Steve Rieck: One thing that all beginner guitar players should really learn is, how to read chord grids as well as tablature and reading music is also a great skill and important one to learn down the road. But just to get started, chord grids and tablature are really essential. So I want to start by talking about chord grids. At the beginning of the tab on this video, you will see there are three chord grids and there is a C chord, a G chord and another C chord voicing. The first thing you want to understand is that the strings of the guitar are written vertically and the frets are written horizontally and the thick line at the top indicates the string nut, that piece right there.
So it is sort of as if you are looking at the top of the fretboard, as if you stood the guitar straight up and look directly at the guitar fretboard at the top. Then the dots really represent your fingers; the dots on the strings represent your fingers, the numbers below each string represent which finger is at first, second, third or fourth. Then there for any string that doesn't have a dot or a finger placed on it, you will notice there is an X or a zero at the very top of that string.
The X means you don't play that string, you want to get rid of it or not play it and the zero means, you are going to play it open. So with the C chord in the beginning, the third finger is on the third fret of the fifth string and the second finger is on the second fret of the fourth string, the open third string. The first finger is in the first fret of the second string, and then you have the open first string. So that's the basic C Major chord and I am muting the sixth string with the third finger there.
So that's why there is an X over the sixth string. The next chord grid is actually a bar chord. This is a G Chord. In this case you are going to see a curved lined at the top of where my first finger is placed over the third fret. Then you can have, see on the second, third and the fourth strings on the third, fifth and fourth strings respectively. So that will be a G bar chord in the chord grid form. Then the last one is actually a higher voice in the C chord that ever end up here at the eight fret, in the eight position.
Notice how the fifth and sixth string, the E and A string are muted; you don't play those. So the third, second and first finger barring across the eight fret at the top of two strings. So definitely you want to get real familiar with chord grids and little practice and you will have that. It's really pretty simple after a while and now onto tablature.
So at tablature you are looking at six lines. Traditional music notation is five lines, where you have notes written in the lines and spaces of the staff. Tablature has very little to do with that. So I want you to forget that for the moment. Tablature really represents the six guitar strings themselves. With the low E string, the thick low E string on the bottom and the high E string on the top.
So the numbers on the strings actually just mean the fret that you are playing. So the first thing we are going to play here is a C Major scale, on the part where it says frets and strings, at the third fret on the fifth string. Then the open second and third fret on the fourth string, open second third. Then open on second fret of the third string. Then the open and first fret on the second string.
If you have taken a basic guitar lessons, you will probably recognize that is a simple C Major scale. It's just a simple scale. It's just for the purposes of explaining the tablature. Now if we were to add hammer-ons on tablature, in our case we have got Hs underneath the staff indicating which notes are hammered. So the Hs indicate hammer-on. There is also a little curved line between the two notes.
So hammer-on is where you are going to just pick the first note and hammer your left hand finger into the second note without picking. So in each case there I have only picked each string one time. So that's what hammer-ons, then pull-offs would be the offset. If I were to go backwards down the scale and just use pull-offs, you would see the same curve lined with the P underneath, that is for pull-off.
The next one is with slides. So if you see an S underneath, that indicates a slide and the straight line between the two numbers indicates the slide as well. So I will put the third to the fifth fret on the fifth string and then slide from two to three, which is indicated on the fourth string. Then slide from five to seven on the fourth string and then from four to five on the third string. That's slides on tablature.
Now we are on to bends. So there are different types of bends. You can do half step bends, quarter step bends, whole step bends, I am going to demonstrate some whole step and half step bends on tablature. The first one is real simple, I am playing the seventh fret over the third string, denotes D, and you can see the arrow on the tablature is saying full. I am going to bend it up at full step, a whole step that means I am going to bend it up the equivalent of two frets in terms of actual pitch.
So if I play this D, I am going to target this E that's at the ninth fret, two frets higher. So that's a whole step bend and then a release bend, the whole step release bend would be where I do the bend before I actually pick it. So you'll hear a release to the seventh fret to the D. So from D to E is a whole step bend and then a release bend is in the opposite direction.
A half step bend, you will see a half rather than a full on the arrow. So, for example, I was going to bend the ninth fret, the E, to the tenth fret, which would be an F, upper half step and then half step release bend, same thing there. So you have the whole step bend, whole step release bend, half step bend and a half step release bend.
Now on page two of the tab, you will see there is a hammer-on, and pull-off exercise with tapping, two hand tapping. So, for example, if I were to take the fifth fret, eight fret and 13th fret on the second string, and just tap that. It's pretty common technique, but on that tablature that's what it would look like. In this case, in 16th notes, five, eight, 13, five, eight, 13.
So two hand tapping, with the T underneath it for tapping. That's the thing to look out for at the right hand. Then a tap and actually a bend and a tap. So if I were to bend that D we had earlier up a whole step, and then tap the 15th fret on the third string. That would be a bend and a tap, combined.
The next one is the grace notes. So that's like a quick note, right before the extra note. If were to just play this note C in the 13th fret of the second string in quarter notes... It sounds obviously just like quarter notes, but if I went like that, it's a quick little hammer-on from the 12th fret. It's not enough to really make that a rhythmic value. The 12th fret doesn't really get any kind of rhythmic value, it is just as a quick little grace note.
We can do a quick little slide, like that, same idea. So grace notes are real subtle details into notes and notes that sort of don't really take up any value but they are more about the articulation, the phrasing. Then Vibrato, you see a squiggly line above the note. If there is any extreme vibrato points, you will see that in the tab.
Ten tremolo picking is where you're just playing a note, and sort of just picking with your right hand. So you can just start with a 13th fret tremolo pick, like that. Then when you see chords written out in tab, you are going to see the notes written vertically, so that they are actually one on top of the other. I have got four different C chord voicing going up to top four strings here. 2 open 1 open and then 5, 5, 5, 3 which is G, C, E, G and then 10, 9, 8, 8 which is C, E, G, C and then 14, 12, 13, 12, so you get...
So those are the C chord voicing. Of course, this is just for purposes of explanation. You can see any chord written in the same way where you have the notes vertically, stacked vertically. Then a tied note, you will see that all the time where a note sustains more than a whole note or more than a certain rhythmic value where there is a tied note between two
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