature conveys notes and chords into a readable format instead of sound. Tablature is the same for acoustic and electric guitar. Tablature consists of six lines which represent the stings of the guitar. The bottom string (which is the thickest sting on the guitar) is an E, followed by A, D, G, B and another E which is also the top E string or the thinnest string.

In tablature the frets are represented with numbers, these numbers tell us what notes and strings to play and in what fret. For instance, if we saw a 6 on the E string, we would play the E string in the sixth fret, sometimes there is also a 0 that is displayed, this means we play that note open.

Also, the name of the chord (such as E Major or D) should be displayed above the tab. When you see numbers that are stacked vertically (in a row from top to bottom) that means we play it as a chord or all at once, if we see numbers that are not stacked but rather are span from left to right (as tablature and most music is usually read) that means we play the notes one at a time.

One down side to this however is that most guitar tablature doesn’t include rhythmic notation meaning we have no knowledge of how long to play a note or how fast and so on, the only solution is to listen to the piece you are trying to learn by ear, however some tablature websites attempt to convey this notation but is usually found cumbersome guitarist and hard to read among other musicians of different instrument.

Learning to Read Music