Guitar Tab and Chord Diagrams Explained

You may have heard stories of how to read music and how it takes years of training, but there is an easier way for beginners to start playing and get involved with that is designed for guitar! It’s called Tablature, or Tab for short. Most guitarists will know how to read this and you will too soon, as it’s approachable and easy to understand. All the exercises you see on the site will be written in Tab, so it is best to familiarise yourself with it.

The exercises will also have sheet music above it. I would encourage you to learn sheet music as much as possible as it has many benefits over Tab, but for the early stages feel free to read Tab and overtime, try to adapt to the sheet music.

Guitar Tablature (Tab) explained.

It is best to know how to read chord charts from an early stage. You will see a fret board which is upright with dots indicating where your fingers should go. Some diagrams will also include numbers for each finger to clarify how the shape should look. I have annotated a chord diagram for you with all the information you should need. This is a really effective way of learning chords from the start. Every chord can be created on a chart like this, so it's always hand to have a chord library near by to help you if you get stuck with some chords.

Chord diagram explained.