How to Play Guitar without Reading Music

One of the many things beginning guitarists ask is “how to play guitar without reading music”. This almost seems silly to ask because one needs to be able to read music to play songs they don’t know how to play. However, this problem of learning how to read music for guitar has been one of the biggest problems for beginners. This is because notes on the guitar can be played in many different positions.

If you take the C note on the G clef, you will notice that there are 5 different positions on the guitar that you can play that note. However if you take a piano, there is only one single key that will play that particular note. This has to be the biggest hurdle of learning a musical instrument ever!

This is why many guitarists starting out get discouraged and end up asking how to play the guitar without reading music. Of course if the guitarist sat down and memorized the fret board, they wouldn’t have such a tough time reading music, but that’s a problem for most because everyone wants to just get started playing music!

So the thing to remember is this, no matter if you are reading music or not, there has to be a way to communicate how to play songs on guitar.So if you aren’t learning how to read music, you still have to learn something. So what are the ways to communicate how to play guitar without reading music? There are a few resources, tablature, chord charts, video lessons and guitar tutors.

Unlike reading music, tablature gives the guitarist the exact fret he should play a note. So the guitarist no longer has any guess work in which of the 5 positions to play that C note, but rather the tablature would tell them to play the first fret on the B string. This is a big help for many beginning guitarists. Also tablature is probably the most popular way to play guitar without reading music. Once you can read tablature, there are thousands of books and magazine using it, teaching you scales, chords and your favorite songs! So if you aren’t going to read music, tablature is your next best bet.

Other sources such as chord charts are ok, but they only show you how to play the chords in a song. You would have to figure out the articulate melody by ear and that’s a lot of work, so much in fact that reading music and learning the fret board would be easier! Other solutions such as video lessons and guitar tutors cost money for each video or lesson you get, which can be so costly; you might as well take the time to learn by other resources.

So if you are interested in how to play guitar without reading music, there are lots of resources you can use. However, the best way to go about it is to learn tablature. Tablature isn’t perfect, because it doesn’t allow one to know the tempo of a song, but at least it will help you play the melody and not need to know how to read a single note of music.