Free Guitar Tabs - How to Find and Use Them

• November 22, 2016
• Guitar Lessons

Tablature for guitar is a wonderful way to learn your favorite song or pick out a riff or solo part you can’t quite make out from the recording. Depending on who’s doing the tabbing, though, you can get anywhere from a perfect tablature to a hit and miss version. For example, the ones you find in popular guitar magazines are usually spot on and great detail is given to the work, but some of the ones you randomly pull off the Internet are sketchy at best. Sometimes, they are just wrong altogether. First, you need to educate yourself on how tablature works, then you can best use free guitar tabs for learning new material.

How To Use Tablature

When you don’t read notation and you just wanna learn the lick or song the right way, many turn to tablature. You’re looking at the six strings of the guitar from your perspective. The bottom line is the low E string or sixth string and the top line is the little E string or first string.

So, from the bottom line to the top is E, A, D, G, B, E. When it’s a single number on a line, it’s a single note being played on that string. For example a 3 on the top line would be a little G3. A “0” on any line is that string’s open note. However, when it’s a stack of numbers, it’s a double stop or chord. For example, a 2 stacked on lines 2, 3, and 4 would be an A major chord. Meaning you strike those strings simultaneously.

Where it gets tricky is the bending, pulling, hammering, and sliding. There are lot of symbols you should take the time to learn so you can be very efficient at reading tablature. The thing that tablature doesn’t afford you is the feel of the music. You would need to listen to the lick or part you’re learning several times from the recording to try and match what’s on the tablature and vice versa. Tablature is an awesome way to remember an intro riff or solo on your gig. Just add tab lines to your chart and write out the lick so you can glance at it during the performance.

Websites with Free Guitar Tabs

We know that anything labeled as “free” can sound too good to be true. While there are a few websites on this list that honestly mean that, others will offer you some kind of trial period before making you commit. If you know that going in, you might save yourself a headache or two.

GuitareTAB is a comprehensive guitar tab site with over 200,000 songs on it and it’s pretty simple. Just type in your song title or band and print. Some of the sites are truly free or at least offer a free period but end up costing you. GuitareTAB has a very clean and navigable website that should keep things easy.

Guitar Tab Universe is a sweet guitar tab site which offers free guitar tabs, but also offers more if you sign up. It’s very simple. Just enter part or all of the name of the song and up it comes. There are also tutorials and very cool learning tools if you member up.

Guitar World is one of the most popular guitar magazines out there. Their website is a very cool where you can just learn licks by your favorite guitar hero. Like some of the others on this list, you can go deeper if you want to sign up. If you want to keep it casual, you can flirt around with the home page and learn some cool riffs and tabs. They also have a demo for you to try out.

Songsterr has a very smooth site and offers lots of free songs and licks. As you can see from the very first link shared in this post, they offer to teach you how to read tab and step by step lessons too. We love that they also offer you the ability to modify the tab and make corrections. Songsterr’s the bomb!

Guitar Nick offers some free guitar tabs to awesome songs you’ll want to learn. “One hundred easy beginners guitar songs” wouldn’t be a bad place to start. Reading tab is pretty easy but these super simple tunes will help get your confidence up before tackling “Eruption” by Van Halen or some other complicated piece of music.

We like the guys at Tabs4Acoustic too. Basically, any site that gives you immediate access to songs and licks is good with us. We are talking free here. There’s nothing wrong with paying for a service that you’re using, but we know it’s nice to get freebies here and there. If you like a company and what they offer, you may want to consider investing in their business with some kind of monthly subscription.

As for how to use free guitar tabs, all of these sites offer a tutorial or instruction of some kind as to how to use their stuff. Our recommendation is to first learn some basics on how to read tablature and then find a site that offers what you really want to learn. Then subscribe and start learning each and every song or part until you can play it exactly as demonstrated.

As you learn each song and build your own library of song knowledge, your abilities as a guitarist will improve dramatically and exponentially. As your hand strength builds, you will play more. As you play more, you will become hungrier for better or more challenging music.

Keep your focus! Learn as many styles as you can. There are specific sites if you just wanna focus on a certain style. For example, there are sites devoted to just metal or country or blues. Whatever you do, do it with all your might and don't stop until you master it.

Finally, there are dozens of sites for learning guitar. Search engines will pull up hundreds and it’s a bit overwhelming. Maybe some of the ones mentioned above will help. We recommend you download the latest version of Guitar Pro and learn to do your own tabs too. There are also tabs available from users all over the world for Guitar Pro. Get out there and find your free guitar tabs. Whatever makes you a better guitar player, stick with it.

At Pro Lessons, we know the importance of getting a well-rounded education. Whether you’re the kind of guitarist who likes to forge his own path or the musician who wants to do everything by the book, taking lessons from professional guitar players who have come before you is a great resource to invest in.

With experienced instructors and affordable rates, we think Pro Lessons might just be the missing piece to your arsenal. Click on the link below for more information.