Learning to play acoustic guitar is a dream for many people. And if you're one of the ones that's ready to start playing your favorite songs for your own pleasure, a lot of times an acoustic guitar is the one to start with. For one thing an acoustic guitar is usually pretty quiet unless you strum real hard so you're not going to disturb anyone. And there's no amp to turn up or down so a lot of times you can play and pick while people around you are doing other things like watching videos or whatever. And once you get good you'll find you're asked to play more often around the house. Regardless, whether in public or if it's a chance to get off by yourself, an acoustic guitar is nice to have.
If you're a beginner, a good way to take acoustic guitar lessons is using something called tablature or better known as tab. It's a real fast way to start picking out notes without reading music or getting things off the recordings. It's really very basic and a visual way to look at your guitar neck. The letters on the left is where the tuning keys are. And each letter is the name of the string.
e|------------------------------------
B|--------3-------0-----------3-------
G|------0---0---0-----------0---0---0-
D|----2-------2-----------2-------2---
A|--3-------------------3-------------
E|------------------------------------
So now you know the orientation of the layout. The low E string is on the bottom. Just think Low or Bottom and the high E string is on top. The numbers represent which fret to play on that string. O is open string, 1 is first fret, and on and on.
Now you can get fancy past the point as people will have bends which is a little curve next to the number (fret). This means to push up or down, whichever the direction of the curve. Other than that you can get timing and such from tablature but you don't really need to make it difficult in the beginning. A lot of beginning students have their hands full just getting the guitar
tuned and ready to go. So just make it easy on yourself and play the notes and just think how the song goes. You'll get it, just take your time. There's always people that are further down the playing road and they will be happy to lend a hand. And of course private lessons are good, even if it's a couple to help you get started.
As you advance with tabs you will start seeing how to do rhythms and chords and strumming, everything really. A lot of good teachers I know will write out the licks and chords in tabs so the student can go home and practice after watching the teacher play and pick up the little tricks.
Once you get used to tab there are a lot of sites all over the net with tablature. Now I'm not saying all the sites are good, some may have tabs that are just plain wrong so if you're playing something and it just doesn't sound right to you, don't assume it's your playing. Go to another site and check to see if the tab is different. You will be surprised sometimes.
Another great thing about reading tab is in one glance you can get the chords, the little melody licks that make the song unique and where the lyrics and music come together to make the song work. So it sounds right. You don't have to learn music or try to get licks and chords off the record. That usually doesn't come till much later down the road. In the beginning you as you play more and more your ear will start improving and tell you when something is right or wrong.
Yet another cool thing about tab is for acoustic guitar you can pick up the finger style picking real easy. Lots of time the fingers are moving too fast to distinguish what the picking hand is doing. With tab its right there and you can practice slowly. I always recommend practicing slow in the beginning. Your inner mind needs slow correct step by step. Because once it gets it, it flies on automatic pilot. Think when you were learning to ride a bike. You didn't run and jump on it and take off, no you made mistakes and took it slow, but once you got it, you never think about it, do you?
Hopefully by now you can see how wonderful reading tab really is. And it doesn't have to be just for acoustic guitar, there's tab for electric and bass also. You will be amazed at how easy it is to learn with tab and understand after using it why it became so popular.
There are hundreds of guitar tablature books for sale online with just about any style or band. If they have recordings somebody somewhere has made a guitar tab book.
back to Used Acoustic Guitar