Music · Guitar Tab (6-string)

About Music · Guitar Tab (6-string)

A six-line guitar tablature staff for hand-written tab. Lines correspond to the six strings of standard guitar tuning (low E to high E), with generous space above for chord names and below for rhythmic notation. Further reading: A practitioner reading list covers the standards lineage in more depth.

Standards lineage

Tablature line count matches the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) standardised six-string convention.

A short history

Guitar tablature in its modern six-line form was popularised by 1960s American folk-revival songbooks and standardised by guitar magazines in the 1970s.

Where designers reach for it

• Guitar tablature composition
• Lesson plans and teaching exercises
• Songwriter sketches and arrangement notes
• Bass-guitar tab (using the four lower lines)

Printing this grid

Every variant on this page is delivered as a vector SVG with physical millimetre dimensions baked into the file, so a compliant printer driver will reproduce it at exact 1:1 scale by default. Choose the sheet size that matches your printer tray, set scaling to 100 % (never "fit to page"), and verify with the calibration check on our how-to-print guide. Buyer's guide: Comparing the major architectural scale rulers can help you pick the right physical scale rule to use over the printed grid.