Guitar TAB Made Easy: Your First Step to Acoustic Playing

1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome to Guitar Tab Made Easy. My name is Chris Richter. I've been a music teacher for over 20 years. And in this class, I'm going to teach you how guitar tablature actually works. Now, guitar tablature is just like a cheap way of writing music, I guess. It shows you where to put your fingers on the guitar in relation to the frets and the strings and which finger to use. And also at the same time, it shows you the timing as well. So it's a really clever way of writing music and being able to learn music from, you know, all your favorite artists from all your favorite songs. So in guitar tab Made Easy, I have a very simple little instrumental that I'm going to teach you. At the end of this, I love it as your project if you could play a recording of yourself or record yourself playing that track, and then share that with me as well, because I love to have listen. I also love to help you out if I can in anyway. So, let's get started in guitar tab Made Easy. 2. What is guitar TAB?: Now, your first question probably is, what is guitar tableta? Well, put quite simply, guitar Tabata is just a way of writing down guitar music. Often you may not remember all of the music to a piece. And so this is a way of writing it down, just like a piano player would have their music or their shot music, to be able to play the piano. Guitar, you can do the same. I mean, you can just learn guitar without reading any music, but this helps you a lot to be able to play music a lot more accurately by reading music that's written in front of you. Now, when I say reading music, I'm not talking about reading the actual nodes because that is actually reading proper music. This is still proper music, but we call it guitar tabletu. And this is what guitar Tabature looks like. So, have a look up here. And you'll see here that we have the notes, and it looks very complicated. But what it's doing is giving you all of the strings on the guitar and telling you whereabouts on the strings of the guitar on each string that you need to put your fingers. It doesn't tell you which finger, but it tells you whereabouts. So you can see there we have the number. Three to zero. So that means at the same time, we will play those three strings. So that would be the fifth string, third string, and the second string. And we would put our fingers on the second and third fret of the third and second string. Now, don't think this is too confusing yet because I'm going to teach you all of this. And to start off with, I'm actually going to play for you the piece that you're going to learn. So let's get into it and remember that your project for this class is obviously to learn this piece record it on your phone or how you want to record and send that to me so I can have a listen to how you're progressing with your guitar playing and in this case, to see how well you've learned how to read guitar tableture. So I look forward to it. Let's get into the class and start on guitar tableture. 3. Listen to the song you will learn: Before we get into this piece, I'd like to play it for you so you can have a listen to what it sounds like. So this is the piece called Sharon, and it is a song that I wrote for my wife instrumental I wrote for her. So I hope you enjoy. I'll play just the one guitar part, the main rhythm guitar part first, and then we'll go through and have a look at how you can learn how to play this as well. Reading guitar table Ja. Here we go. There we go. That's the piece. It's called Sharon. And I'm going to take you through that in the next step. We'll look at tableture Firstly, how to read the tableture, then move on to how to apply that to the guitar and how to take a way all the way through that arrangement called Sharon. I'll see him in the next video. 4. Let's read guitar TAB: Let's look at the guitar tablet much closer. Now you'll notice we have two guitar parts here. So this is what tablet actually looks like when you see it written on a piece of music in front of you, so let's zoom in and have a look a very close look at what it does. You'll see here we have our acoustic guitar one, so that's this section along the top there. And you'll also notice that we have a treble clef and we have our sharps written up there. We have 44, which is the time signature, which is important. So this piece is played in 44, meaning four crotchet beats in a bar. So we count this or four quarter notes. We count this as one, two, three, four. So learning your timing, and I do have a class on learning how to read timing as well, so that teaches you how to read crotchets and quaves and semicuaves and how they work. So, Jon Bon have a look at that, but right at the moment, we're going to look at where with our fingers and how to read the tab part. So let's look at our tab and you'll see it's written TAB for tableture. You'll notice it has six lines. Starting at the bottom there, one, two, three, four, five, six. The six line down at the bottom is the thick string. So that's this one. String number six. You'll also notice that we have string number one. The top there. So all our strings are ordered thin a string. Number one is the string right at the top of the tab and the thick string string number six. What we then do is look at each of the numbers that are written on this. So let's look at the very first three notes that we play all at the same time. Notice they're in line with each other. So that means we play them at the same time. So zero means open string. So to play the open string, we're quite simply using our thumb, play the fifth string. So if we can't our lines down, one, two, three, four, five, one above the sixth, that's our six strings. So we play the open string, says zero, so that's open. We then need to play on the third string one, two, three, we need to play the second fret that number two means fret number two. And that's what the numbers do. They tell you which fret along the guitar you are going to put your fingers. It doesn't tell you which fingers to use. I'll show you which ones I use, but you can use different fingering if you like. It doesn't tell you that. It just shows you whereabouts on the guitar you're going to play it. So third string, second fret. And then we also have, and I'm using my second finger for this. But we also have your the a third fret on the second string. So you can see there third string, second. Third fret, second string. Or if you want to read word it the other way, we've got our second fret on the third string and our third fret on the second string. We play all of those at once. So our open string played at the same time as two and the three on our second and third strings. So that's the very first part of the piece that we're going to play. And again, you can play that in different ways. I'll show you what they are first, and then I'll show you how I do my fingering to make it easier for me to play. You can decide how you want to do it. So we're working on the first section of what it actually means and what it sounds like, but I don't want you to actually learn to play it all the way through yet. I just want to show you some bits along the way to show you how the tableure is read. Now, just the first two notes or first three notes. So we've got a second and third. Then you'll notice it goes down to 022. So to do that, we just move it back to the open string still, and the second fret on the third string, second fret on the second string. And that looks like that, so we can go. Now, just to be really tricky and running at the first bar, the next one is the fifth threat, which is going to be too difficult to reach like that the fingers don't reach there, we could try it like this and reach up to the fifth fret on the first string. So there's the fifth, there's that number five written up the top there. You see that. To play it. Easier, I find it much, much easier to play like this. And then that way, the little finger is already up there and waiting to play the fifth fret. Fifth threat on the first string. And notice I'm playing three strings together. Then I'm playing three strings together again. And then I'm using the single I'm actually using this finger here. Okay, to play the fifth fret on the first string. So that's the first part. So what you've learned there is what the numbers mean. So the zero is an open string, two will be on the second fret, three is on the third fret, and the lines mean each string. Now the next important part, obviously, is the timing. So when we were playing this timing, you'll see there it has written the dotted crotchet, and a dotted crotchet means it goes for 1.5 beats. Then you'll see that after that, we have a dotted crotchet tied to another crotchet. And if this sounds all foreign to you and confusing, that's okay. The counting for it will be one and two and three, and four and so you play one and two, and three, and four and. So if you can follow that timing with each of those beats, it will sound like this one and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three and four and Well play a bit faster. Oh one and two and three and four and two and three and four and. So that's our timing for that 1 bar. So the important thing is with tab, we know the lines, we know that the lines mean the strings, we know the numbers mean the frets. We now know that the timing that's written on there is showing you whether it's a crotch at a quaver or a semiquaver and that timing is important to learn how to count your timing and how to read the timing as well. So it's a combination of all of those things that make up what guitar tableture actually is. So now we're going to start working on how to play this piece. 5. Learning bars 1 and 2: Going to divide this piece into a couple of sections. It's really into four sections, and that way, we can sort of go through it without too much hassle and it'll keep it fairly simple for us. So the first section is really going to be just the first 2 bars. And then we'll move on to the second section being the next 2 bars. And then we'll go into quite a few bars further along because that sort of repeats nearly the same, and we'll divide the second half into two, as well. So don't panic about it yet. I'll show you as we go through. So starting our guitar tabletu. We have our open string with our thumb. It's the open fifth string. That's the first zero. We have our third string, second fret, and our third fret, second string. And remember the way I showed you that I play it is to put my finger across. Now, it's based on an A chord. In this case, it's an A suspended fourth, back to an A. So suspended fourth is actually the Dne. It's the denote there. We're playing A with the extra note and then back to an A. And that gives us our first two parts to the first fret. So the zero, two, and three, zero, 22. We play that together. And that's the first two notes or the first two group of notes that we need to play, which is really a chord. So we're playing these as chords. And then adding in the fifth fret on the first strings the extra note. And what we've done there just by learning that little bit is learn the first 2 bars cause the first 2 bars, just repeat it. So let's try that again. One, two, three, or one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Got that bid down. If you're not sure, you might need to go back and go through this little section a couple of times, just so you can work it out, so one last go at it, we'll slow it down a little bit more. One, three, and four and one and two, and three and four. One and two, and three and four. One and two, three, and four and one and two, and three and four. And Got that. Nice and simple. Let's move on to the next stage. 6. Learning bars 3 and 4: For this next stage, we're looking at bars three and bars four. That's all we're going to look at for this, and then we'll put all of that together at the end and play the first 4 bars. So this gets a little more complicated. You'll notice there that it says second second fret on the fifth string, second fret again on the third string, and then third fret on the second string. So it's very similar to the first how we started before, except this time we're using this second frut on the fifth string instead of the open. So let's try that. That's our first three notes played together, which is sort of an A suspended fourth chord with a B bass note. Then we're going to change this to the fourth. Now, this is a bit of a jump. And when I say the fourth, it's actually the fourth fret on the fifth string, which is up here. And this is going to be a big jump for most people. We need to play that note there, and we also need to play the second and second second frets on the second and third strings. So we're looking for this. Which is technically an A chord with a C sharp base. Sounds like that. So all of these fit into cords, and I will show you what the cords are after this, as well. But we'll keep working on the tab first, and I'll add the cords in for you as well later. So let's go back again. We've got our second, second and third. So this is a started ban number three. And there's a few different ways you can do that. So you can jump from our second fret on the fifth string, and our second fret on the third string, third fret on the second string. Back up to here, or we can keep those down here and move our finger up like that. I tend to play it like this. Mainly because I can keep this finger all the way across, add in the extra third, and then just move this down one and move my third finger up. So it's just that one jump. While we're there, let's move on to the end of that bar, which is three, two, two, or in this case, three, two, two, or if you want to change fingers again, three, two, two. And notice these are notes one after the other. So we're not playing them at the same time. It's just like a little run. Down like that. So it's third fret on the second string, which is where we started right at the beginning, second fret on the third string and second fret on the fourth string. And that is our third bar. We're going to move straight into the fourth bar to do that. We slide up to the fifth fret. And we're going to fifth fret on the fifth string. Then we put our next finger on the fourth fret of the fourth string. Then we have an open string. Then we have our third third fret on the second string, and then our little finger, if you can see it under here. Play there, third fret. On F string down here. So what you actually have here to make it really easy to remember is a C chord shape. So there's our C cord. We've moved that up to frets, which gives us a decord shape with our extra little finger added on top there. That gives us an A note. And that's what it looks like. So this is gonna take quite a bit of practice to do this section. So I'll play it through for you. Now, remember we're using our second finger so it can actually position like this. You got to be careful about muting other strings, there. Sorry about that. That's what it sounds like those 2 bars. Let's go again. Second finger on the fourth string. Sorry, second finger on the fifth string. Second fret. Second fret, second bar. Third bar. Second fret. Fifth string. Start that little bit again. We are right. I'm going to use my first finger. I'm gonna put that on the fifth string, second fret. Next finger on the third string, second fret, and the next one on the second string, third fret. That gives us that sound. Now we jump to our fourth with our two fingers back here, sort of barring that. And then adding my middle finger there, second finger. Into the third string, second one. So we've got three, two, one going down our second, third and fourth strings. And then because my finger was already here just before that, I tend to just slide that up one and do our C shape with the extra little Gne A note up the top e. So it's a C shape, but starting on D. And with our right hand, we're just playing on, so thumb, thumb, finger finger finger. Like that. Okay. One, two, three, four, five. From me out on that angle, you can see a little better. Just like that. So let's play that again. And that's those 2 bars, that's bars three and bars four. Let's try to tempo. One and two and three and four, and I'll start with the um though No ya. One and two, and three and four, and it's probably a little bit fast for you, so let's slow it down. One and two and three and four. One and two, three, four, and one and two, and three and four, and. Still pretty quick, isn't it? Slow it down a bit more? One and two and three, and four and one and two, and three, and four and one, two, three, and four, and one more time. One and two and three and four, and one and two and three, and four and one and two, and three and four, and. 7. Play through bars 1 to 4: We're now going to play through the first 4 bars so you can hear the transition between the first 2 bars and the next 2 bars. So let's give this a go. Here we go. One and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three and four, and one and two and three, and four and one. And again, one and two and three, and four and one and two, three. And that's our first 4 bars, under four. 8. Learning bars 9 and 10: We are now going to jump down to bar number nine. Now if you are using the PDF document, which there is a download there for you earlier on in the class. We're actually on page number two. So it's the first 2 bars of page number two. If you haven't already downloaded the PDF, feel free to go back and grab that, and you may find that easier to follow if using the PDF document rather than trying to follow along on the screen while the videos playing as well. So let's have a look. This part changes quite a bit now. It's the first 2 bars, bars nine and ten are the same thing repeated. But with this, we need to use our thumb for two strings. So the way we're going to pick this using our right hand, pick, or using our fingers is to play the fifth and fourth string with your thumb one after the other. So you notice the notes, just repeat one after the other without us actually having to to play multiple notes at the same time. So they're all quavers, it'll be one and two, and playing on each one of those beats all the way through the bar. So let's sort where our fingers go with our left hand. My we're going again use our thumb for strings five and four and other fingers for the rest of the strings. For our left hand, first of all, we have an open string. Then we have number seven. So open string on the fifth string on the fourth string, we're on fret number seven. If you're not sure where fret number seven is, I'll look on your guitar. And you'll see there that we have some dots. On there, they should be three, five and seven is where they will mark for you. So it makes it easier to find. Open string on the fourth string on fifth string, seventh fret. So three, five, seven on the four string. And then the third string is using this finger here. We have our second finger on the one, two, three, third string, sixth thread. So this is where our two fingers gag. Now, to play this, if we have a look at our music at our tab, we've got open string. Then we've got number seven, seventh threat, and that's basically using our thumb. So it's thumb, thumb. And then all we need to do is use our fingers one after the other. Notice where that's sitting, you can see my fingers sitting in there, one string each. So we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Back to our thumb. We'll play that through twice. So let's try that. One and two, and three and four, and one and two and three, and four and one and two. Right. Four and one and two, and three and four, and one and two and three and four, and. So practice that. That's the next stage. So the fourth section of what we have to learn. We have one more section to learn, then we'll be able to play the whole thing all the way through. Because quite a bit of it repeats, which makes it much, much easier for you. So practice that again. Remember, thumb, thumb. We don't need to worry about changing our left hand. It stays there all the way through these 2 bars, thumb, thumb, and then we're using our three fingers on the right hand, and then back down again. Try and keep that nice and even one and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three and four. Let's practice that, and we'll jump on to the next edge. 9. Learning bars 11 and 12: This next section is bars 11 and 12. So remember, top of the second page, the last 2 bars and the top line. And to play this, this is actually really easy because I'm going to show an easy way to remember where to put your fingers. The first thing is to make C cord shape. Now, you already know what a C cord shape is. So if you play a Schord, what we're going to do is play a C chord, but instead of using our first finger back here on the second string, first fret, we're going to use our fourth finger a little finger down here on the second string on the third fret. And if we make a C cord, shape like that instead, still a C, but with the extra finger down here, now have a look at the notes that we have on our guitar tab. The notes on our guitar tab. Ah, third fret on the fifth string, second fret on the fourth string, open string, third fret on the second string. That's your little finger, and then an open string. So it's using a C chord slightly changed. It's a C chord with a denote added. And if we play it through, it will look like this. I'll be thumb, thumb, finger finger, finger. So it's one and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three and four and. That part's easy. What we do next is we slide that up two frets, and that gives us the fifth fret now. On the fifth string, fifth threat, fifth string. The fourth threat on the fourth string, open string again. So still get that open sound. Then we have our little finger now on the fifth threat, which is what it says there, fifth threat, second string, and then the open string. So to play this, it'll be thumb, thumb, finger, finger, finger on the right hand. So to play the 2 bars, slide back again to our C shape, but with the little finger on the second string. And we go one and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three and four, slide up, one and two, and three and four, and that's it. Nice and simple, isn't it? Let's try that once more. So, third fret, fifth string. Second fret on the fourth string, open string. Then we'll have our third fret, second string, which is a little finger, then an open string again. And then we slide up two frets to do the next one, so here we go. Three and four and one and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three and four, and we can let that ring all the way through. That's quite okay. Works really well for this. Let's just jump back now and play bars nine, ten, 11 and 12, all in a row one after the other. And that will be the final section of what we need to learn for guitar part one. 10. Play thorough bars 9 to 12: So here we go. We've got our fingers up here on the seventh. Here we go. Three and four and one and two, and three and four and one and two, three, and four and one and two, and three and four, and Back again, one and two, and three and four and one and two, and three and four and one and two and three, four, one and two, and three and four, and. So there we go. That was playing through bars nine, ten, 11 and 12, and then repeating that as well, which is actually what we have 4 bars 13, 14, 15, 16. 11. Guitar part 2 learning bars 1 to 4: Let's look at the second guitar part. So remember the first part sounds like this. Underneath that is another guitar part that is the second guitar part that plays along with this. Now, let's look at the guitar tab that's written there. It says to play the seventh and then the fifth fret on the second string. So seventh to fifth. So it'll sound like this. One, two, and three and four, and one and two, and three. Then up to the fifth So that's the first 2 bars. I'll try the in seven, five, on the second string, and then fifth on the first string. So one and two and three, and four and one and two and three, and four and one and two, and three and four, and Okay, under the third bar. Third bar, again, is actually pretty straightforward, too. It is the second fret on the first string. And for this one, it's a little bit quicker. It's using quas. So I would say, da da, da, da, da, da. Here we go, second, third, second, open, then third, then third on the second string. So if we count this out, three and four, and one and two and three, and four and four and. And I'll do that again correctly with the counting for you. One and two and three and four. And one and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three and four. Do that again. Three and four and one and two, and three and four, and and try that again. Three and four and one and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three. And four and so let's play that all the way through the first 4 bars. Now, remember, it goes over the top of this part, which is we've got So that's the second guitar part, first 4 bars. Second 4 bars are exactly the same. The same thing played over again over that. Let's just have a quick look, seven and five on the second string. Back up to the fifth fret on the first. So the Indian, second. Now, the only difference is the last note goes back up to the fifth fret. So we go, second, third, second, open, third, then up to the fifth on the first string. Got that. Again. Starts two, three, and then we've got two notes right at the end that lead into the next phrase. And that is on the third string, we've got a two second friend and a four. Okay, so two to four. And then we're jumping into the very next phrase. 12. Guitar part 2 learning bars 9 to 12: So when we start the next phrase, we'll actually start with that two and the four. So it goes two, four, six. And just the way I like to play it is to start on with your first finger, third finger for the four, and then slide up to the six because it just sounds nice. So Denton, D, two, three, four, one, two, three, and again. And the sg to the sixth, we go to the five. Yeah, I just kept playing that three for you so you can see what it actually looks like. And the music there. But let's go back and play it. So we started with our second to the fourth. This is all on the third string. So two, four, slide up to six, and then repeat that. Ist game to six, we go to five. Then we've got this little run that starts on three, three, five, three, one open, and then we're down to the third string, second fret. If we keep going even further, it repeats a little bit of that. It holds that second for quite a while. It's for a bar, and then there's a gap. And then on the 14th bar, right at the very end, we have a two and a four to a five with that same. And then we hold it there, and that's it. So if we were to play that whole second phrase all the way through, it would sound like this. One, two, three, two, three. Oh two, three, four, one, two, three. Two, three, four, and then we're right back to the very start again. Back to that. Okay. So that's the melody for the second guitar part. And just to help you out, I'll play the track for you just after this with the first guitar part, and I'll overlay the second guitar part all the way through and play it through for you fairly slowly so that you can listen to the whole piece in one go with both guitar parts. Then hopefully it will make complete sense to you and you can use that in your baking track. So for the backing tracks, I will make it that there is three backing tracks at one tempo, three backing tracks at different tempos for you to practice the first guitar part, and then three more backing tracks at different tempos, with the first guitar part on there, and you can then play the second one with it. So hopefully, that all makes sense, but I'll put them all in the name, so it will be really easy for you to find. I hope you found that logical, sensible and easy, and you can now understand a little bit about how Tableture works and how to read tablet and where you need to place your fingers on the guitar when you're following tablature. Remember, you do need to learn things like music theory as in timing, so you know what the difference between crotchets and quavers and all that type of thing are. So make sure you spend a bit of time learning that as well, because it will make it so much easier for you and obviously, learning what the actual notes are on the guitar will certainly benefit you in the long run, but it is not essential for you to be able to play guitar. Let's move on to the practice Drakes. 13. Practice track for guitar part 1 at 70 bpm: [No Speech] 14. Practice track for guitar part 1 at 90 bpm: [No Speech] 15. Practice track for guitar part 1 at 110 bpm: [No Speech] 16. Practice track for guitar part 2 at 70 bpm: [No Speech] 17. Practice track for guitar part 2 at 90 bpm: [No Speech] 18. Practice track for guitar part 2 at 110 bpm: [No Speech] 19. Congratulations: Congratulations on completing guitar tap made easy. Well done. Did very well to get through that. Hopefully, it was fairly easy. I'd love to hear your feedback as well on what you thought of the class. But also, now that you've learned guitar tape, you can get on with learning so many new fantastic pieces. So again, congratulations. Look forward to hearing you playing, and I'll see you in the next class.