These TABs appear in the flute method book, Celebrate the Native American Flute. You are looking at pages 20, 21, and 22. Follow the pages down the screen to maintain their order. Since the pages are screen shots from the PDF book, concessions were made to optimize their file size for presentation on the Net. The pages in the book, as you can imagine, are significantly clearer than what you see here.

What you see on the left is Tablature notation. We simply call them TABS. The advantage of tablature is you don't have to know beans about reading music. Each individual column shows you exactly how to play the note. This way of writing out music is very old. In fact, it was developed by musicians long before the standard Western notation we are all so familiar with appeared. Johanne Sebastian Bach wrote out his classical guitar masterpieces in tablature form because indicating the string and the fret on the guitar was a natural for tablature notation. Although somewhat different than the flute notation on the left, the principle was the same: each "note" showed the musician exactly how to play that note.

NOTE: The tablature pictured uses the Pentatonic Scale. It's the simplest possible scale playable on the Native American flute. Many more scales are possible on the NA flute, making alll kinds of music accessible on this simple instrument. Pop, blues, sacred, jazz, classical--all are possible on the NA flute. Many of these powerful scales are covered in the book, Celebrate the Native American Flute.

The TABS you see are an introduction for those who are not familiar with the flute. We will be adding different TABS from time to time.