Guitar tabs actually look like a standard staff. They are composed of horizontal lines, each line representing the string of the guitar. It's also through the tabs that you can identify if you're playing a bass guitar or an acoustic guitar: the former has 4 lines while the latter has 6 lines. The highest pitch is represented by the highest line while the lowest represents the thickest string in your guitar. Conversely, if you're going to write notes in guitar tabs, the lowest note should be found at the lowest line and the highest at the topmost.
Meanwhile, every note is represented by the letters in the alphabet, and the lines of the tabs are numbered accordingly, depending on how many lines there are. Every number that is written on the line stands for the fret that will be receiving your wanted pitch.
The Difference between Guitar Tabs and Standard Staff
At first glance, you may assume that the guitar tabs and standard staff notation are the same. The truth is they're not. They have a number of differences, which make it easier for you to determine whether you're dealing with a guitar tab or not.
For example, the tabs of the guitar are highly similar to the fretboard. It's also one of the reasons why it's easier for you to learn guitar even when you're going to deal with various guitar tabs. Moreover, unlike the usual staff notation where you can also see the measure and the beat, with guitar tabs, you can also identify the correct position of your fingers. Each of the fingers is also represented by a number, from 1 to 4. The thumb is not included.
Tablatures can also be converted to ASCII file, or plain text. You can make use of symbols, letters, and numbers. This way, you can at least have a good visual representation of the tablature. This also allows anyone share various guitar tabs of different kinds of music even in the World Wide Web. Most of all, tablatures are more specific to the kind of instrument you're playing. Tabs used in violin are entirely different with the ones utilized by those who are playing the guitar.
