Tabs and Chord Charts
Notation tells you which pitch sounds. Tablature tells you where to put your fingers. A chord chart tells you which chord to play. Nashville numbers tell you which degree that chord is, so the key stops mattering. Four systems, four different answers to what should I play.
- 4 systems
- same music
- different question
Where you run into this
- Guitar
- Bass
- Sessions
- Country
- Worship
In short
A staff is a map of pitch, and it works for any instrument: a G sounds like a G on piano, oboe or guitar. Tablature works the other way round. It is a map of the instrument itself: the lines are strings, not pitches, and the numbers are frets, not notes. That makes it immediate for a beginner and blind to what is actually happening harmonically.
Tab has one real weakness and it is worth knowing before you rely on it: rhythm. Standard tablature shows position and says little or nothing about duration, which is why so many tabs only work for people who already know how the song goes.
How it works
The popular story that tab is a modern invention for guitarists who never learned to read is wrong on every count. Keyboard tablature was in use from around 1300, and tablature for plucked instruments is older than a good deal of modern instrumental notation. It is a historical system, not a shortcut invented for the internet.
Where you run into this
- A tab that is perfectly playable once you already know the rhythm
- A chord chart that a session player transposes on sight
- Nashville numbers on a stand, so the key can change in the last minute before the take
Our own examples
One bar in three notations, all playing the identical music here, so the difference between the systems becomes a matter of what each one shows and hides rather than which is better.
Keep going
Everything in reading music
- Lead Sheets
- Tabs and Chord Charts
- Dynamics, Articulation and Terms