The Last Stretch: Guitar Tabs, Chords and Some Music Playing

There's 2 basic ways to learn how to play music with a guitar: tabs and chords. Basic things to know about tabs:


-TABS is the easiest way to communicate music notation on the guitar
-The lines represent the strings on a guitar
-The numbers (0-5) represent the FRET numbers you press on with your fingers.


Basic things to know about CHORDS:

-Chord diagrams are upright pictures of the guitar neck
-The numbers represent which fingers you should use
-The "X" means don't play this string, the "O" means to play the string open

I began an exercise where I played a series of basic guitar tabs, utilizing both a finger picking and strumming techniques. I did this for about 5 times at 20 seconds long, just so I can get a feel for how to properly play guitar tabs and chords...and to be honest, I can't really tell a big difference. I'll admit I enjoy the sound of both techniques and will definitely play both ways when I begin to write songs.


I probably messed up four or five times on each technique and maybe one or two of my attempts were flawless. I definitely need to practice more.


After I went through these playing techniques I started combining both techniques simultaneously and felt like I was improving my playing style.


Ideally, I would like to learn the actual guitar notes, which is the proper way to read music but the next best thing is studying guitar tabs and chords.