Step 2: Learn How To Read Tablature

Now that you have learned how to tune your guitar, you are ready to learn how to read tablature. Upon learning tablature, you can get started right away playing your favorite songs without putting forth all the time and effort of learning how to read sheet music.

But don't be foolish. If you want to get very far in the music industry, you will need to learn how to read music. Tablature alone won't cut it forever as far as music careers go.

The chances are good that you don't know how to read music. I'll be the first to admit that even I didn't know how to read sheet music when I first picked up a guitar. But that never stopped me from becoming really good thanks to the awesome guitar learning tool called tablature. Let me show you how it works:

(Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses)

The LINES in the Tablature represent the strings.
The NUMBERS represent which fret to press.
Playing Tip: Never press on the fret bars! (The vertical stripes you see on the fret board) Always press between the fret bars! I've seen a lot of people I teach start out by thinking they have to press on the bars to sound the notes.

The guitar is actually "upside down" in the above illustration because the bottom string (the thinnest string) is actually the 1st string, and the top string (the thickest string) is the 6th string. The tablature represents this.

In this video I walk you through a real tablature sheet and show you some important details you need to

To put this into perspective

As an analogy, hold a book directly in front of you with your arms extended. Now take that book and lower your arms so that the top of the book points directly at the ground. See how the top is now at the bottom as you look down on it from above?

Now take your guitar and hold it in the regular playing position. Now grab it by the body and flip it so that the strings are facing you, then extend your arms. Now do what I told you with the book analogy and you will see that it all makes sense.

Now, since you don't know how to read music, but still want to play along to your favorite song, the only advice I can give you is to listen to the particular song over and over. If you have bought a tablature book, you can open it up to the song you're listening to and follow the tablature visually as each note is played which will give you a sense of timing, rhythym, and also learn some of the music symbology as you go. (Guitar hero is also another good way for learning this.)

This video puts it all in perspective and with more details.











This Video teaches you how to read chord diagrams and how they are listed in tablature and music sheets.