Beginner guitarists shouldn't learn by ear

Don’t be afraid to use TABs

I think there is often a stigma around using TABs when you could learn something by ear. It’s true; there is a huge benefit to developing your ear. But, I don’t think it’s always the best use of our practice time. As it turns out, there’s actually a lot you can learn from looking at TABs (especially when you’re starting out).

Learning songs without a TAB does allow us to develop our aural skills so we’re better able to hear and play melodies, identify chords, and recognise the shape of a chord progression. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a beginner guitarist or an advanced player; we can all benefit from continuing to develop our ears.

But, when we’re starting out, this might be more trouble than it’s worth. If you’ve got time, great! Challenge yourself and learn something by ear. But don’t be afraid to pick up a TAB or watch a tutorial video to get some help identifying what’s going on.

Here are some reasons why you might want to use a TAB instead of learning to play something by ear:

A TAB allows you to see exactly where something is played

One of the cool things about the guitar is that you can play the same riff in multiple positions. However, this can also be frustrating when you’re trying to learn something for the first time. As you develop as a guitar player you realise that each position has a different sound or feel due to the unique timbre of each string and the way chord shapes or scale patterns fall in different positions. Using a TAB to get a sense of how something is played can help you get used to these “guitar-isms” and quickly develop a sense of the best place to play different riffs.

Using a TAB is faster than using your ears

It’s true that some people will find it faster to learn a song by using their ears. But for most of us, looking up the music written as a TAB will help us get the riffs under our fingers much faster. Most beginner guitarists need to spend equal amounts of time developing their intellectual understanding, physical understanding, and aural understanding. However, when you’re still learning to listen and hear things correctly - trying to do things exclusively by ear will often take much longer than it otherwise would. Aural skills are important to practice for our development as musicians, but don’t let yourself develop the mindset that you’re somehow cheating if you need to use a TAB.

TABs allow you to discover new techniques on the guitar

The guitar is an extremely expressive instrument due to the fact that you can play it with so many different types of articulation. You can bend notes, slide, use hammer-ons or pull-offs, double stops, harmonics, and many more guitar techniques that allow us to shape the sound of a melody. If you’re not aware of what these techniques sound like or how to do them, trying to learn something by ear is going to be a challenge. Learning how to play a song with a TAB will allow you to see exactly where and how different techniques are being used. This will help your ear get used to the unique sound of each technique which will allow you to better learn things by ear in the future.