The tabulator

Many of you might find it difficult to read music and must be willing to learn guitar without knowing all those treble and clef kind of stuffs. Well, there is a thing in your favour and that is called the tabulator. Even if you don't know about it, that is pretty easy to learn, understand,read and write too.

Here is a sample tabulator diagram.

The two diagrams are shown above. The tabulator is basically a representation of the six strings of the guitar.

The lines may be continuous or dotted. Now let us look at the order of the strings. In the tabulator the topmost line represents the lowermost string on the guitar. That is the thinnest string of the all. And consequently the lowest line will indicate the thickest string on the guitar which is on the top on the guitar.

Hence is the numbering on the guitar strings. The numbering is done from bottom to top. So, whenever someone says string one, it means the thinnest string. When someone says the sixth string, he is referring to the top most and thickest string on the guitar.

The strings on the guitar are tuned to a standard set of frequencies. For the moment you just have to remember that the standard tuning is EADGBE. This order is from sixth string to first string. So the tabulator may be assigned the tuning as shown in the figure below.

For the standard tuning, these notes are omitted. But to have an understanding of the tabulator, check this out.

The numbers written along the strings show which fret you have to play. Start playing from left. The horizontal spaces show the time gap between the two notes to be played. If there are two or more notes without any gap, then play them simultaneously. If 0 is written on any string, it means you need to play that string open, that is without fretting it or without pressing with your finger.

Try to analyse the spacings.

The spacing between some notes are closer while for others it is far. More the spacing, longer is the pause before playing the next note.