How To Read Guitar Tabs

There are 3 important things to know when learning guitar tabs:

1. Guitar Tabs are Upside Down 

I mention briefly in my other post on how to remember the names of the strings, that guitar tabs are upside down. This is a reminder: Guitar Tabs are presented as if YOU, the guitarist, are looking at the fret board with the guitar in your lap so the top string, which is closer to you, is now the bottom string because of your view of the fret board.

2. Your Fingers have Names and Numbers 

Tabs show a visual representation of fingers by their numbers. Those numbers are obviously 1, 2, 3, 4 because we only have 4 fingers. They also have names: Index, Middle, Ring, Pinky. This picture shows that.

3. Frets are numbers 1 to 26 

The first fret is the space between the strings coming from the neck and the metal bar (That bar is actually called the fret). This pic shows the numbers of the frets. And hey handy guitars have dots to represent frets. This is helpful for the guitarist to see where they are on the fret board and where they need to be quickly.

Here are a couple of websites to check out with free tabs:
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/
http://www.guitaretab.com/?no_takeover
http://www.guitartabs.cc/