subject: You Can Learn Guitar Without Reading Music [print this page] Many people think about learning how to play an instrument. Some actually take the dive and try to learn. However, when they face the challenge of learning to sight read music, they give up because it is too difficult to grasp the concepts behind all of those abstract symbols. Luckily, it is possible to learn guitar without reading music and the same is true for many other instruments.
The great thing about the guitar is that it has its own form of written music called tablature. Tablature is much easier for many people to sight read and understand, especially since it does not involve the use of complex symbols.
When you read tablature, or tab for short, you will see a series of numbers and lines. The lines are arranged vertically and each one represents a string on the guitar. The line at the bottom will relate to the top string of your guitar, while the line at the top will relate to the bottom string of your guitar.
If you can count, you can read and use tab to play the guitar. This is because each fret is numbered in tab. When you see a number on a specific line, all you have to do is move your finger to that fret on the appropriate string. This is much easier than translating odd looking symbols into a location on the neck of the guitar.
Playing chords is very easy to do with tab. When you see several numbers in a single space within the tab, you are playing a chord. Some tab books may even put the name of the chord above the tab to let you know the name of the chord you are playing.
Chord charts are great for learning to play chords also. They are small pictures which show you the strings of the guitar and the exact placement of each finger that is necessary to form a chord.
