Guitar tablature, a bit of history

Did you ever ask yourself when guitar tablature was first invented?

Well, I did, to be honest, because I thought that all this madness we face each day, with music industry hitting hard on guitar tablature sites was just something that is started cause the rock and roll era.

Honestly, I’ve thought that some uneducated guitar player, looking for a way to transmit some music but not being familiar with classical music notation, invented this easier way of writing music on string instruments, what we call today guitar tablature or simpler, guitar tabs.

Well, what do you know? I was totally wrong, seems that it was not some uneducated rock and roll guitar player who invented tablature but English lute players of the 15th century!

And seems that it was not the guitar tablature concept that became popular in the first place, but lute and all fretted, string instruments. However, I was right on the second part: these lute players were looking for an easier way of transmitting their music.

When keyboard instruments and orchestral music became more and more popular, the interest in this popular music notation was not that high anymore but came back in the last century, with the ever growing popularity of electric guitars.

As Wikipedia says, tablature may be used for:

“guitar, bass, lute, archlute, theorbo, angélique, mandora, gallichon, and vihuela, but in principle it can be used for any fretted instrument, including ukulele, mandolin, banjo, and viola da gamba, as well as many free reed aerophones such as the harmonica”

but it was the rock music and guitar playing what brought it back to life! Rock on, people!! We rule!

I thought it would be interesting to point that out since it is good to know that the world didn’t start and will not end with us!

Bookmark It