I’ve been playing guitar for a few years now, but I still don’t read sheet music or know how to write a song using real notes. There are thousands of people out there like me who have taught themselves to play guitar using guitar tabs.
Essentially, guitar tabs are instructional pieces that show you where to place your fingers on the strings or just tell you the chords of a song and how they go with the melody and the words of a given piece of music. Guitar tabs (or tablature) help novices learn how to play songs pretty easily. Sure, there are some very difficult songs out there, but tabs provide that extra bit of accessibility many armchair acoustic guitarists are looking for.
This is my list of favorite places to find guitar tabs online. They are all free to use and have legitimate, high quality tabs that will help you master some great songs.
1) Guitar Tab Guide – This is a site that has a very personal approach and is updated quite often. It follows an acoustic guitarist who posts tabs he is learning or interested in at the moment. As a result, you get a nice mix of guitar tabs in a cool, fun package. Tabs range from Red Hot Chili Peppers, to Eric Clapton, to Jack Johnson, to Metallica, and even to country music star Taylor Swift. Search the site for all kinds of tabs and you may be happy with what you find.
2) Ultimate Guitar – Chances are if you have done a google search for guitar tabs, this site has come up at or near the top. Ultimate Guitar has been around for a long time now and attracts a lot of guitar enthusiasts every single day. The site has tons of tabs for you to use free or charge. There are some ads on the site, but that’s not a huge deal. The link at the beginning of this paragraph goes to the “top 100 songs” page, which is where you can find the most popular tabs over the last day or so. If you can’t figure out what song to play check out this resource.
3) Chordie is a site where you can search for a tab and results from many different guitar tablature sites pop up. This is a good way to not only find new tab sites, but to find versions of songs you may not have found in the Google search engine or wherever you search for tabs. If you’ve been playing tabs for a while, you know that it can be quite hard to find complete or even accurate tabs online.
4) GuitarTabs.net is a good place to find a directory of other tab sites. This is helpful because you may find a site that you really like and becomes your “home” page when it comes to tabs. Some sites have different focuses. Some only have chords for songs, while other only have transcribed tabs. Some specialize in lyrics and some have all three elements. This is a good tab site.
5) Guitar Tab Universe has a lot of tabs available. They are arranged very nicely and are easy to find. The thing that really jumps out about this site is how well-designed and user-friendly the site is. It just makes finding a tab that much easier. GTU has a blog type design, which makes it feel accessible. You can learn how to play all kind of music at this site from rock to rockabilly to classical to jazz.
That’s my list of guitar tabs websites that you should check out next time you are looking for tabs to your favorite song. If you’ve never used this kind of resource before and you are trying to learn how to play guitar, tabs will help you get to next level. Please read my other piece about how to learn to play guitar. I think it may be helpful to you.
