Home  www.houlston.freeserve.co.uk  TAB
The Printer Friendly pages on this site are optimized for your printing pleasure. Hang them on your wall or put them in a binder!

  Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,
e|--------------|--------------|
B|-------0------|-------0------|
G|-0-2------0---|-0-2------0---|
D|--------------|--------------|
A|--------------|--------------|
E|--------------|--------------|
The above TAB / tablature uses horizontal lines to represent guitar strings from thick E string to thin e string. Imagine tuning pegs to the left of the diagram and guitar body to the right. The numbers indicate which fret and string to play reading from left to right. Vertical bar lines indicate timing.

Try writing some TAB out by hand using Print Blank: TAB paper. Use a monospaced font such as Courier when writing TAB on a computer; easier to achieve alignment of text.

Informal use of TAB or tablature may include various means of representing guitar chords, music, songs.

Chord Boxes e.g. diagram below shows the neck of your guitar as if viewed face on - tuning pegs above, guitar body below. A number at the right side of the chord box indicates the fret number e.g. below, it is 5.

A = chord name

X_O_ _ _ _O
|_|_|_|_|_|
|_|_1_2_3_|
|_|_|_|_|_|
|_|_|_|_|_|
|_|_|_|_|_|5


 Text Chords

 A = chord name

E A D G B e
X 0 2 2 2 0 		Bold number = left hand finger
Horizontal lines = frets

Vertical lines represent strings
Left = thick
Right = thin

X = silent string
O = play open string

Letter = string name
E = thick string
e = thin string
Number = fret
X = string not played
O = play open string

Online rock tab - Any student knows there is a vast amount of notation, mostly tab, available online and much of it is illegal. A thorn in the side of music publishers has been the rise of ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) tab. Since websites grew to increasingly encourage user-generated content (UGC), the amount of ASCII tab online has snowballed. But, of course, "users" don't have the legal permission to be distributing tab for copyrighted songs. Tab Library (www.tablibrary.com), on the other hand - which is run by the global music print publishers, Music Sales - is licensed in the UK. Source: www.musiciansunion.org.uk.