While not meant to replace standard reading notation skills, the ability to read it's simpler cousin - "Tablature" (or tab as it's known), has it's advantages to say the least. Designed for simplicity and handy for many players to know the basics. Many Guitar Tablature books are available today ranging in accuracy from awful to note-for-note. So beware and get a gud 'un is my advice - pay a little extra if you must, it's worth it.

For many reasons, reading and writing Standard Notation does have it's advantages though, such as quickly learning and playing other people's music for one, and not necessarily guitar music either. For example you can pick up some fine tips by reading other players music such as found in Saxophone, Piano, Violin and Piano scores. So, (depending on what type of music you want to play I suppose), it's worth seriously considering to learn and sharpen this skill, if you don't have and use it already.

But that's another story as they say and on the menu today we're looking at Tab, so off we go...

• Beginner's Tab Tip Use a piece of music written in tab alongside it's recording, to get accurate timing quickly - but most importantly use your ear as well. Tab's written down (like standard notation) are not error free sometimes, and can be wrong! This using the recording alongside the Tab will make things much easier and effective.

Guitar Tablature Basics #1

Unlike conventional music notation, where the lines have no direct relationship with the strings, the 6 tablature lines do represent the actual strings of the guitar.

A simple Guitar Tablature can often have the conventional standard notation equivalent represented above it ... looks like this -

Sometimes the tab itself has the rhythm notes written directly on the Tab Staff itself - The basic system is the same as shown here.

Here's the notes of the guitar if you played just the open (unfretted) strings one after the other, with a simple standard note equivalent on top -

Here's what the above empty guitar tablature looks like and is equal to in the real world:

To write (or read) notes in Tab, you simply write in a number on a string, which corresponds to which fret should be played. For example a number 3 on the hi-E string means exactly that - play the hi E string fretted at the 3rd fret. We'll be looking at this and MP3 examples next.

Btw Tab can be found easily on the 'Net - "but u pays for what u git's" as they say. Free ain't always best ;-) in this case. Try a trusty ol' Google Search below, there's loads of Tab to start off with there.