Guitar for Beginners: Chords or TAB?

When you first start to learn to play songs on guitar, or even if you’ve been playing for a while but maybe can’t read sheet music yet, you have two basic options: Chords or TAB. You can either go out and buy/Internet/steal a lead sheet with chord names on (alot of the time leaving you to figure out the voicings), or you can learn to read guitar TAB (which seems so readily available on the internet). So, the big question is, which is the best option?

There are many advantages and disadvantages to each option, which I will attempt to discuss here, for your benefit.

Chords

First, I’m going to start with chords. Chords are the thing that are most associated with guitar- and for good reason! The guitar (wether acoustic or electric) seems to be almost designed with chords in mind: six strings make it (relatively) easy to play 6 notes at once, the resonance created (especially on acoustic guitars) allows the, once lonely and boring, single notes to harmonize together into one complete sonic chorus.

But how does this help you? Well chords are the basis of guitar playing and, as a guitarist, will make up about 90% of the things you play (pretty important, then…). The main advantage you will find from learning chords first is that you will be introduced sooner to the chord names, which will help enormously when it comes to working with other musicians (whereas the guy who only plays TAB only knows where to put his fingers). Also, when you’ve learnt enough chords you can pretty much pick up any chord song and play it (whereas, the TAB guy has to learn each song from scratch each time, making life alot harder).

So, if what you want to do is play songs, maybe to accompany a singer or a band, chords are the obvious choice. You may not be able to get riffs or melodic lines from a chord sheet, but (once you’ve learnt the relevant theory) you can better understand the harmonic structure of a song (which may eventually lead to creating your own solos!).

Guitar TAB

Now, guitar TAB is more for the people who want to start out learning riffs and solos- but without a proper understanding of the chords in a song, this can only take you so far. The main advantage of this method being that it shows you exactly how to fret each note, and the guitar techniques used. This is, in fact, almost the only method to learn some guitar solos and it comes from the point of view of the instrument (hang on, what?!). What I mean is, guitar TAB is describing to you what to do on your guitar, taking you through step by step how to play the song (but not telling you what you’re playing).

So, although Guitar TAB is useful if you’re a beginner and you want to learn riffs and solos, you’re not going to get much further than replicating the techniques used in the original (or, in the case of some Internet TABs, the techniques of the tabber[noun- Someone who writes a song down in TAB form. from to tab verb]). If what you want to do when playing guitar is just mindlessly replicate the sound of an original recording, I suggest you go buy a CD.

However, don’t discount Guitar TABs as useless just yet, they are great for the beginner (I.E. at the time before you’ve learnt these techniques or how to recognise them), and are also great at explaining guitar techniques, or specific ways of fretting notes etc,. It’s just their one main drawback is that they have no musical value to anyone outside of guitar playing circles.

Sheet Music

There is one, third option, standard musical notation (A.K.A. “sheet music”), has been about for centuries- and still survives until this day! The reason for this popularity? Sheet music comes from the point of view of the music- of the sounds themselves (just like guitar TAB comes from the point of view of the guitar). So, whereas guitar TAB is describing what to do on a guitar, musical notation is describing which sounds to make. Thus, sheet music can be applied to any instrument ever and still be readable (to someone who can read music, obviously!) and playable. I definitely recommend to anyone to learn to read sheet music- even though it does have it’s failings aswell. I mean, it’s not too easy to read blocks of six note chords from sheet music, let alone figure out the difference between a bend and use of the vibrato arm!

Conclusion

So, there we have it, all three main methods of reading music- each with advantages and disadvantages of it’s own. When I write out songs for my students, I use a program called “Power TAB Editor”, which allows you to use all three- which I feel is the best way to approach it. The disadvantages of each system are compensated by each other system, so it all evens out (a bit like “Rock, Paper, Scissors” in a way…). Above all, the key is to remember why you want to play those songs in the first place, and that’s to have fun, right?

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November 22, 2009 at 2:27 pm | How to, Music News and Opinions | 1 comment

One Response to “Guitar for Beginners: Chords or TAB?”

1. Chainsaw Guitar Tuition » Christmas Sheet Music says:

   23/12/2009 at 11:24 am

   [...] always stressed the importance of learning to read sheet music over guitar tab, and why it’s a good idea to learn to sight-read. However, if you’re unable to read [...]

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