How to read guitar tab
Tablature (tab) shows you where to put your fingers instead of which pitches to play, which makes it the fastest way to learn and write guitar parts.
The six lines are strings
A guitar tab has six horizontal lines, one for each string. The top line is the thinnest, highest-pitched string (high E) and the bottom line is the thickest (low E). The lines are laid out as if you tilted the guitar towards you.
The numbers are frets
A number on a line tells you which fret to press on that string. A 0 means play the open string; a 3 on the second line means third fret of the B string. Numbers stacked vertically are played together as a chord.
Writing your own
Blank guitar tab paper lets you write riffs and songs by hand. Draw the fret numbers on the lines from left to right in time order — grab a sheet from our guitar tab paper page.