Lesson #1 : Tabs : Simple Smoke on the Water

Wouldn’t it be nice just to be able to pick up your guitar and play a cool riff that everyone can get into? Well here’s a simple one. This is the opening guitar riff from Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the water.”

To start off, you need to understand how to read tabs (short for tablature) and how the strings on the guitar are labeled. The fattest string on the guitar is a “low” E string and descending downwards there are (e, a, d, g, b, e) until you get the “high” e string. You will commonly see them in the order referred to the diagram below.

e (the thinnest string)
B
G
D
A
E (the fattest string)

It might seem upside down but that’s just because you’re looking at it upside down. You're going to have to pick up your monitor and set it upside down while you're reading these tabs. KIDDING! Set your computer down. It's written like that so when you’re looking down at your guitar, the strings will look upside down and therefore will match up easier with what you're trying to read. It’ll take a day or two to really get used to it but once you’ve got it, it's super easy to read. Easier than a book. It’s like a movie script, only you don’t have to think about the words. It’s that easy. You get the point.

Along the lines of the strings you will see NUMBERS. These numbers refer to the FRET you will be putting your finger closest to. The frets are in increasing order starting at the far end of the neck. For example, if you see the number 3, you will put your finger between the 2nd and 3rd frets from the headstock. (0 = open meaning you just strum the string without putting your finger down).

Deep Purple – Smoke on the Water tab

(play at a tempo of 112 for all you lucky metronome owners)
e -------------------------------------------------------------------
B ------------------------------------------------------------------
G ------------------------------------------------------------------
D ------------------------------------------------------------------
A ------------------------------------------------------------------
E ---0---3---5------0---3---7---6------0---3---5------3---0---

Check to see if you have the timing right by playing it with the original song.

Now you might be thinking, “waaaait a minute, why don’t I sound as cool as them? I’m playing all the right notes but it isn’t the same?” It's not that your playing it wrong, it’s a little something called stylistic interpretation (big word, don’t worry about it) basically it means that they have been playing for a long time and are awesome at this song and add little bends(the twangs you hear) so that just when people think they’re sick of the song, they like it again. You’ll get it eventually; it just takes practice, experience, and patience!

**Tross Tip**

If you turn up the volume really loud while you play with the video it sounds like the audience is screaming for you!

If you don’t fully get it from Smoke on the Water, there are also a bunch of other cool site that explain tabs in further detail or that have a lot more exercises to help bridge the gap between beginner and seasoned veteran so you can go out and find guitar tabs on your own.

**Killa Tip**

When playing the guitar it can get confusing keeping track what fret you’re on. The guitar simplifies this for you by (generally) putting dots on the third, fifth, seventh, ninth and two dots on the twelfth frets. I would recommend remembering this so you don’t have to count down the frets every time you read tab.