How to read guitar tab for Late Nights solo

Here's a basic explanation of how to read guitar tab so you can get maximum value out the free guitar tabulature file for the sample "Late Nights" solo. And in case you didn't know, the tab is designed to go with the free video sample (windows media player) (quicktime version) so you can "hear it", "see it" and now hopefully "play it" with this tab.

Standard Notation

Standard musical notation is what you are probably already familiar with. It represents notes with no relation to guitar strings but it can do much more than guitar tab because it can show timing. And standard notation is universal for any musician playing any instrument - providing you know where the notes are on your instrument. Here's the notation for "Late Nights" solo...

Notice that there are five lines in the notation above. These lines do not relate to the strings on a guitar!

Guitar Tab

In or to know how read guitar tab you have to understand that it is a more visual method of writing music specifically to assist stringed instruments. Tab shows you exactly what notes to play by identifying the six strings of the guitar and then using numbers to indicate which fret to press on which string to play a particular note. Easy!

Except what you gain in ease, you lose in overall information about the musical piece. Tabs don't indicate the timing of notes or the ryhthm patterns. To figure that out you have to know or be listening to the song - which is perfect in this case because you already have the song (download it if you don't). Here's the guitar tab for the "Late Nights" solo...

Notice that there are six lines in this tabulature. These lines do represent the strings of the guitar. This is how you read the tab - starting from the bottom of the grid, the lowest string represents the lowest sounding string - the low E. Moving upward along the grid, each ascending string represents the A, D, G, B and high E respectively.

Reading guitar tab still requires you to understand how music is broken down into bars. In the notation above and the tabluature here, the song is represented in twelve bars.

A Few Final Tips on How to Read Guitar Tab

Don't forget that tabs do not indicate the tuning of the guitar. It shows you only where to put your finger on the fretboard to play the note but you still have to have your guitar tuned correctly.

Tab does not indicate which fingers to use and it also doesn't usually tell you whether to pick or strum although some tab does try to get quite elaborate with a variety of different symbols for different meanings. But for our purposes we'll keep it simple.

Remember the focus here is to help those of you who are strumming but now want to start learning lead guitar improvisation. And tons of lead solos are offered online or in guitar magazines in tab format. So you have to know how to read guitar tab if you want to take advantage of them.

So have fun learning this basic lead solo to "Late Nights". Its a good one to learn because it purposely goes up and down the main pattern boxes of the pentatonic scale. And you can see clearly which patterns in the scale are being used by looking at the Guitar Map.

If you think you have a basic handle on this, then read the next article on how to read guitar tabs where we take you through each bar of the tab side by side with the notation. Have fun!