subject: What Are Guitar Tabs? [print this page] If you sit down at a piano expecting to play a bit of Bach, you will be quite out of luck until you master the sheet music. On a piece of music you should be able to see rows of lines with different opaque marks on them. These of course represent the keys that need to be played to make the piece of music come together. Guitar tablature is quite similar. But instead of keys, the six lines represent the six strings on your guitar. Easy, huh? Well it takes a bit of coordination to learn and play them effectively. But when you do you will begin to see how the chords come together to create melody, and eventually a song you may recognize.
Any new guitarist will want to start with the easy guitar tabs first. The reason for that should be a given. Difficult stuff lies ahead - there is no need to rush right into it. Tablature can illustrate chords (a certain set of strings being strummed through correct finger positioning on the frets), or actual songs. Some especially easy guitar tabs for chords are the C Major chord and the A Major chord. In picking up a piece of tablature that showed these two, you would see the six strings with numbers on top of some of them. These numbers represent which of your five fingers is suppose to hold that string at a specific fret while you strum all of the strings down below.
Describing one of these particular chord tabs may be too confusing. So, what better way to learn how to read tablature than by picking some up online or at a local music store. Easy guitar tabs are not difficult to come by. In fact, dozens and dozens of websites have devoted themselves to exposing guitar tabs both in chord form and in song form. There are many rather famous (and easy) acoustic guitar tabs that you can practice if you feel up to it. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Green Day, Linkin Park, Snow Patrol and many, many other artists are well within your grasp. Some of their tablature will be more difficult than others. It really depends on what you feel up to trying. Hopefully, with plenty of practice and dedication you will be up for anything one day. You do not have to be a master at the guitar, you just need to be willing to give it your all if you expect to play well someday.
Visualize the tab you are looking at and everything will begin to make sense. It is not just a code, but a translation. Learning guitar tabs is like learning to speak a different language. Put your mind to it and you will be amazed what beautiful music will come from this new language you are speaking.
