Guitar Tabs For Beginners: How To Play Your First Song

You’ve picked up the guitar. You may even know how to tune a guitar, and you may even know a few chords that a friend or relative may have taught you. Although you may have a few bits of information to start with, you’d really like to start playing songs. While this may sound like a difficult task to undertake, I can assure you that it’s not as difficult as it may seem. Don't let all the different numbers and letters scare or confuse you; the diagrams are almost self-explanatory in nature. In order to start playing your first song, you need to learn how to read and play tablature, or tabs as they’re more commonly called. By the end of this article, you will be able to not only read tablature, but also play your very first song.

Let’s start with a really easy song. I’ve chosen “All The Small Things” by Blink 182, because it’s quite possibly the easiest song I know how to play. I suggest that you open a new window and take a look at the tablature here:

http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/b/blink_182/all_the_small_things_tab.htm

So as you can see, here’s the entire song tabbed out for you. The strings of the guitar are shown with the Low E string on the bottom, and the rest of the strings, all the way up to the High E (e) string ascending from there. The first chord in the intro shows that you need to place your first finger on the third fret of the Low E string, while you place your other two fingers (middle and ring) on the fifth fret of the A and D strings. Now you want to strike the chord.

The next chord dictates that you shift down the neck to the first fret with your first (pointer) finger while shifting your middle and ring fingers to the third fret on the A and D strings. Once you strike these two chords, you’ll have gotten through the intro of the song.

Now that you understand how tablature works, you can move on to riff one. The first chord in riff one is the same chord pattern as the first chord in the intro, but it is shifted down a string to the A string.  The second chord follows the same pattern as the first chord.

You will notice that there are some X’s in between the 3 and the 5 in the chorus. This means that the string is muted, meaning that you don’t play that string, and the fingers that are playing the designated notes for that chord will mute that string by themselves.

You will also notice that there are the letters P.M. under a few zeros, which indicate that you should play an open string, meaning that you should not fret the string while playing it. The letters P.M. signify that you should palm mute that particular note or chord, meaning that you should roll the back of your palm onto the strings of the guitar where they come in contact with the bridge, creating a muffled sound.

The rest of the song, which includes the chorus, interlude, and the outro all follow the same structure at the intro and first chorus.

And there you have it… you now are playing your very first song. Take what you have learned here and apply it to other songs that you want to learn. Best of luck in your quest to learn how to play the guitar.