Posts Tagged ‘Guitar Tabs’

The guitar is one of the most popular instruments. Many people would like to learn how to play but lack the time, resources for professional lessons, or believe it would be too hard. However, learning to play the guitar doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, it is easier than ever. Now there is a way for almost everyone to teach themselves to play the guitar anytime they want. What is the secret? It is printable guitar chords. These simple to use and easy to understand chords can be printed right from any computer.

You will be playing the guitar in no time with this simple but ingenious concept. The benefits include:

o Learn at your own pace
o No extra fees for instructors
o Easily accessible
o Inexpensive
o Easy to understand

For those would be musicians who just cannot find the time to learn the guitar, using printable guitar chords are just what you need to help you accomplish your goal. All you have to do is print the chords and then you can practice anytime you wish. Whether it is late at night, early in the morning or on your lunch break they are ready whenever you are because they are printed right from your home or office computer.

These guitar chords can also save you money. Guitar lessons can be expensive, especially if you are learning for a hobby. Therefore, if you decide to learn the guitar entirely on your own, by using these chords, you will not have to incur the extra costs of a professional instructor. Thus saving you hundreds of dollars.

However, if you decide that you want to be a little more serious about learning the guitar these chords can also be used as a supplement to instruction. Practice makes perfect and printable guitar chords can help achieve that perfection. If you forget the chords that you learned in your lesson all you have to do is print them out.

Guitar chord pages can be found by simply searching for them on the internet. Find the ones you need, print them out and you will be playing your favorite songs in no time. Many sites even offer them for free while others ask only a small fee for the service. The choice is yours.

Finally, the chords are very easy to understand. The simple grids clearly show finger placement for each chord. It is also common for the pages to show alternative ways to play the same chord if the first way is too awkward or hard for the player.

Now with printable guitar chords anybody can teach themselves to play the guitar at their own pace and in their own home. Then when people ask who taught you to play, you can say, “I taught myself.”

Even if you haven’t played guitar tablature before you can impress or maybe shock your friends by playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Let’s start playing guitar tab!

We will use guitar tabs so you will not need to read traditional sheet music. You will only use the thinnest strings on the guitar which also will make this song a little bit easier to play.

The string with the highest pitch is called the first string or E-string. Look at the following guitar tab staff:

1. —————-

2. —————-

3. —————-

In this guitar tab staff we have three lines representing the three first strings on your guitar. The top line represents the E-string on your guitar. That is the thinnest string or the string with the highest pitch.

When you look at a guitar tablature staff you will find numbers on it that tells you which frets to press down. Here is an example:

1. ————

2. ——–3—

3. —-0——-

The number zero on the third line tells you to play the third string without pressing down a left hand finger. This note is a G. In other words, the number O represents an open string. The number 3 on the second string indicates that you shall press down the third fret on the second string and play the note. This note is a D.

Here are the first line of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star with lyrics and corresponding guitar tab:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

1. ——————-0—0——-

2. ———–3—3———–3—

3. —0—0———————–

What to do with your left hand? I mean, which fingers should you use to press down the frets?

I admit that this is a little bit tricky at first but I suggest that you use your index finger for the notes on the first fret, the middle finger for the notes on the second fret and your ring finger for the third fret.

Time for the next tablature staff:

How I wonder where you are

1. ——————————-

2. —1—1—0—0—————

3. ——————-2—2—0—

Maybe you feel that it is difficult to use your left hand fingers the way I described. The only thing I can say is, be patient! Very soon you will reap the benefits from using these fingers when playing guitar.

1. You will be able to keep your hand from moving as you use three fingers instead of one finger for the three frets which will make it easier to play more advanced melodies on your guitar.

2. You will not have to look on the fretboard as much as your fingers have their fixed frets to work with and they will help you find your way around the fretboard.

Next guitar tab:

Up above the world so high

1. ——————————-

2. —3—3—1—1—0—0——-

3. —————————2—

You can’t see the length of the notes in these guitar tabs. Actually it is possible to notate even the length of notes but I guess you already know this melody well and will be able to find out how to play the rhythm of the song by ear.

Let’s continue with the guitar tabs:

Like a diamond in the sky

1. ——————————-

2. —3—3—1—1—0—0——-

3. —————————2—

Now when you understand guitar tab notation you can find many songs written this way on the internet. A complete guitar tablature staff has six lines representing the six strings.

Here is the last guitar tabs to learn. Actually you know this melody part already:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

1. ——————-0—0——-

2. ———–3—3———–3—

3. —0—0———————–

How I wonder where you are

1. ——————————-

2. —1—1—0—0—————

3. ——————-2—2—0—

Now you have completed the song! But you still have to learn it by heart to be able to play it to your friends! One line at a time until you know the whole song!

All beginner guitarists who want to play rock songs are itching to get started playing chords right away. So let us get some insight into the process of learning beginner guitar chords for rock songs. Naturally you can apply the basic ideas you find in this article to any genre, but the techniques for playing chords are mostly for rock guitarists. The best way to introduce you to guitar chords is to list some easy rock songs and the chords that you need to learn in order to play them. As guitar chords and tabs are easy to find on the internet, I will leave it to you to do a search for the songs you decide to play.

Sunshine Of Your Love by Cream – A C G D F

Blitzkrieg Bop by The Ramones – A D E B

Pink Houses by John Cougar – G C F D

Wild Thing – A D E

La Bamba – C F G

As Tears Go By – G A C D

Okay, that should be enough to get any beginner guitar player started. If you do not like the idea of playing the songs that I have listed, then just do a web search for easy rock songs. The songs listed above have these chords in common: C D E F G A B. So you have the seven major chords as your basic chords for rock songs. All of these chords can be played at the first position but in the F chord you have no alternative to playing a bar chord. Or do you?

This is the F chord as a bar chord:

e–1—————————-

B–1—————————-

G–2—————————-

D–3—————————-

A–3—————————-

E–1—————————-

You can play the F chord without the bar this way:

e–X—————————-

B–1—————————-

G–2—————————-

D–3—————————-

A–3—————————-

E–X—————————-

Simply place your left hand fingers to make the bar chord, then lift the first finger and place it at the first fret on the second string. The first and sixth strings are not played. If you move this chord up to the third fret you will have a G chord and at the fifth fret, the A chord. Any barre chord can be fingered this way, and some guitarists use these “internal” chords all the time. You use four fingers to play four string chords.

Of course, most guitarists will tell you that you should learn to play the bar chord fingering, and I agree with them. It takes a few weeks to begin to play the bar chords effectively and a few months before you are playing them with no problems, but once that is done, you are set up for a lifetime of guitar playing. The four string chords are just a way of enabling you to play more songs without too much delay.

Another way of moving chords up and down the guitar neck is by the use of power chords. Power chord is the name rock guitarists have given to a two note chord containing the root note of the chord and the note a fifth above the root. Common practice has become to play the root note an octave above, for example to play a power chord instead of E major you would play the notes E and B.

e–0—————————-

B–0—————————-

G–x—————————-

D–2—————————-

A–2—————————-

E–0—————————-

In the above example if you play with a pick you just damp the G string with a left hand finger and strum all the strings. Or you might prefer the effect when you do not play the top E string so that the E B E B ring out on the lower strings.

Piano Tabs vs. Guitar Tabs

Piano Tabs are basically the same as guitar tabs. Why is that fact important to you? Simply because most chords/lyrics which are in tab form on the internet are going to be listed as “Guitar Tabs” and not necessarily “Piano Tabs”. The chords to a song, the lyrics to a song are the same regardless if a guitarist or a pianist is playing it. So if you’re looking for the “tabs” for a song on the internet, you may end up having to look at a guitar tab site rather than a piano tab site. But no big deal here!

One big difference with guitar tabs, which of course is short for “guitar tablature”, is that the guitar diagrams are almost always shown and these indicate what fret, string, etc. to play. Just ignore that part. You’re only looking to get the lyrics and chords and disregard everything else relating to guitar playing. A student of mine once pleaded with me to explain how to directly translate the guitar notation into piano. Here’s the deal though, pianists DO NOT waste time doing that exercise. Maybe it’ll be fun for you but practically speaking, it’s a waste of time. Guitarists don’t typically take a fully written piano arrangement and extract out each note to directly use that to perform on guitar. So conversely, why whould you want to do this for piano? Just chords and lyrics my friends, chords and lyrics!!

By the way, many pianists never use guitar tab books or guitar tab sheets to work up songs. I certainly do! They argue that the melody line is not included there but it is always found in “lead sheets”. What I do for a song I’m familiar with, is I have already memorized the melody line, (a relatively simple task) so all I’m missing is the chords and lyrics. Case in point, recently, I bought a fantastic Billy Joel Guitar Tab book. I would assume though that very few keyboard players would consider picking up such a book. My thought though was that the fact that I know these songs so well, just having the chords in front of me would enable me to play the song. Additionally, I could now concentrate on working on my singing without being bogged down on the note for note piano arrangement. When you’re on stage, chances are you have memorized everything already, but if you have the guitar/piano tabs in front of you as a “cheat sheet”, it enables you to still perform the song with minimal diversion to “looking at the music”.

But the most important aspect of this type of “tab” playing is that in my experience, with pop/rock band performance, the best, most efficient information you can have to play any song and learn it quickly are guitar tabs!! That is the Secret Weapon all these garage bands use to work up songs and they’re able to do a great job playing these songs, regardless of how much traditional harmonic theory they have been exposed to!

Lesson learned? Go Google or search out your favorite songs and put “tab” after the song, and you’re 80% on the way to perfecting that song in its entirety!

There are many sites on the web where you can find Piano Tabs. If you are able to find a good piano tab site or at least accurate tabs for a song you’re searching for, you are well on your way to playing that song. The major obstacles to creating that song from tabs are

CHORDS

1. Sites infected with Viruses – Unfortunately, this is a very common problem at tab sites. More often than you’d like, your computer can be infected so make sure your viral protection programs are up and running. If you do not have protection for virus infection, you can get free trail downloads at http://www.download.com.

2. Wrong chords and/or lyrics –
Many of the tabs listed on the web for your favorite songs have been put together by well intentioned amateurs who either don’t double check that all the chords are correct or perhaps are unable to distinguish between a correct chord and an incorrect one.

On a scale of 1-10, there are varying degrees of “wrongness” for any chord. Example, if the correct chord should be G7 and instead the chord is listed simply as G, well that’s a minor offense and you could say it’s a “9″ in terms of accuracy. A common mistake is listing the relative minor for a major chord or visa versa. For this error, we might consider it a 6 or 7 in terms of accuracy. In short, for well regarded substitutions for chords, one can live with that. However, with free piano tabs, you can often see wrong chords listed which are at the opposite end of the spectrum for what the chord should in fact be. The chord might be a B flat minor and the tab says that it’s a G sharp major, not even close and completely out there in “left field”! We’d give that infraction a “1″ on a scale of 10. Then again, you will definitely see chords that are that far off. Your final judge should be your “ear”, engage your inherent musicality- if it sounds wrong or really bad to you, there’s a good chance that it is in fact wrong.

LYRICS

For lyrics, again, the same principal applies here – you will see major infractions and minor ones. Just take the posture that the lyrics are “guilty” until proven innocent, i.e., are not 100% accurate until you proof them against either an artist songbook or against a recording.

With No Written Reference for the Lyric: If a song has never been published or perhaps is out of print and one simply can not find a written reference to check the song tabs against, then your guess is as good as anyone’s really. In this case, you basically have to check it and proof it against the recording to find out how accurate it is.

Missing Lyrics and/or Chords

Another common phenomenon with free piano tabs or free tabs is that entire whole portions or sections of a song may be eliminated. It can be frustrating when this occurs so just check against the artist songbook if you have one or if one is available or check against other tab sites for that song. Speaking of which, “comparison shopping” can be a good idea with free tab sites, taking a consensus of opinion, using your own musicality as the ultimate judge again and determining which portions of a tab for any song is correct or appealing to you and which ones are not.

Along with praising God through the gospel lyrics, gospel links up with rhythm, melody, harmony and tempo. When the guitar and other instruments are added to gospel, the human psyche is more stimulated than with only singing alone. The mental, emotional and physical effects can bring on a natural euphoric feeling strong enough for a longer lasting spiritual uplift. With gospel music believed to only have been around close to a century, there are some that do not truly recognize gospel as an appropriate religious music and this is especially true when adding guitars and other instruments.

This question alone has a forever continuing debate between various religious sects differentiating between what should and should not be allowed music wise in the churches. The ones who argue against guitar picking gospel music are usually against most all types of music because of a belief in music being the work of the Devil, due to the movement and emotions music physically causes in us.

Convincing those who truly love gospel music out there though that they are doing wrong would surely not even possible. In its 100 years or so, gospel has hit its popularity heights and falls, but never to disappear completely. Gospel has touched so many areas of music through out its short history. The variations on gospel music is a wide ever changing spectrum from Sam Cooke’s smooth sounds of the 1930′s to country, pop, R&B, Hip Hop and even gospel’s very own record company category of today. With all of these types of gospel music to choose from, it is no wonder why old gospel guitar tabs are so high in demand.

So many out there today play various types of guitars and for many different reasons, old gospel guitar tabs are being searched for to be purchased by beginners and professional guitar experts alike. There are many sites dedicated to selling old gospel guitar for all types of musical mixtures of musical rhythms and instruments. But there are those who want only the original guitars for keeping their sounds to what was first written. The sites seem endless in collective old gospel guitar tabs. There are some for adults to children with many being collaborated into harder types to the easiest written types of old gospel guitar tabs available. There are many Christian and non-Christian musical shops out there to fill your needs for your favorite old gospel ones you are yearning to learn!