Guitar Tab Books article
Common Guitar Tab Books Mistakes to Avoid
Buying the wrong book, ignoring the rhythm notation, or not listening first — the mistakes guitarists make with tab publications are consistent, and consistently avoidable.
Tab notation is the most accessible way to learn guitar repertoire, but the way most players buy and use guitar tab books leads to wasted money, slow progress, or both. The mistakes are consistent: buying on impulse before checking accuracy, using the book without listening to the recording, and treating tab as a complete substitute for musical understanding. Each of these is avoidable with a small change in approach.
Buying Without Checking Accuracy First
Accuracy varies enormously across publishers. Unofficial transcriptions — books not licensed by the artist or their publisher — frequently contain errors in fret positions, chord voicings and missing sections. Learning a riff from an inaccurate transcription takes longer to unlearn than it took to learn in the first place. Before buying, check user reviews on music retailers such as Thomann, Andertons or Amazon, specifically filtering for comments on transcription accuracy. Official licensee publications (Hal Leonard, Music Sales, Alfred) are generally more accurate than third-party compilations for the same material.
Ignoring the Rhythm Notation
Tab alone shows where to put your fingers, not how long to hold each note. Most quality publications print standard notation above the tab staff, with note duration symbols giving the rhythmic values. Players who ignore this notation and rely only on their memory of the recording end up guessing at rhythms — which works for songs they know extremely well, but produces imprecise playing for anything less familiar. Reading the note duration values above the tab staff (even without reading full standard notation) significantly improves rhythmic accuracy.
Buying a Full Book for One or Two Songs
Artist songbooks typically cost £15–£30 and contain twenty to forty songs. Buying a physical book to learn two or three songs from it is poor value — particularly when individual song transcriptions are available digitally at £3–£6 each. Before purchasing a complete songbook, confirm how many songs in it you actually intend to learn. If the answer is fewer than five or six, a digital individual download is the more sensible format. This also applies to genre compilations: check the full contents list before buying rather than relying on the title alone.
Not Listening Before Playing
Tab reads better when you already know how the music sounds. Many players open a new book and try to work out the song from tab alone — which is hard, especially for rhythmically complex or ornamented playing. Listening to the recording (or a cover performance) before opening the book gives context for every embellishment mark (bends, slides, hammer-ons) that tab notation cannot fully represent. For unfamiliar songs, three or four careful listens before attempting to play from the tab reduces the total learning time considerably.
Assuming All Tab Books Cover the Same Material
The category of guitar publications includes artist songbooks, method books, technique books and genre compilations. Each has a different purpose. Buying an artist songbook when you need a systematic method to improve technique is a common mismatch — and vice versa. Before purchasing, confirm that the format of the book matches your actual goal: building skill level, learning specific songs, or developing a particular technique. Our guide to guitar tab books explains the difference between formats in detail.
Buying at the Wrong Level
Most guitar tab books are not graded by difficulty; they transcribe the songs as played, which may include techniques beyond the buyer's current level. A beginner buying a complete Jimi Hendrix transcription encounters heavy use of bends, vibrato, whammy bar techniques and fast pentatonic runs — all in the first few pages. The result is discouragement rather than learning. Before buying, check online previews (most retailers show a sample page or two) and assess whether the techniques required match your current abilities. Method books are graded by design and are a more appropriate format for players working at a specific level.
Comments