FUNDAMENTALS OF MUSICAL NOTATION

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It is very common this days to see instrumentalists play instruments without even knowing much about the music itself. I can’t imagine how easy its going to be for a language to be well understood without knowing it’s alphabet, talkless of how to form words or sentences necessary for communication. If all instrumentalists suffer this, I want to ensure that my upcoming guitarists does not experience same.

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In this post I will be going through some basic tablature that will help in getting on and make you pick any music note and at least have a grasp of what is being taught in it.

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TABLATURE

Long ago, i was made to understand that anything you see sticks even better when you write it down. There are loads of songs out there that sounds so complex that you feel it’s humanly impossible to play it on your guitar by merely looking at the player, but I want to tell you it becomes very easy if you have access to such song’s music note. If you have this music note, it is still useless if you don’t understand music notations

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The most common method of writing out music for the guitar is tablature which is different from Standard music notation in that, TAB uses numbers and symbolic characters as while standard musical notation which uses symbols alone. And looking critically at the number notations you will realise it is directly associated to the fret board of your guitar, meaning that you may easily see where you put your fingers at once without much cracking of brain.

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Although TAB is not considered to be accurate because of many reasons but the most salient of all is that accurate interpretation might not be easy for a novice. Accuracy in rest, timing and many other factors. The TAB lines are just exactly like the guitar strings only that on a TAB diagram, the thinnest string, also known as 1st string is at the top while the thickest also known as the 6th string is at the bottom and guitar music is always written in this manner as shown above.

NOTATIONS ON TABLATURE

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Beats generally group themselves into regular patterns that gives the music a pathwayour. To show these patterns the music is divided by bar lines into bars ('measures').

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A double bar line separates different sections of music within the piece.

A thin/thick double bar line indicates the end of the piece.

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A Time Signature is placed at the beginning of each piece to show the number of beats there in each bar, and the type of note that equals one beat. This is usually shown as a fraction and the upper number indicates the number of beats in each bar while the lower number represents the length of one beat as a fraction of a whole tone.

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For instance
2/4 - means 2 beats per bar, each beat a crotchet (a quarter note) long

3/4 - means 3 beats per bar, each beat a crotchet (a quarter note) long

4/4 - means 4 beats per bar, each beat a crotchet (a quarter note) long

2/2 - means 2 beats per bar, each beat a minim (a half note) long

6/8 - means 6 beats per bar, each beat a quaver (an eighth note) long.

The Time Signature in the shape of a C is known as COMMON TIME and this is identical to 4/4 time. Also, CUT TIME is written as a C with a vertical stroke through it and this is identical to 2/2 time, although initially (in the past) this was an half circle but over the years the half circle became a C sign.

Wow! Its been nice going through this topic with you, I kindly implore you to find more knowledge as you go on your guitar journey, pick up a guitar book and digest, it really helps.

Thanks for your undivided attention.

Next lesson is coming soon.

I love you all

Special thanks to all my supporters out there, most especially, @captainbob, @aderonkemi, @candyman, @wafrica e.t.c.

I am open to questions please.