Guitar tabs or tablatures are one of two methods used to write down music notations, the other being sheet music. For a beginner, learning to read tabs is one of the most important skill you will ever acquire. When most beginners hear about guitar tabs they think about sheet music, which looks really complicated, but tabs and sheet notations are two different things. For starters, tabs are a lot easier to understand and they are mainly for fretted stringed instruments like guitars, bass, banjo, and many others.

When reading guitar tabs first you will see six horizontal lines which represent the guitar strings. Next thing you will notice is are little numbers written on top of the lines. This number will indicate which fret you should place your finger on. So if the number 3 is written on the bottom line, you should place your finger on the third fret on the E string. If the number zero is on the second line you should play the B string open.

Although this might look like an over simplified way to look at guitar tabs, there really isn't much more to it than that. I would recommend for all guitar players that are just starting out to learn tabs, they are easy to learn and even if it takes some time to get the hang of it, I promise its worth it.