Tab Notation - Other Symbols
Tab Notation - Other Symbols
Tab Notation - Other Symbols
So far we've looked at what notes to play : which string to hit, and where to fret it. We've mentioned how to get an idea of note lengths by looking at the spaces between notes on the TAB, but this can only be a rough guide. You will always have to check with the original track to work out details of the rhythm.
A lot of other imprtant information can be included in a piece of TAB.
This includes hammer-ons, pull offs, slides, bends, vibrato and so on.
The standard practice is to write extra letters or symbols between notes to indicate how to play them.
Here are the letters/symbols most often used :
- h - hammer on
- p - pull off
- b - bend string up
- r - release bend
- / - slide up
- \ - slide down
- v - vibrato (sometimes written as ~)
- t - right hand tap
- x - play 'note' with heavy damping
That last one, the x, is used to get a choppy, percussive sound. You usually use your fretting hand to lightly damp the strings so that when you pick the note it sounds dead.
Note that the use of 'x' is *totally* different from the use of an 'x' when giving chord shapes.
For example if you wrote the chord of D, you would see :
EADGBE
xx0232
where the 'x's mean do not play this string.
In tab it is implicitly assumed that a string is not played if it is not marked. So the same chord in TAB would be :
E-----2-----------------------------------------------------------
B-----3-----------------------------------------------------------
G-----2-----------------------------------------------------------
D-----0-----------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------
with no 'x'. The x is is only used in TAB to represent a heavily muted string which is picked/strummed to give a percussive sound.
There are a number of other symbols for things like whammy bar bends, pick scrapes and so on. There seems to be no particular standard way of writing these - details should be given in the TAB to explain what the symbols mean.
Bass TAB will probably need a few extra symbols to cope with the different techniques used in bass playing - for example slapping and 'popping' the string with thumb or middle finger.
You could use 's' for slap and 'p' for pop as long as you wrote them *underneath* the lines of tab to distinguish them from slide and pull off which would be written *on* the lines of tab.
NEXT...Tab Notation - Hammer Ons And Pull Offs...
