Help with a music symbol:

I found a tab for 'round Midnight by Monk. It has a symbol I am not familiar with. It's a B with an arrow pointing either up or down. The symbol appears on the right side of a chord symbol. Fooling around with is it seems to be a strum direction, but I am not sure. Anyone familiar with this? I checked tab notation but couldn't find anything.

Here is the address: ukuleledavarnaudd.free.fr Also, I can't believe that I am learning to play one of my favorite songs. Just amazing!

Here's a YouTube video of someone playing from this tab.


It would appear that's a hint to play the chord as an arpeggio, so the notes are slightly separated. The arrows indicate which direction to drag your thumb or finger so the notes are heard in the proper sequence.

Normally, you'd just see the arrows themselves, so I'm not entirely sure about the B. Hopefully someone else can add in as well.

KoaDependent said:

Here's a YouTube video of someone playing from this tab.


It would appear that's a hint to play the chord as an arpeggio, so the notes are slightly separated. The arrows indicate which direction to drag your thumb or finger so the notes are heard in the proper sequence.

Click to expand...

Thank you, I was wondering about that but I usually see arpeggio's with a more "squiggly" line. But that is probably it, an arpeggio.

I know that Wilfried Welti (who posts here regularly and has some excellent arrangements available) uses a squiggly line to denote an arpeggios but also adds an arrowhead at the top of bottom of the squiggle to indicate the strumming direction. I think your initial guess for the arrow is correct...it indicates strum direction.

I use the same software for my tabs, and I can confirm that it stands for 'brush'. Not really an arpeggio as such, and I suppose it could be a quick brush or a slow one, it's open to interpretation (as are many musical symbols). I suspect it's mainly to tell you not to pick/pluck all the strings at the same time, but 'strum' through them.