Whether you're interested in learning acoustic blues guitar, rock 'n roll, country-western, or jazz, guitar tabs can help you get going on the songs you're interested in.

Essentially, a guitar tab is a diagram of the fingerboard ("neck") of the guitar. The horizontal lines of a guitar tab represent the strings, with the bottom line being the lowest-pitched string on the guitar (E), and the top line being the highest string (e, two octaves above). The first step in learning acoustic guitar tab is to get familiar with the open strings (E-A-D-G-B-E, from lowest to highest).

The numbers on guitar tab represent the frets where you place your fingers to make the desired notes for the song you're learning. So, if you see a tab with a "3" on the third string from the bottom, that means you're supposed to press the "D" string at the third fret. If you see two or more numbers stacked on top of each other, that means you're pressing and playing more than one string at a time (this is how chords are often shown in tab). Reading from left to right will result in playing the notes in the proper order for the tune you are learning.

When you're learning acoustic guitar tab, it's best to stick with songs that you're already somewhat familiar with. The reason for this is that in tab notation, there's not really any standard way of showing how long each note is supposed to be held. That's not too much of a problem if you already have a pretty good idea of how the song is supposed to sound. But if you're learning an unfamiliar song, acoustic guitar tab might not be the easiest method to use.

Especially in rock, blues, and jazz, guitarists often use special techniques like "bending," "sliding," "hammer on," and "pull off." These are effects produced by pushing strings toward the middle of the neck on the same fret to raise or lower the pitch, sliding a finger on the same string from one fret to the next to change pitch, popping the finger down on a string to make a sound without strumming or plucking the string, or pulling the finger off the string just plucked to change the pitch suddenly. These are shown in various ways in acoustic guitar tab, and you can learn them once you've mastered the basics.