Guitar tab is a fast and easy way to learn how to play songs. There are literally thousands of guitar tabs on the net. I started reading guitar tab in 1982 and still read it to this day. Here are some lessons that will teach you how to read guitar tab like a pro.

Think of the guitar as if it were laying flat in front of you on a table. Now imagine as if you were to pick the guitar up and hold it. Looking down on the guitar strings you would see the thickest string first. Each line on the guitar tab represents a guitar string.

The next example shows numbers on the guitar tab lines. These numbers indicate which fret(s) to press. The number string combined with the fret number tells you exactly which note(s) to play. You don't even have to read any music, just numbers.

The guitar tab in the example above shows which notes to play and doesn't show when and how long to play the notes. This was an issue for me when I first started learning to read guitar tab. I had to listen to the recording to find out when to play the notes and how long hold them. I then decided to learn how to read standard notation so I could learn when and how long to play the notes. Reading standard notation takes years of practice to be good at.

One day I stumbled across a great guitar program called Guitar Pro. Guitar Pro is one of the best guitar notation products on the net. The screen shots used in this website are from Guitar Pro (with their kind permission). Guitar Pro plays the music so you can follow along with the guitar tab. Guitar pro has lots of great features like a guitar tuner, metronome, bass and guitar tab, standard notation, speed trainer and a ton of other great features.

I had to wait a month for the guitar magazine to come out with new guitar tab and I also had to buy the song to play along with. With Guitar Pro and some guitar tabs, you will be armed and ready to learn songs. I wish that Guitar Pro was around when I started playing guitar. Check it out and see why it's the only guitar notation program I use.

Guitar Pro 6 has officially been released and all I can say is "It was worth the wait"

For an in depth look at guitar tab check out Guitar tab

Guitar Chords