How To Read Tablature At fiddlehub.com

Section links: Intro Which String Which Finger Up Bow Or Down Changing Bow Direction Note Values Summary, With Slur Demo

How long do the individual notes last?

The answer to this question is a little complicated. Like standard notation, tablature divides a tune up into measures. Most fiddle tunes have sixteen measures.

Each measure contains a certain number of beats, and in American fiddling, regardless of style (Southern, New England, Bluegrass or Old-Time), that number is almost always four.
There are a few tunes that have two or three beats in a measure, and some have six or even nine; but they are in the minority, and we'll deal with them as they come up in individual tune lessons.
If you can understand the timing in a four-beat measure, you won't have any trouble making the leap to a waltz or a jig.

I've put Figure 5 under the two demo videos below so you can see it when you watch the videos, but take a look at Figure 5 now. The first measure has four notes; the second has seven. These two measures are part of the same tune, so you know they have to last exactly the same period of time.

In the first measure, each note is on the beat.
In the first video below, I'll play just the first measure and count "one, two, three, four" as I play the four notes.
In the second video, I'll play just the second measure. I'll play all seven notes, and count "one, two, three, four" where the beats fall in the measure.

Figure 5

Because the second measure can't take up any more time than the first one, you know for sure that some of the notes in the 2nd measure are going to be shorter than the notes in the 1st measure. How do you know which ones?

This is where the stems come in. The stems are the vertical lines extending down from the fingering numbers, and they show up for the first time in Figure 5.
If a note is going to last for a whole beat, the stem for the note will stand alone. It won't be connected to any other stems. The notes in the 1st measure of Figure 5 are all good examples.
If, however, the stems of two notes are connected, this means that both notes together take up the time allowed for one beat. Each connected note gets half a beat.