re: Beginner Guitar Question

Have a go to site for tabbed songs?

I'm just curious.

What song did you learn to play?

Tab can be a help but I think it is much more important to understand chords and know the five or six most important in every key. You need to know how to put those chords into progressions and a little bit of theory behind it. Know how to count the chords based on major scale. For instance a very common progression in folk,country, blues and rock is a I, IV, V progression. In the key of C that would be C, F, G. If you start counting with the first chord of the key then F is the fourth and G the fifth.

You can do the same thing with any key. Just start with the major chord that has the same name as the key and count forward. Then learn as many inversions(ways to make the chord on the guitar) as you can.

Develop your ear. Listen to a song and see if you can feel when the chords change. Then look at your song book or whatever and see if you were right. Even something as simple as tuning your guitar can train your ear to hear the right pitch and tone. You can use an electronic tuner but listen to the sound closely when you get it right and before too long you will be able to do it without the tuner.

I refer to it as fingering the string note you want to play while fingering two frets up on the next string up.

For example, for a C chord, playing just the root 4th string 3rd fret along with the 3rd string 5th fret.

(I know there's a third finger in there, but I tend to play power chords lazily.)

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Sheet music is the way to actually write music, understand music, see music, and communicate it.

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Edward Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix say Hi.... neither can/could read music.

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Edward Van Halen

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But some folks are just freaks like that. He was an award winning pianist as a school kid - his father was a high-end concert pianist and made him and Alex play. But Eddie refused to learn to read music (and guitar is one of those few disciplines that lets you get away with it).

Not all of us are so gifted. I can only read music a little - enough to get by. Guitar is so much more about technique and fingering that tablature is the more important skill when learning how to play. But, I would argue that - in today's visual, interconnected world, video lessons are probably even more important because of transitions and actual playing techniques.

On the other hand, a serious student should aspire to go from watching someone play the song, to working out how to play from tab, to reading music - on almost any instrument.

But, many elite guitarists get by without it. We're not them. Heck, I never learned to tune a guitar by ear - my ear may not be good enough.

But, I can play the heck out of some open chords, though.

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A power chord is just the root & 5th of a major triad (no 3rd). So a G power chord is G-D-G instead of G-B-D.

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Which brings us to another point where we can incorporate theory into practice.

So-called "power" chords aren't traditional chords at all. In classical music, such a construct would be called a dyad (separated by an interval). "Traditionally" - a chord would have to have 3 notes on a scale to meet the strict definition.

And the Supreme "Chort" hasn't intervened yet to settle the dispute.

These are popular on the distorted electric guitar as the larger strings tend to overpower the smaller, anyway, and "chord" changes can be made much more quickly by sliding up and down or alterating from E-A to A-D, while keeping the same shape.

Learn all the open chords, and get good at making fast, accurate and clean chord changes. This will help build up muscles and muscle memory in both hands. You'll also be able to play most songs ever written.

Reading sheet music will help, but you'll probably just get more frustrated trying to learn how. TABs are much easier, and when you are playing from memory what difference does it make?

It's not that it's necessarily hard. I just don't see how it's very practical for a casual guitar player.