Guitar tabs sheet music

What tab leaves out

Six lines, one per string, with fret numbers on them. It is unambiguous about position — which is exactly what standard notation is bad at on a guitar, where the same pitch exists in several places — and it says nothing about rhythm.

Editions that print tab with standard notation above it give you both, and they are what most paid transcriptions are. Tab alone assumes you already know how the piece goes.

Free tab versus a published transcription

Free tab is transcribed by ear by fans, and its quality ranges from immaculate to fiction. Common failings: the wrong key because the recording is tuned down a semitone, invented chord voicings, missing sections, and no indication of which of six plausible positions the player actually used.

A published transcription is made from the master recording and often checked with the artist. That is what the money buys — that, and legality: a licensed transcription pays the songwriter, and an unlicensed one does not.

Tunings and capos

A tab is only correct in the tuning it was written for. Drop D, DADGAD, open G and half-step-down are all common, and a tab in one played in another is simply wrong notes. Good editions state the tuning at the head of the piece.

A capo position is likewise part of the instruction, not a suggestion: fret numbers in a capo tab are counted from the capo, not from the nut.