Music educators debate the use of tablature. Unlike notation on a 5-line staff, tablature lines represent an instrument’s strings, with number indicating what fret must be pressed on each string in order to produce the required pitch. Tablature is particularly common for guitar, bass (particularly bass guitar), banjo, mandolin, ukulele, and other instruments.

There are many variations of tablature.

While in its most pure form, it includes only lines for strings and numerals for frets, it might or might not also include chord symbols, stems (indicating note duration), articulation markings, or other symbols.

Benefits of tablature include:

1. It clearly and elegantly renders the exact string and fret that the writer feels should be used to sound the note.
2. It is logical, and a beginning musician will be able to translate it into sound.
3. It isolates pitch, which encourages the player to focus on developing an internal sense of rhythm and playing by ear.
4. It is easily typed without special software, making ASCII tab easily sharable via many communication tools.

Benefits of 5-line staff notation include:

1. It is universal to all musicians and instruments.
2. More information about the music is easily indicated, particularly regarding rhythm.
3. It allows readers to choose their own preferred fingering or string assignments for a given pitch.
4. It easily reveals musical patterns, such as scales or arpeggios.
5. The special relationships of the pitches and rhythms follow the contours of the sound, making it an intuitive representation of the music.

Tablature has existed since the late middle ages/early Renaissance, originating in organ music and then being adapted for the lute and other instruments. The standardization of notation on the 5-line staff is a more recent innovation, dating to the later Renaissance. So, while the 5-line staff is often referred to as “traditional notation,” it is actually relatively modern.

Contemporary acceptance of tablature is often divided by musical genre, as well as educational background. Formally educated musicians tend to favor the 5-line staff, while self-taught musicians often feel more comfortable with tablature. Rock and folk musicians typically embrace it. Jazz musicians are often wary of it, and classical musicians tend to avoid it. General music teachers are often conflicted, recognizing that it is in widespread use and a gateway for many to begin learning to make music, while having reservations about its limitations, particularly regarding communicating with other instrumentalists. While some music teachers feel that tablature “dumbs down” the learning process, others see tablature as a means towards simplifying the task of initially learning music, as it breaks down the barrier to reading. A compromise solution in many music education texts and notation publications has been to feature music that includes both a traditional staff paired with a tablature staff.