Reading Tablature

Before you buy a guitar book with sheet music, which is slower to learn, you should learn to read guitar tablature. What is guitar tablature? It is a visual layout of the fretboard with numbers coinciding with frets on the neck. This is a much quicker way to get started playing your favorite songs because of it's simplicity. When you pick up a guitar you want to play, not just learn to read music, this is accomplished much quicker with tablature. Click here to go to Gitarre Spielen, a complete guitar tablature site.

Advanced Notation

---1h2h1--- (This is called a hammer-on, hold the string down on fret 1, pick it and while still holding the string down, quickly hit the second fret and then release it, while still holding your finger on the first fret, this should be performed very quickly.)

---1p0--- (This is called a pull-off, hold down the string on the first fret and pick it, then quickly pull your finger off of the first fret and let it ring.)

---5/7--- ( This is called a slide and it is performed by picking the string on the fifth fret and then sliding down on the fretboard to fret seven.)

---x--x-- ( This is called muffliing and you just touch your fingers to a string on the fret board without holding it all the way down and then pick the string. This is most oftenly used in conjunction with distortion.)

---(12)-- ( This is called a harmonic, and you just barely touch a string on the fret board, do not hold down,and then pick it. There are certain areas on the fretboard that sound better than others, such as skinnier strings, and the twelfth fret.)