TABLATURE

(Lat. tabula, a table.) In Music, the use of the letters of the alphabet, or any other character, for expre ing the notes or sounds of a composition. It is not now a usual mode of writing. In its stricter and more original sense it is a mode of writing music for a particular instrument on parallel lines (of which each represents a string of the instrument) by means of certain letters of the alphabet. Thus A denotes that the string is to be struck open, B that one of the fingers is to be put on the first stop, C on the second, D on the third, and so on through the octave. [s. 1216]