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Reading Music for Guitarists - Chord Charts vs. Tabs

Lesson #500 • Jun 27, 2023

When it comes to “reading music” for guitarists, there are two types of diagrams you should be familiar with: chord charts and tabs. These both show the same information, but use two very different visual styles. Each has advantages and drawbacks – and in this video I’ll give a quick overview of each. Let’s get into it!

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Follow along with the print-friendly PDF!

It includes all of my notes for this lesson, allowing you to follow along at your own pace. You're free to download, print, and share the PDF across your devices.

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Free PDF Cheat Sheet!

As a bonus, I'm offering this PDF guide as a free download for this lesson. For each of the most common chords, it shows the chord chart and tab diagram – so you can easily look back & forth between both (for each chord) to get comfortable with each format.

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Looking for More on This Topic?

Check out my new course – Reading Music for Guitarists! It provides an extensive deep-dive into reading tabs, chord chats, and a handful of other notation styles you'll see when playing guitar. This includes guitar tabs, chord charts, strumming patterns, chord progressions, fretboard diagrams, and an overview of my song sheets. For each topic I have a video lesson, a PDF download, and a webpage component.

On the topic of my courses, I also am proud to offer Beginner Chord Guide. and Practical Music Theory. Both courses have videos available to stream here on this website, and also have PDF downloads for each individual lesson.

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