Playing with tablature

Tablature works the same with guitar as it does bass guitar.

When you are learning a new song there are a variety of ways to learn how to play it. You can either play the song back by ear and find the notes yourself, you can purchase the sheet music that will sometimes only have the musical notes and rhythms. Or the most popular way is to find some tablature for the song. The tablature can come in three different ways.

One way is to have the actual sheet music on the top with the correct notes and rhythms, then underneath that will have another six lines, (one for each guitar string), and the corresponding places that the fingers would have to be pressed.

Here you can see where to put your fingers down, this method helps you learn the rhythms as well as the notes while your playing.

The second method is to not have the sheet music on the top, but to only have the 6 lines for the frets and the rhythms will be notated. But within the note heads of the music there will be the fret numbers.

This is the song silent night. The advantage of this method is that you can only have to focus on one piece of information, over having to read a line of music and looking underneath for the frets. The disadvantage of this method is that it doesn't help you learn how to properly read music.

The final way is the least accurate method, and the least reliable. This method just has the six strings, and only the fret numbers, but no real way of indicating rhythm.

As you can see, there's no real way to gauge what rhythm to play, or when there are rests, or any other vital musical information that would have the player reading the music accurately the first time. But, there is an advantage to this method of finding music. The advantage would be to playing a song that you are already familiar with, and have heard a number of times and could even sing it back without music. If you are learning a pop song then these tablature pages can be a quick reference and you could realistically learn a song very quickly.