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How To Read GuitarPort Tab
By John Tapella
Tab (short for tablature) is a system of numbers
and lines used to accurately display a piece of
music played on the guitar. It appeared as early
as the 15th century as an easy method of finger
placement for instruments such as the guitar,
lute, flute, and keyboard. In the 1960's and early
1970's, there was such a scarcity of tab available
for pop music that typically everyone either learned
to sight read notation or played by rote. Finally,
in the mid '70's some of the first serious rock
guitar tab books were released by a company called
Green Note. These books came with complete tablature
and a plastic audio record covering the styles
of Hendrix and Page. This was a major step forward
in the guitar industry, as these books were ahead
of their time and had guitarists shocked by the
innovation.
In 1987 I was hired to write the first legal
Stevie Ray Vaughan book in tab. Twenty-five songs
in thirty days?! Yeah, right! It took sixty
days real time. The first thing I noticed
when diving into transcribing was that there was
only one type of tab bend mark; there were no
tab symbols for vibrato and plenty of other things.
So, I went ahead and made them up. Years later
I was actually criticized by several transcribers
for not following the standard tab rules (for
the Vaughan book), rules that had not even been
invented yet!
Well, here we go again. GuitarPort is
revolutionizing the tab rules, one more time,
and making them more accurate and better than
ever. We are now including rhythm inside of the
tab lines. Sure, this has been done before, but
never to this degree of detail. Additionally,
the tab is now more accurate and simpler to read.
This straightforward tab system is the best on
the market with which to learn simple and complex
guitar parts or even a Vai or Hendrix song.
One key point worth mentioning is that from
time to time, when GuitarPort shows musical notation
and/or tab in its window, it has to be slightly
modified in order to be clearly read and easily
understood. Our viewing window is considerably
smaller (for the time being) than conventional
manuscript paper, and often "crowded"
or "busy" parts that contain many articulation
markings may have to be modified. We always try
to make the best choice IF we are forced to eliminate
or modify any of the musical markings so that
it is still easy to read and understand.
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