re: Advice from a guitar semi-newbie to any others on this board wanting to learn.

The best way is with sheet music, but the problem with sheet music is it tells you what notes to play and when, but not how on the guitar to play them. Tabs teach you how to play the note, but not what the note is or when to play it. Tabs are an excellent tool for learning while listening to a song, so you can learn how the player you’re listening to played those notes.

On the flip side, sheet music is great, but requires the reader to come up with their own method of arriving at those notes at the time they’re supposed to be played.

Much like capitalism, when it comes to learning guitar parts, tabs are the slowest method, except for all others.

I learn most songs by a combination of tabs and by ear, but my ear was trained by tons of knowledge of music theory and two decades of playoffs in ensembles, marching bands, jazz groups, etc. I know what sounds right, I know the influences a lot of artists are pulling from, I know a lot of the patterns routinely employed to write songs, so it’s easy for me to pick up simple stuff. I might not be an advanced technical player, but I know how to find the notes that will sound right.

Remember, though, that there are two different modes of musicianship: the interpretive and the creative. The interpretive musician seeks first to master the techniques of others in order to play what has already been played before putting their own spin on it. They seek to interpret the tabs and sheet music to be able to precisely mimic and replicate the exact technique’s employed. The creative musician merely uses the works of others to add to their bag of tricks. They might read the tab, but come up with a completely different way of arriving at the same notes, thus utilizing a novel technique with their own spin.