HOW TO READ TAB AND CHORD BOXES

You are going to be reading chord boxes in the very rst stage so you will need to get this down now. You won't need to read tab
for a little while yet, but we'll give you a brief rundown of it here so you at least understand the basics of this as well. I do not
encourage beginners to read music notation because it makes for very slow progress.

R E A D I N G C H O R D B OXE S

The rst thing that you need to know is how to read chord boxes. These show you where to put your ngers on the ngerboard to
play chords. The six vertical lines represent the six strings. The string on the furthest left is the thickest string (E). The two lines at
the top of the box represent the nut (the plastic, bone or metal piece that the strings go through on the headstock) and the rest of
the horizontal lines represent the frets.

The dots represent the places where you put your left-hand ngers, and they are numbered to show which nger to use. Number 1
is the index nger, 2 is the middle nger, 3 is the ring nger and 4 is your pinky (little nger). If you have played the piano make
sure you don't get confused; piano nger numbering is completely different (guitar players generally don't use their left-hand
thumbs).

Notice the X or O above each string too. These show whether you should play the string or not for that chord. The O means that
you play the string ‘open' – with no ngers holding it down – and the X means that you should not play that string.
R E A D I N G TA B
Guitar TAB (or guitar tablature) is a way of writing music speci cally for guitar. It is perfect for those that do not read music, and in
many cases offers more information than the written notation would anyway!

TAB has six horizontal lines that represent the six strings on the guitar. The top line is the thinnest string ( rst) and the lowest line
represents the thickest (sixth) string. The numbers that are placed on the lines tell you what fret to play a note. You will only ever
play the strings with numbers on; If a string has no number, don't play it. The 0 means that a string is played open, with no ngers
pressing down the string on the frets.