How to Read Guitar Tablature Part 2: Chords

To understand this article you must have some knowledge in reading guitar tabs. If you do not and want to learn you can read my previous article entitled "How to Read Guitar Tablature" and that will get you started.

Open chords can be writen one of two ways in tablature. One way is notating all of the strings and the second way is to just notate the strings the chord is played on.

Here are the most basic chords written in tablature form:
e---0---------------1-----2-----0------------4-----2-----2-----0------------1-----2-----3-----3-----4-----
B---0(1)-(1)------1-----2-----1-----1-----4-----3-----3-----0------------1-----2-----3-----3-----4-----
G---2-----2--------3-----4-----0------------6-----2-----2-----1(0)-1(-)--1-----2-----0------------4-----
D---2-----2--------3-----4-----2-----2-----6-----0------------2-----2-----3-----4-----0------------6-----
A---0---------------1-----2-----3-----3-----4-----0------------2-----2-----3-----4-----0------------6-----
E---0---------------1-----2-----0------------4-----0------------0------------1-----2-----3-----3-----4-----
A(m) A(m) Bb B C C C# D D E(m) E(m) F F# G G G#

These are the basic chords that a person will need to play the guitar, but there are so many more than this. These are just the major chords. The minor chords are written for A minor and E minor.

Understanding how to read guitar tablature and escpecially the way chords are written in tab form will save so much time in learning how to play the guitar.

From my previous article, "How to Read Guitar Tablature", adding what you have learned in this article can be so very helpful. It can be helpful because when you go to read guitar tabs from a website that provides tabs for songs you will see both written. Chords may be tabbed along with single notes, so you need to know how to read both.

One thing that is good about tabs is that it keeps a guitarist from having to learn how to read music, which can be very difficult.

Guitar tabs are so universal in the guitar playing world that you can go to most guitar stores and buy either books or paper that has blank guitar tab sheets for you to write your own tabs, and also you can buy books that teach you how to play famous bands songs written in guitar tabs.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article and hope that you will get better at playing the guitar.