re: Beginner Guitar Question

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Is it important for a beginner to learn how to read TABs?

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While you can learn to play almost anything by watching videos, I recommend that you at least learn tablature and, eventually, music.

Good news is that quality guitar music books often have both.

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What should be my next step? Learning new songs and chords?

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Depends on what you want to do. If you want to play lots of single string lead parts, I would recommend working on exercises that support muscle memory for that, other techniques that will help such as Travis fingerpicking, playing scales with a metronome (and speeding up to the tempo of the song you want to play), etc.

On the other hand, if you want to play rhythm and lots of "sing along songs" - you can't master too many chords - learn as many as you can and as many variants. You'll listen to music and realize that a cat isn't playing quite the right chord, but it works for him and the song. You need those tools to do that.

Good luck and happy playing.