Guitar tabs are seen by learning guitar players as an easy way to start playing guitar right away. That is true but it is wrong to think that guitar tablature just needs to be read. Guitar tabs are standardized, but various publishers of sheet music may use different styles writing guitar music.

Guitar tabs are a form of musical notation that tell the player where to put his or her fingers on the guitar neck, rather than what note and pitch to play. Many believe that guitar tabs are a new form of writing music, but in actuality tabs have been used for centuries.

Guitar tabs are written with the highest string at the top and since most people would expect tabs to written from top to bottom instead of the other way around, it can be difficult. In actuality, guitar tabs are written from the highest to lowest and the numbers on each line represent the guitar fret. Guitar tabs are much like sheet music but they are for those who can not read notes.

Chord diagrams for acoustic guitars are similar to guitar tabs for electric guitars however they are slightly different. While guitar tabs are printed side-to-side (horizontally), acoustic guitar chord diagrams are vertical (top to bottom). Chords can best be described as a grouping of notes that are played together, usually strummed. This requires some patience and one of the simplest ways to get playing quickly is learning guitar “tabs”.

Guitar tabs, unlike sheet music denote where each note is played by demonstrating the proper placement of your fingers. When you are learning how to read guitar tabs, the first thing you will likely notice is that each tab has six lines as opposed to the five seen in sheet music - these six lines represent the six strings of a guitar.