Tablature.

It's a very old method of writing music for instruments like the lute. Since the guitar is very similar to the lute (strings and frets), this is an example of the old lute tablature updated and applied to the guitar.

The six horizontal lines (a row of dashes or hyphens, which is the only way you can draw a line in this font) represent the six strings of the guitar. The top line is the 1st string, the bottom line is the 6th string. The numbers on the lines tell you what fret to play on that string ("0" = open string). The letter ("G") over the whole thing is the basic chord, the "e/" halfway across the first measure tells you to stay on the G chord, but play an E note on the 4th string, 2nd fret. The "0h2" means play the 5th string open, then hammer a finger down on the 2nd fret (a "hammer on" is the same as an upward slur).

Above the lines, the colon (":") indicates the downbeat (first beat of the measure) and the periods (".") are the main beats (1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4).

Very complicated lute pieces have been written this way, and there is no reason that the system shouldn't work well for the guitar. In fact, I've seen a few classical guitar manuals where, beneath the standard notation, tablature has been added as an aid for students just learning to read music.

It's a good system. But—it's no more difficult to learn to read regular notation than it is to learn to read tablature. And if a melody is written out in regular notation, you can play it on a guitar, a banjo, a piano, a bagpipe, or a glockenspiel. If a melody is written out in guitar tablature, the only instrument you can read it for is the guitar.

Don Firth