Tablature, or TAB for short, is a form of musical notation which represents the guitar in a very direct way. Instead of representing notes via an abstract mechanism they are presented as they would be played on the guitar. The basis of tablature for the guitar is the following diagram:
-|------------------------------------------------------------------------| -|------------------------------------------------------------------------| -|------------------------------------------------------------------------| -|------------------------------------------------------------------------| -|------------------------------------------------------------------------| -|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
Tablature can be thought of as a diagram of the neck of the guitar where each line represents a particular string. The top string in the diagram is the highest pitched string of the guitar (normally tuned to high E), and the bottom string corresponds to the lowest pitched string on the guitar (normally tuned to low E). This represents a view of the guitar such that the "|"'s on the left-hand side represent the head of the guitar.
Notes are placed on the strings on which they are played, and are given a value equal to the fret at which they are played. Notes are placed from left to right across the tablature diagram in the order they are played.
For example, successively playing each string from the low E string (top-most) to the high E string (bottom-most) while making an E chord with the left hand would be depicted as:
-|-----------------0--| bottom string (highest pitch), open -|--------------0-----| 2nd string, open -|-----------1--------| 3rd string, 2nd fret -|--------2-----------| 4th string, 3rd fret -|-----2--------------| 5th string, 3rd fret -|--0-----------------| top string (lowest pitch), open
No timing information is conveyed by tablature. In the above example, there is no way to tell how fast to play the notes, how much delay there should be between successive notes, or how long each note should be held. It is most suited to depicting how a known piece of music is played.
