When it comes to learning guitar, there is two ways to learn, either by learning to read standard music notation or learning to read tab. Standard music notation has been around for ages and until recently was the default way to learn to play music. Tab being more recent has been all the rage especially for guitar players, why bother to read notes when you can read something that tells you exactly where to push your fingers. The big question that comes to mind is, which one is more useful? Should we even bother to learn to read standard music notation nowadays? The answer to this question is very simple, unless you want to learn to read standard music notation for a specific reason, go with tab. Let me explain why

1. It’s Easier

When it comes to learning guitar, why stress yourself out with learning to read music when tab tells you exactly where to push your fingers on the frets. This is a no brainer for me, learning guitar is already hard enough as it is, why add even more difficulty to the process by learning to read music.

2. It’s available everywere

Guitar tab being the new standard, is available all over the web and is much easier to find music for specific pieces that you want to learn compared to standard music notation. Websites like ultimateguitar.com offer a ton of free guitar tabs for almost any song you can think off.

3. You progress faster

Learning to read music takes time like learning to read any new language and can be a long process which can slow down your ultimate goal which is to get good at guitar. With tab, we ditch the long process of learning to read and immediately learn to start playing music we enjoy.

To conclude, learning to read standard music notation has it’s place, but after years of teaching and experience, guitar tab is the clear winner for me. Sign up for guitar lessons in Winnipeg here.