How to Play Guitar Tabs
As the first method that beginner guitar players use to learn songs guitar tabs are an important skill to understand. If you’ve used a learn to play guitar dvd or other guitar lesson program tabs are usually introduced early on since they’re such a vital role to your learning. If this is your first intro to guitar tab don’t worry I’ll go easy on you, and if you’re using a guitar lesson course at home rest assured you will have some lessons on reading tab.
This article will explain how guitar tabs are made, how to read them and of course how to play guitar tabs. After reading this article you shouldn’t have any problems reading, understanding and playing most basic guitar tabs. Starting out take your time learning tabs, it’s a good idea to master a song or piece from a tab slow first then add speed, accuracy is what makes a great guitar player.
Let’s Begin
How Guitar Tab is Constructed
A guitar tab is like looking at your guitar neck if the guitar was in the case. A guitar tab has 6 lines, one for each string on your guitar. The top line of guitar tab corresponds to the first string on your guitar or the high E. The bottom string on a guitar tab corresponds to the sixth string or your low E string.
Here’s a quick example
1st ——–
2nd ——–
3rd ——–
4th ——–
5th ——–
6th ——–
Understanding the Notes of Guitar Tab
The next part of reading tabs is understanding what notes to play and on what strings. One of the great things about guitar tab is you aren’t required to know how to read music you just need to know which fret to play on each string.
Here’s another example
1st -2——
2nd ——–
3rd ——–
4th —–6–
5th ——–
6th ——-3
The number on each string line corresponds to the fret you are supposed to use when playing that string at that point in the song. In the above example you’re to play the second fret on the first string, then the sixth fret on the fourth string followed by the third fret on the sixth string.
Tabs will look just like this of course much longer. Sometimes it will be individual notes you need to play and other times it could be complete chords you need to play. There’s an example chord tabbed below, it’s a C major chord.
1st ———
2nd –1—–
3rd —2—-
4th ——–
5th —3—-
6th —x—-
Above it the right fingering for a C major chord. You might have noticed the ‘x’ on the sixth string, I haven’t mentioned this yet but the x on the string means you do not play that string during this part of the song. So if you see an x on a particular string don’t strum or pluck that string.
With this information you should be able to go out and find some tabs of your favorite songs. There are some more advanced symbols you might run into in tabs, don’t worry you’ll learn them as your progress.
Quality guitar lesson dvd will be of assistance to teach you more advanced tab reading skills. It’s important to not stop learning, tab is just one skill you should strive to master on the guitar. You will become a better guitar player and better musician if you push to learn how to also read music and understand theory as well as reading tabs.