Intro To Music - Guitar Chord Charts and Tab(lature)

[Seth]

Welcome to the first Intro To Music article, where I intend to ease beginners into the world of chord charts and tablature. You'll get some background information and examples of both, and a little bit of a dictionary section at the end with more charts.

What's a Chord Chart?

For those of you who've never seen a chord chart before in your life, here's the chord chart for the chord of C Major.



First, let's explain exactly what's what on that diagram.

The thick black line at the top of the diagram represents the nut of your guitar. That's the thing your strings go through at the top of the neck, for those who might not know. All the strings are represented as if you'd propped your guitar against a table and were looking at the neck face on, so from left to right the strings are EADGBe (6 to 1).

Above the nut on the diagram, you'll notice the O's and X's. An O means that for that chord shape, the string the O appears above should be played open - or with no finger at any fret. An X, in contrast, means don't play that string at all.

The black dots with numbers in show you where to fret the strings, and the numbers are suggested fingering patterns. So, for the chord of C Major the diagram tells us:

Fret the B (2nd) String at the 1st fret, the D (4th) String at the 2nd fret and the A (5th) String at the 3rd fret. Play the e (1st) and G (3rd) strings open, and don't play the E (6th) string.

What's this barre thing I've heard about?

Barre is where you play multiple frets with one finger, like in this B Major chord for instance.



Notice that the 2nd fret has two black dots on the e (1st) and A (5th) strings, with a kind of arc between them. This generally indicates that the frets between the two dots, and hence under the arc, should be barred with the finger indicated which is the index finger in this case.

Barre chords can be quite tricky to play, and tricky to switch into from other chords. They become much easier with practise.

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Right. So what's "tab"?

Tab, or "tablature" if you want the full name, is a special notation for music that is used to write down music for guitar. Here's an example of a popular riff from the 80's - Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water".



For the purposes of this article, you can ignore the staff notation. If you already know how to read music, you might enjoy the staff notation with accidentals and key signature. We're going to focus on the bottom half of the diagram - the tab.

Tab represents the guitar strings with one line for each, and they're represented as if you were sitting down looking over your guitar to play it. So, that means the top line represents your high e string (1st string) and the bottom one is the low E string (6th string).

The numbers on the line represent the fret at which the string should be fretted, and the numbers move progressively further along the line as the music progresses. If two numbers appear above each other, as in our example, this indicates that the two notes should be fretted and played at the same time.

In tab, if a line has no number on it then this suggests that the string is not played at all. If the fret number has been replaced by an x, this means the string is played but has a percussive sound because it has been muted. You can easily mute a string by just laying your finger lightly on it.

Try playing the riff in the tab above. If you have the song, you can play along, but if you don't you can probably stream it via Napster or iTunes.

That's all for this article, however on the following page I've included chord diagrams for all the Major chords. Please note that these positions on the neck aren't the only way to play these chords, they're simply popular ways of doing it.

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Chord Charts - Major Chords

A Major


B Major


C Major


D Major


E Major


F Major


G Major


NB: Major chords of accidental notes (sharp/flat) have been omitted. Stay tuned for diagrams of these chords.