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Guitar tab

Guitar tab has great advantages over standard staff notation, as well as some disadvantages. First of all, guitar tab is a way of representing music on paper. Guitar tab is almost like a picture of the strings on the guitar and which notes should be played. In fact, depending on the instrument you are playing, the tablature may be different – for instance, guitar tab has 6 horizontal lines (to represent the six strings) while bass guitar tabs have only 4 lines (to represent the four lines of the bass).

People like guitar tab because it is an easy, visual representation of which notes should be played. Of course, it is not nearly as precise as standard staff notation. There is more range of timing and lack of precision when using guitar tab – this is why it is not so popular among classical musicians. Also, guitar tab is not so universal – as mentioned before, someone playing on a bass guitar would require a different guitar tab, and guitar tab most certainly is not readable by a piano player!