Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches.

Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the lute, vihuela, or guitar, as well as many free reed aerophones such as the harmonica. Tablature was common during the Renaissance and Baroque eras, and is commonly used in notating rock, pop, folk, ragtime, bluegrass, and blues music.

Three types of organ tablature were used in Europe: German, Spanish and Italian. There are several types of ocarina tabulature. Harp tablature was used in Spain and Wales.

To distinguish standard musical notation from tablature, the former is usually called "staff notation" or just "notation".

An alternate usage of the word "tab" is common on the Internet, where it can also refer to conventional chord symbols (for harmony), or note names (for melody).

The word tablature originates from the Latin word tabulatura. Tabula is a table or slate, in Latin. To tabulate something means to put it into a table or chart.

Nino Ferrer (born Nino Agostino Arturo Maria Ferrari in Genoa, Italy, 15 August 1934, died in Quercy Blanc, Saint-Cyprien Lot, Montcuq, 13 August 1998) was a famous French – Italian singer, actor and jazz musician.

The son of bourgeois parents, an Italian father and a French mother, Nino declared having had a pleasant childhood in a cultivated art-loving family. He spent the first five years of his life in New Caledonia where his father, an engineer, worked in a nickel mine. On holiday in France in 1939, Nino and his mother were unable to leave Europe because of the World War II. While his father carried on working in New Caledonia, they spent difficult years stuck and penniless in Italy, where Nino’s mother was considered the wife of an enemy.

In 1947, the family, re-united and moved to France. Nino was sent to the best colleges in Paris and earned a degree in ethnology and prehistoric archaeology. As a student, much of his free time was spent on archaeological digs and his first job was at the Musée de l'Homme with André Leroi-Gourhan.

Georges Brassens (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ bʁasɛ̃s]), 22 October 1921 – 29 October 1981), was a French singer-songwriter and poet.

Brassens was born in Sète, a town in southern France near Montpellier. Now an iconic figure in France, he achieved fame through his elegant songs with their harmonically complex music for voice and guitar and articulate, diverse lyrics; indeed, he is considered one of France's most accomplished postwar poets. He has also set to music poems by both well-known and relatively obscure poets, including Louis Aragon (Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux), Victor Hugo (La Légende de la Nonne, Gastibelza), Jean Richepin, François Villon (La Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis), and Guillaume Apollinaire, Antoine Pol (Les Passantes).

During World War II, he was forced by the Germans to work in a labor camp at a BMW aircraft engine plant in Basdorf near Berlin in Germany (March 1943). Here Brassens met some of his future friends, such as Pierre Onténiente, whom he called Gibraltar because he was "steady as a rock." They would later become close friends.