Additional Video Explanation for the “How to Read Tabs” Lesson

[jhuebel]

For this page:

How to Read Tabs, Chord Graphs, and Chart Symbols (FREE LESSON)

It would be nice to see more explanation—- particularly as a video. The part about how to read tabs is pretty straightforward, but the rest could use some more in-depth explanation and perhaps a demonstration of each topic.

Does anyone have suggestions of such a video, either on the RockClass101 website or on YouTube? I’m completely new to reading music, so this page felt too abridged for a beginner to get a full understanding.

[robinboyd]

Does this help?

An Introduction to Reading Standard Notation

[Andrew]

Robin linked our Reading Course. Which is an excellent resource for learning to read standard notation. But, I think your question is dealing more-so with reading chart symbols.

If they appear in any lesson on our site, I always address them in detail in the video tutorial. This includes an explanation and demonstration.

If you ever have a question on anything, please don’t hesitate to ask 🙂

[jhuebel]

So just for my own peace of mind, I shouldn’t worry about completely understanding that page just yet? It’ll be covered in more detail in a future lesson?

[Andrew]

Correct.

There’s only one chart symbol that is used for more advanced songs that can be confusing at first. This symbol is actually a direction called: D.S. al Coda. It’s good to see an example of this. If you look at the tab player for this lesson, you can see how it works.

Hit play from the beginning and stop at bar 16 (continue to play the tab after you read this). At bar 16 it says: “D.S. al Coda”. This means to return to the measure with the sign, which looks like an ‘S’ with a slash and 2 diagonal dots. You can find that symbol in measure 1.

So you jump back to measure 1 and play until you see the text that says “To Coda”, which is in bar 9. At that point you jump to the Coda sign, which looks like a crosshair and can be found at measure 17. Play from bar 17 until the end of the piece.

To summarize, you play:

1-16 (D.S. al Coda back to the Sign)
1-9 (Sign is located at bar 1. Play until “To coda” which is at bar 9)
17-24 (Jump to Coda symbol at bar 17 and play until end)

[Author]

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