How to Learn Guitar Tabs

One of the easist ways to learn guitar fast is to learn guitar tabs. This will be vital in expanding your guitar playing skills.

If you listen to songs you like and want to recreate the solos or the chord progressions through the song learning to read the guitar tabs related to the songs will open up the song for you.

I will show you some basic tips and tricks to help you learn guitar tabs and hopefully that will make you a better and more versatile guitar player.

Find the song you want to learn & listen!

There are litrially 1000′s of songs you can learn guitar tabs with on the net. These are updated regularly and as most guitar tabs are written by guitarist and submitted free of charge. Some can sound “out” meaning they may not be in the correct key that the original song you are listening are. In this case it is easy to transpose the chords in the song to a different key.

Learn Guitar Tabs as Barred Chords

If a chord is barred there will be a number on either side the thick black line to donate where your index finger barres the strings on the fretboard. You finger will need to cover the full width of the fretboard in order to play a barre chord. This does take practice and can be phyisically hard to do in order to let the chord ring clearly. Once you have basic guitar knowledge it is relatively easy to learn guitar tabs. Start in small sections, one chord at a time. Use your guitar and play the chord out loud until you know it sounds correct.

Learn Guitar Tabs as the 6 strings on the Guitar

The easy way to learn guitar tabs is to look at the tab as the 6 strings on the guitar. You can look to see if the chords are known to yourself and you are confident in playing these chords. Dont worry if you dont know a certain chord as the finger positioning will be laid out within the tab.

For example your main chords tabbed would look something the picture above :-

If you look at the chord the left side is the low “E” string it then works left to right E,A,D,G,B,E.

The “X” represents a string not to be played either mute the string or if easier dont play it at all. e.g the “A” chord the x is on the low e string so simply play the 5 othe string to hear the chord.

The “O” represents an open string- a string where no note is fingered.

The numbers inside the black dots are the fingers you should be using on the frets of the guitar. One (1) being the index finger, four (4) being the pinky finger.

The nut of the guitar is represented by the thick black line . This is the end of the fretboard.

Practice makes Perfect

Continue to practice as much as you can, set time up everyday to feel the benefits , you will find that the better you get at reading guitar tabs the more you will want practice . When you enjoy something you will generally apply more time to it. Trying to learn guitar tabs is easy as long as you practice! Once you learn guitar tabs then you can learn to write you own music and thats what every musician strives for!