How to Read Shorthand Tablature
The Structure of a Note in Shorthand Tablature
Shorthand tablature, or sometimes referred to as simplified tablature, or Jianzipu (簡字譜) is how most scores you’ll find today are written. Of that, the majority of notes are written in the following structure:
Top “half” of the note contains information that pertains to the left hand while the bottom “half” of the note contains information that pertains to what your right hand should do.
Left Hand Instructions
In the top half of the note, it is usually divided into a left and right half. The left half informs you of which finger to use, while the right half informs which hui position you should position that finger at.
In the first, second, and fifth notes, there is only one symbol in the right side, that means the position your left hand needs to be at is exactly at that hui. But what if the desired hui position is between two huis?
Well, in the third and last notes, the right half can be further divided into a top and bottom. The top indicates the hui, while the bottom is a decimal value, so for the third note it wants 6.7 (六 = 6, 七 = 7) while for the last note it wants you to be positioned at 8.5. For a full list of the characters you may see to indicate hui position, please refer to the glossary.
In the fourth note, you will notice that isn’t a left or right half, Instead, you see the symbol 艹. This symbol indicates that you do nothing with your left hand, you will simply play the string with your right hand, or in other words it is an open string / san yin (散音) note.
While this is the general structure, depending on the style, sometimes the hui position is written where the number for the ones place is larger and the decimal value is written in the bottom right. In this example, taken from another score, the hui position is 10.8.
Right Hand Instructions
Looking at the right hand instructions, or the bottom “half” of the note, you can usually categorize that into an inner and outer part, or into an upper and lower part.
Here is an example of an inner and outer part:
You can see here, the inner part is boxed in a darker green with the outer part is boxed in with a light green. The inner part indicates which string you should pluck, as there are only 7 strings, the inner part is easy to identify if you remember the chinese characters for the numbers one to seven (一 二 三 四 五 六 七). The outer part indicates how you should pluck the string.
Here is an example of an upper and lower part:
The bottom part indicates which string you should pluck. While the top part indicates how to pluck the string.