Another way to write down music is to use tablature. Instead of showing the notes to be played, the way music notation does, tablature is designed for a particular instrument and shows you where to stop a particular string to play the desired note. A version of this kind of music notation was used by Renaissance and medieval lute players for years. You can show complex fingerings this way, including chords and melodies.

In guitar tablature, each of the six lines represents one of the guitar's six strings, as shown in FIGURE 4-5. The top line is the first string, and the bottom line is the sixth string. The numbers on each line represent the fret you need to stop in order to get the desired note — a pretty good system for writing down tunes quickly.