Acoustic Guitar Tabs makes it easy to learn the guitar

By Shane Fenham

When you play acoustic guitar, you have the advantage of a totally different, and much easier, kind of music notation. No more notes and staffs and time signatures. This is simpler and more intuitive. Its acoustic guitar tabs, which are notations based on the positions of the instruments strings. The greatest advantage is not having to learn to read music the traditional way. A number of string instruments utilize tabs.

"Tabs" is short for tablature. Acoustic guitar tabs arelike a little picture of your guitar strings. The first row is the top string and the sixth row is the bottom one. On each of the rows, or lines, the numbers indicate the fret youre supposed to be playing. A 0 (zero) is used to indicate an open string, while an X indicates a muffled string.

If you're not sure what a fret is, it's the area between the metal bars on the neck, or the fingerboard of your guitar. Usually there will be somewhere between 21 to 24 frets on the acoustic guitar. The dots you see on the frets are simply a visual guide to let you see where you are.

While looking at acoustic guitar tabs, first you should note if the numbers are listed one after another on each of the lines. If they are arranged in this manner, the numbers are indicating to you which fret to use on that string, and you pluck that one string alone. On the other hand, if you notice that the numbers are stacked one on top of the other (in a vertical manner) on the individual line, the acoustic guitar tab is instructing you to play these notes simultaneously, strumming all six strings at the same time.

When you're reading on up acoustic guitar tabs, a few other things are going to come up, like hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends and slides. The letter h indicates a hammer-on. For instance, you might see something like 7h9 on one of the lines. Pull-offs are indicated by a p, bends by the letter b, and slides by the notation "/ (thats a slash mark).

After youve gotten accustomed to the notion of reading music by string position, search online for basic acoustic guitar tabs and find a tune youre really familiar with to practice on. While the approach may be new to you, youll see that you can pick up its melody quickly this way now that you can read tabs.

Listening to a song while you are trying to learn it makes it simpler to learn. Details and rhythms that you think you remember will pop out and help you. Learning the guitar using acoustic guitar tabs makes it quite a bit more fun. It won't take long to learn several songs, and you will be able to play them for your friends at parties, or while you're alone so you can enjoy them in private.

About the Author:

Shane Fenham writes on how to play using acoustic guitar tabs as well as everything there is to know on how to play acoustic guitar. For more news, products and resources on this beautiful and melodic instrument, be sure to follow this link: acoustic guitar tabs.