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Tablatures can help you play any songs written on paper. Your guitar neck has six strings counting from the thinnest to the thickest strings. They are numbered from 1 to 6 starting from the thinnest. Notice the metal bars dividing the entire space on your guitar neck. These bars are called frets. The first bar closer to the nut or the head is called the first fret. The second bar next to it is called the second fret. And so on. Though there are a lot of bars in your guitar neck, most chords played on any song only uses the first until the seventh frets.

A tablature depicts six horizontal lines. These lines represent the six strings of your guitar. The top line represents the High E note string. The next string represents the B note. The third string represents the G note. The fourth string represents the D note. The fifth string represents the A note. And the sixth string represents the Low E note. Whenever you see a number, it represents the frets on your guitar neck.

Each time you see a number in a tablature staff, it wants you to play that note. When you encounter the number "0", it wants you to play the open string. This means that you only play the corresponding string without fretting it. When you see a group of vertical numbers in a tablature, this means that you should play them all at once as a chord. Usually when you see these types of vertical numbers, it includes the chord name so it can be easily recognized by guitar players.

Now that you know how to read a tablature, let us move on to the next lesson. This lesson is created for beginners.

It is important to learn how to hold a guitar and pick. The thumb finger should be parallel to the index finger. Then hold a pick between your thumb finger and index finger. Your left hand should rest at the back of your guitar neck. Your thumb should rest behind the neck while the rest of your fingers should curl around to get the chords you want to play.

Concentrate on exercises to strengthen your fingers. Playing a scale can help you achieve this. Try to play the pentatonic scale below.

E||---------------------1-4-1---------------------||
A||-----------------1-4-------4-1-----------------||
D||-------------1-3---------------3-1-------------||
G||---------1-3-----------------------3-1---------||
B||-----1-3-------------------------------3-1-----||
E||-1-4---------------------------------------4-1-||

Your pointing finger should play all number 1 on the first fret. Your ring finger should play all number 3 on the third fret. And your pinky should play all number 4 on the fourth fret. Do this over and over again starting perhaps at 60 BPM (Beats Per Minute) and build your tempo up.

Playing a scale like this might be boring to some people. You do not have to sit there and play for long straight hours. You can stop for a while and do something else and then go back and play it again. This exercise will help build muscles to your picking fingers while educating your fingers to gain speed and accuracy.

Playing guitar requires patience. The more you play songs, the more you get better. Probably, you have seen a professional guitarist blazing through a guitar solo while longing to become as good as he is. A great guitar soloist knows which notes that sound good before actually playing them. Soloist follow a scale as his blueprint and make improvements or create note variations using his imagination.

When you practice a scale, play it up and down over and over again and check for accuracy to get a clear sound. You are free to create variations of the scale you are following. Memorizing the scale in the first place helps your imagination play the scale in different ways. Memorize all the box positions of a scale on the entire fret board in your guitar neck. This will let you run your piece up and down through out the fret board. Once you start experimenting with your guitar solo, you will notice improvements from your guitar playing.