Tablature with notation

Two staffs

The most common type of ukulele tablature is actually a combination of one staff of notation placed above a staff of tablature, both representing the same piece of music. At first this seems to be a bit complicated, but it’s really easy to read: Use the tablature to find out where to fret and which strings to play. For every digit in the tablature staff there is a corresponding note in the notation staff above. If you know how to read note values (and this is really not difficult), you know the length of the individual notes (and rests) to be played.

Tablature with notation is the common way of representing sophisticated ukulele arrangements for many reasons:

• The notation staff represents the rhythmic and melodic structure of a piece in a precise and clear way. It is possible to distinguish between melody and accompaniment: The stems of all notes of the melody are pointing upwards, while the stems of the notes of the accompaniment are pointing downwards.
• The tablature staff precisely indicates the strings and the fret positions to be played. It is really useful to indicate this in an unabiguous way, since on the ukulele it can be hard to decide which string is best for playing a certain note. Moreover, the same note can sound quite differently when played on different strings. And sometimes even the same tone is played on several strings at once in order to achieve a full sound. All these things can be represented with tablature in a simple and straightforward way.
• Fingerings are usually placed in the notation staff. (It would be somewhat confusing to place additional digits in the tablature staff!)

About the fingerings

Fingerings are represented by digits in the notation staff. I want to point out that these digits always correspond to a certain note in the notation staff. So, a fingering indicates for a certain note, with which finger of the left hand it should be fretted.

So watch out! This can be a bit confusing, since due to the re-entrant tuning of the ukulele, the vertical order of the notes in the notation staff is NOT always identical with the vertical order of the corresponding numbers in the tablature staff! So, if you want to use the fingerings of several simultaneous notes correctly, you will have to actually read the notes and understand to which digits in the tablature they correspond.