Tab

So far, the guitar practice is going just fine. I feel like I've gotten really good at both songs that I began with (Hurt and Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash). I can easily play an F chord now, which I was having trouble with, and I can go from chord to chord without too much trouble. Sawyer has been listening to a lot of Pink Floyd, so he's trying to teach me a couple of their songs. I'm really excited to broaden my guitar playing ability from one artist to two!

Another thing that I've been doing is trying to learn how to read tab. Tab is like a sheet of music, but it doesn't have traditional notes and key signatures like a normal sheet of music would. Instead, it shows the strings of the guitar and a bunch of numbers. The numbers mean what fret you should put your finger on at that moment. So if I wanted to play a D scale, it would look like this:

e --------2-----------------
B ------3---3---------------
G ----2-------2-------------
D --0-----------------------
A --------------------------
E --------------------------

Here the one means to put a finger on the first fret, a two means put a finger on the second fret, and so on. The zero means play the open string. It's pretty easy to read if I take the time to do it. I'm just trying to be able to sight read like I can with normal sheet music. Learning to play the violin was a little easier than the guitar because I already knew how to read sheet music, which is what the violin uses. The fact that I had professional help might have made it a little bit easier as well.

There are also a bunch of new symbols that I wouldn't usually see in normal sheet music.

p = pull off
h = hammer on
\ = slide (downward)
b = string bend
/ = slide (upward)
~ = string vibrato

I understand what most of these mean, but I've never heard of a hammer on. Sawyer will probably know.

Other than that, it's business as usual! Hopefully by next time I'll have a few more songs to play.

Hayden