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The Pentatonic scale is giving me lots to study right now. I started off working with the Am (that’s the A minor) scale on the fifth fret. That one seems to be the easiest of the five pentatonic box patterns.

I have that Pentatonic scale pattern pretty much down. I know it, and can play it pretty consistently… although I wouldn’t mind playing it a lot faster. And that same pentatonic pattern can be moved around the neck. For instance if you play it at the 12th fret (12th position), then you are playing it in E. And if you play it all the way down the neck at the open position, you are also playing it in E. That’s all I know for now… but I am sure you can play the same pattern in other places on the neck.

The other pattern I learned was the G major pattern at the 5th fret. This one is a little tougher, because you are actually playing it over a total of five frets (instead of four frets with that Am box I mentioned above.) That means you are going to be moving your fingers around a little more.

All in all, it seems like some very useful stuff… all of a sudden I am playing some leads. It’s sorta amazing to me (as a complete novice still) that without knowing more than a couple of simple pentatonic box patterns, I can be playing lead guitar. Now that doesn’t mean my leads sound all that great… but at least they technically belong.

01. Green Day Guitar Tabs - Wake Me Up When September Ends tab
02. James Blunt Guitar Tabs - Youre Beautiful Chords
03. Led Zeppelin Guitar Tabs - Stairway To Heaven Tabs
04. Christmas Guitar Tabs - Jingle Bells Tabs
05. James Blunt Guitar Tabs - Youre Beautiful Tabs
06. Lynyrd Skynyrd Guitar Tabs - Sweet Home Alabama Tabs
07. Green Day Guitar Tabs - American Idiot Album Tabs
08. Eric Clapton Guitar Tabs - Tears In Heaven Tabs
09. Fall Out Boy Guitar Tabs - Sugar Were Going Down Tabs
10. Guns N Roses Guitar Tabs - Sweet Child O Mine Tabs
11. Christmas Guitar Tabs - Jingle Bells Rock Tabs
12. Eagles Guitar Tabs - Hotel California Tabs
13. Weezer Guitar Tabs - Perfect Situation Chords
14. System Of A Down Guitar Tabs - Hypnotize Tabs
15. Metallica Guitar Tabs - Nothing Else Matters Tabs
16. AC DC Guitar Tabs - Back In Black Tabs
17. Extreme Guitar Tabs - More Than Words Tabs
18. System Of A Down Guitar Tabs - Byob Tabs
19. Metallica Guitar Tabs - Fade To Black Tabs
20. Lifehouse Guitar Tabs - You And Me tabs

Those are the Top 20 most requested guitar tabs, according to Ultimate Guitar.

So I went looking for Guitar chord charts today. This was spurred by me not knowing the B7 chord - yesterday I was looking up Christmas songs (in particular, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen chords). Turned out it was a simple song, but it had the B7 chord… which I didn’t know. Now I don’t have a chord chart… so I went running off to look it up online, and I found my favorite guitar chord site (more on that later.) But that didn’t quite do it for me, I decided that I needed to have a…

Guitar chord chart - how cool would it be to have a nice wall chart in my practice room. Or even better, a nice laminated chord chart that folded up and went into my guitar case. Of course, I have actually seen guitar chord computers out there, but I was more interested in a chart - something I could hold and look at. So I went looking for something that fit along these lines… and a free guitar chord chart would be even better.

Here’s a series of free guitar chord charts at this link. However, it is spread out over a whole bunch of pages. A good start, but not exactly what I had in mind. Nevertheless, you could print this out and it should come out nice. Wouldn’t make much of a guitar chord poster though.

But take a look at this chord chart… this is starting to look a bit more like it.

That’s it for now… dinner time. But I will continue my search for the perfect guitar chord chart.

File under: guitar chord chart,
guitar chords

Looking for Christmast guitar chords - I got my guitar last Christmas, which means a lot of things… like I am coming up on my first year anniversary of playing guitar. It also means this is my first Christmas season with a guitar. So it has me thinking about playing some Christmas songs.

So I went looking for Christmas guitar chords just now. Of course, there are plenty of them out there… as I have mentioned before, I really don’t know how guitar players survived before the Internet. There are so many online sources of guitar tabs and chords, I still can’t believe it. However, this was a little different - I mean some of my favorite tab sites didn’t seem like they would be the perfect place to find Christmas tabs… so I searched around to find some other sources. And of course, I found them…

Here are a couple of interesting sites I found that are targetting Christmas guitar chords and tabs:

Tabworld’s Misc Christmast guitar chords

PJ’s Christmast songs

Wholenote Christmast guitar tabs

I am sure there are a bunch more… that is just a start. My daughter is working on “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” on piano - maybe I will be able to play along with here if I get working on the guitar chords.

File under: Christmas guitar chords,
Christmas guitar tabs

Blues scale guitar riff - I just found a cool resource. Personally, I sure struggle with getting a blues sound out of my guitar. Of course, a big part of that is that I am still a beginner. But for some reason I can read about blues scales and blues chords, but when I play stuff it just doesn’t sound like the blues. So I am sort of excited about this book I just found - it seems to do a good job of explaining how to get a good blues scale riff going on my guitar.

The thing with the typical blues guitar scale riff is that you can look at the notes and play the notes, but there is more to simply picking those notes to getting a blues sound out of your guitar. And I am not talking about electric guitar here and setting up everything right. I am talking about a basic acoustic guitar. In any case, this book does a good job of explaining why this is so. I don’t want to give a complete blues scale lesson here (in fact, I am completely unqualified to do anything like that.) But if you are interested in the blues scale or doing any blues riffing on your guitar, then check out this resource.

Here is the link for for the blues scale guitar riff book. Actually, the best thing is that you can download a big chunk of this book for free. Enough to decide if you want to buy it.

File under: blues guitar scale,
blues guitar riff

OK, I am not the biggest country music fan… but Folsom Prison Blues is not your average country song. It is a really killer song, and I would love to learn to play it on my guitar“>. No problem… right? The guitar chords are super easy, even for a beginner like me.

The real problem is in the strum pattern, at least for me. However, I found a killer video online that shows a couple of different ways to do the strum pattern for Folsom Prison Blues.

This isn’t a professional video, it is just guy with a blog and a video camera. The video shows how to do the alternating bass picking strum style (also known as Carter picking). It is really cool, even though I am still struggling to really get the technique down.

In fact, there are really two videos… one that gives a pretty simple guitar strum pattern, and one that gives an even simpler pattern. Be sure to check it out.

Everyone is looking for guitar tabs (which is short for guitar tablature). I have found some of the best guitar tab resources on the internet. And by the way, I don’t know what guitarists did before the internet. All of a sudden a budding guitar player can find tabs for all kinds of songs… and you can find them almost instantly.

OK, let’s get back to guitar tabs. I really like going out and tabs for the songs I want to play. Some of the best web sites actually have multiple tabs for many songs. And if a song is performed by different artists, the tabs might be slightly different. And if you are looking for bass tabs, guitar tabs, or guitar chords… well you can often find them as well. So let’s get on with it… where do you find tabs?

Well, one of my favorites for guitar tabs is ultimate-guitar. This site has a nice search function, and the search results can be done by song title or artist. One nice feature is that the tabs are “rated” by the users… so when you get a whole bunch of search results (say you are looking for the tab for “Heart Of Gold") you can see which ones people really liked.

Another good place for guitar tabs is OLGA - the Online Guitar Archive. This site is amazing… you have to check it out for yourself.

guitar, guitar tabs, guitar chords

Learn guitar - this is all about learning how to play the guitar… I have been on this quest since I got my guitar for Christmas just four months ago. I went from struggling to play the most basic guitar chords to actually making early struggling attempts at barre chords.

Mind you, this learn guitar odyssey has been slow going for me - I am not a musical genius. In fact, I cannot play any other musical instrument. I am struggling to learn guitar - it does not come easy. However, I have learned how to play the basic chords - the ones that they call campfire chords, or open chords.

But this is the deal - while I learn guitar, I am having an awful lot of fun. I usually take 15 to 30 minutes out the day and just bang away at the chords… mostly just C, D, G (those are the basics that every needs to master when they are learning how to play guitar - if you know those three, there are an awful lot of songs you can play.) I also love the other easy guitar chords such as Em, Am, A, E, and F.

That F chord is one of the first real hurdles when you are learing guitar. I am now about 70% of the way there on the F chord.

learn guitar

I am pretty excited about learning guitar chords. I mean the whole finger picking thing and flat picking thing seem cool, but if I learn guitar chords… well I am pretty sure I can be playing songs in a matter of days or weeks.

This is the deal, if I learn the basic guitar chords - often called the open chords - then I can play a lot of songs. I am talking about the D chord and G chord and C chord. If I have those down then I can play the basic 1-4-5 chord progression… and look out, there are all kinds of 1-4-5 chord songs.

Now it might sound like I know a lot about guitar chords, and guitar playing in general… but I really don’t have a clue. I just started a few months ago, and I have exactly zero musical talent. And believe me, I am not just being modest. I really am slow at this stuff. But when you just have to learn to play three chords to be able to start playing songs… well that is achievable by just about anyone.

There are some other useful guitar chords to learn off the bat. I like the Em chord (that is the E minor chord). I like it because I like the sound of it, and because this might be the easiest chord there is to play. The Am is another chord that is easy and sounds cool. Then there is the F chord… every beginner’s nemisis (including me). But if you just keep banging away on it, you will get it.

learn guitar chords

I get lots of comments and feedback from visitors, and one request I keep getting is for Christian guitar tabs and chords. Of course, a C chord is a C chord, and a D chord is a D chord… whether they are played by a Christian or non-Christian.

But this request is not really for Christian guitar chords… but for guitar tabs for Christian songs…

As usual, the Internet is the guitarist’s best friend, and it didn’t fail me in this search for Christian guitar tabs. After spending some time searching, I came up with some great resources for tabs for the Christian guitarist (and for the guitarist looking to play Chistian songs.

I even found lots of great resources for free Christian guitar tabs. Here are some of the resources I found:

Christian Guitar Resources is a site that has chords and tabs to hundreds of Christian songs. The search function is a bit week… it uses a form of Google search, but you can’t specify if you are searching for a specific song or a specific artist. Nevertheless, there is a lot at this site for the Christian guitar player.

Here is another site that seems to have lots of Christian tabs and Christian guitar resources. It doesn’t look quite as big, but it does seem to have a better search function. Check this one out for some cool resources.

I also found another site that seems like it would be good for Christian guitar tabs, however, it doesn’t have free tabs. The site claims that it had free tabs for five years, but they now charge for access. What is up with that?

Wow, do I love these guitar tabs. I haven’t been playing guitar all that long, but I am already hooked on all the free guitar tabs that you can find on the Internet. This is the simple formula for doing so…

You can find the guitar tabs for just about any song you want by typing the song title into your favorite search engine (such as Google, or Yahoo, or MSN) and then putting the phrase “guitar tab” after the song title.

The thing about guitar tabs is that there are good ones and some not so good ones. That is one reason I really like Ultimate Guitar… they actually have rankings of the tabs. You can see what other visitors thought of the various tabs. This is especially helpful when there are various versions of a guitar tab for a given song.

One really nice guitar tab I found was for “Rockin’ In The Free World” by Neil Young. This tab went way beyond the call of duty - it had extensive notes on the strum patterns. Not THAT is really useful. All of a sudden I went from playing a few chords to actually having something that sounded like a song!

You have just got to love free guitar tabs. I have been on a search for guitar tablature since I got my guitar on Christmas day… and I have really gotten hooked on free guitar tabs.

I have found lots of sites with guitar tabs for free. And I have a list of them built up that I am going to post.

When I really got the guitar but was this past October, sitting around the campfire on a river trip. I think it is sort of funny how people talk about campfirYou have just got to love free guitar tabs. I have been on a search for guitar tablature since I got my guitar on Christmas day… and I have really gotten hooked on free guitar tabs.

I have found lots of sites with guitar tabs for free. And I have a list of them built up that I am going to post.

When I really got the guitar but was this past October, sitting around the campfire on a river trip. I think it is sort of funny how people talk about campfire chords - somewhat disparagingly - and those are the chords that hooked me and convinced me to get a guitar.

Anyway, of of the folks on that river trip that was playing guitar said “you can get the guitar tabs for any song you want online for free". I didn’t know what he meant at the time - I didn’t even know what tabs were.

But now that I have learned all about chords, and tabs, and such… I know what he means - there are free guitar tabs all over the place. Sometimes I just go to google and do a search for the song name and then add in “guitar tab".

For instance, if I am searching for a tab for “Stairway to Heavan", I will do a search like “Stairway to Heavan guitar tab” or “Stairway to Heavan free guitar tab". Bingo, that usually lands me my free guitar tab.

I just love easy guitar tabs… the question is how to find them. There are lots of great tab sites (I have already written about some of my favorites here). And plenty of those sites have easy guitar tabs (ie, tablature).

Those sites usually let you search their tabs for a given song or a given artist. Those search facilities are truly great… it is amazing how many songs you can find really fast. Whenever I spend five minutes there, I find so many songs I want to play… well it is just incredible. But inevitably, I end up searching through those songs looking for easy guitar tabs - lots of those songs are songs I want to play… far fewer are songs I can play.

What I would really like is an “easy guitar tabs” site - the best would be a site where I put in the chords I can or I want to play, and the search engine spits out the songs that can be played with those chords. For instance, I love the Em (e minor). I love the way it sounds and I think it is the easiest chord to play. The C chord is a close second. And the G chord is awfully sweet as well.

So I could envision an easy guitar tabs site where I go and put Em, C, and G in the search box, and it would give me the songs with just those chords or tabs. Sweet idea, eh? And it would really not be very hard to implement…. I will have to give that some thought.

Where there are guitar tabs, and there are guitar song chords. It seems like lots of times people use guitar tabs and guitar chords as interchangeable terms… but there is a difference.

And then lots of times, when you look at song guitar tabs… they also have the guitar song chords. That makes me happy, because at this point I am pretty much just playing chords. As far as I can tell, guitar tabs are more for playing leads and/or playing some additional bass rhythm. At this point, I have a hard enough time getting the song chords down.

I mean, when I am just noodling around, I don’t have any problem playing the chords on my guitar. But when it comes to playing song chords… then everything falls apart.

In any case, if you (like me) are really looking for song chords for your guitar… just go check the guitar tab sites… and you will likely find the chords right there side by side with the tablature.

Now if I could just find a search engine that can search by what chords I can play (or I am WILLING to play).

(And by the way, am I the only person in the world who has SO much difficulty with the spelling of the word “rhythm"? I don’t even try… I just go straight to my spell checker!!!)

UPDATE: I nailed an F chord a few times yesterday. Not consistent by any stretch of the imagination… but I got it a few times.

OK, we already talked about guitar tabs (ie, guitar tablature). And I said that some day I would get back to it. Well that day is here… but this isn’t all about theory. Actually, it isn’t about theory at all. This is about where to find guitar tabs for free.

Here are some sites I found that have guitar tabs…

Ultimate Guitar has a huge listing of tabs. Best of all, it has a really nice search function, so you can search by band and song title. Many songs have multiple versions of tabs. And there is a review/ranking system so you can see what other people think of the tabs. And it just keeps getting better - the site designates whether each listing is guitar chords, tabs, or bass tabs. What a cool site!

Here is another site to look at - TabRobot.com. This site isn’t as nice as Ultimate Guitar… it is more like a search engine that searches other tab sites. But it does give a whole bunch of results from lots of site. For instance, I did a search on “I Fought The Law", and it came back with all kinds of results from probably 20 different sites.

The funny thing is that a lot of these tab sites seem to have the same copies of the same guitar tabs.

And now… the search for guitar tabs! I haven’t been at this for very long (and that is a severe understatement)… but I already know all about guitar tabs.

Actually, I don’t know ALL about guitar tabs, but I have learned quite a bit in a very short time. In fact, it is amazing that I have only had my guitar for less than a week, and I am already scouring the net for guitar tabs.

Some things I know:

- The term guitar tabs is really short for “guitar tablature".
- Guitar tablature has been around for a very long time.
- Guitar tabs are easier to read than music, at least for THIS novice.
- Not everyone means exactly the same thing when they talk about guitar tabs.
- Lots of people are looking for free guitar tabs!

So this is what I am going to do… compile a list of good places out there to get guitar tabs online. There are lots of places that have them, so I might as well put together a list of them. And this seems like as good a place to store them as any other.

As a complete novice (less than one week as a guitar owner/player), it simply amazes me that I can already read tabs. I love love LOVE the fact that they are so simple to understand… and that I don’t need to struggle to read music at this point in the learning curve.

In the meantime, I am going to keep looking for those songs I love that I can play with a G chord and a C chord.