Once you begin to move beyond the basics of learning how to play guitar – open chords, major and minor chords, barre chords, strumming techniques, scales, etc. – you will most certainly want to learn guitar music and play songs on the guitar.
The question most often asked is, “where do I get started”?
The good news is that there are a lot sources to learn guitar music. If you want to learn how to play songs on the guitar here are some good ways to get going.
1. TABs
Tablature or TAB is a method of notating guitar that is unique to the instrument and does not require the ability to read music.
There are many free sources for guitar TABs on the internet and a Google search of your favorite songs will usually turn up a number of possibilities.
A word of caution. Many TABs found online can be inaccurate or incomplete and are only the contributor’s interpretation of the song, so be aware that what you are reading may not always be an exact replication of the original piece of music.
However, most TABs will give you a fairly good start on learning the main gist of the song.
2. Sheet Music
Most popular songs are offered in sheet music form and are a great way to learn guitar music.
A lot of sheet music will have the chords notated above the music staff so that you do not always have to know how to read music in order to make use of sheet music charts.
Note that a lot of sheet music is written for piano and it’s not uncommon for the piece to be transposed to a key that is easier to play for piano, so as a result, they are not always in the original key of the recording.
There are, however, many sources of sheet music written specifically for the guitar.
3. YouTube
Almost any song you can imagine can be found on YouTube.com. In fact, I use YouTube all the time to learn guitar music for cover songs that I play in various bands.
Learning songs by listening to the recording requires training your ear to “hear” chord changes, licks and riffs – but is a great way to really learn to play songs.
To Recap:
After putting all of that hard work into early days of learning guitar techniques and concepts, the next step is to learn guitar music.
Learning how to play your favorite songs on the guitar is not only a lot of fun and rewarding, but it will also give you the foundation for going to the next step on guitar which is – creating your own music!
