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Guitar sheet music

Have you ever looked at guitar sheet music and been utterly confused by what you see? Sometimes guitar sheet music has “regular” notes and bar measures and a treble clef symbol and other things that make it similar to piano sheet music and sheet music for other instruments. Other times, though, guitar sheet music is six lines tall with numbers written on the lines and no bar measures, etc. – and sometimes guitar sheet music is both of these things!

The explanation for this seeming craziness is actually rather simple: there are two different types of guitar sheet music. One type is known as standard staff notation. This is the music that looks like and reads like piano music. This sort of guitar sheet music can be applied to other instruments, as well. Classical guitarists generally prefer this type of music because of its precision.

The other type of guitar sheet music is guitar tabs. Guitar tabs are like a visual representation of the guitar. The six horizontal lines represent the six strings, and the markings on the lines represent where the notes are. Some guitar sheet music shows both standard staff notation and guitar tabs so that any guitarist can play the song.