To learn to play guitar is hard and simple at the same time. The guitar is a fascinating instrument. It is very hard to master in some areas but you will also find wells of simple to play but nice sounding treasures among the strings.

In this learn to play guitar article I will give some examples of simple to play guitar chords and progressions. I will use guitar tab to help you find the notes on your guitar.

In this article i will only use the first four strings on the guitar. In the guitar tab staff notation I will also use only the first four lines. The first string is the thinnest string on the guitar or the E-string.

The first guitar tab progression will be in the key of D. The chords of the progression is Dmaj7 and Em7. Here is the guitar tab:

1. –2—0—
2. –2—0—
3. –2—0—
4. –0—0—

The guitar chord progression above can be used as a small intro in a song in the key of D. It can also end a song or be used as a break between verses in a song. You can repeat the progression to make it last longer.

The next example will use the first chord and a Gm6 as the second chord. This small passage can also be used as an intro in a song if you like it:

1. –2—0—
2. –2—3—
3. –2—3—
4. –0—0—

The following example will use just one chord, the D chord and it will be went two frets up. When you go the chord up it will not be D anymore. It will change into a E7 or if you want E/D. This means that you play an E-chord with the note D as a bass note.

The chords in this guitar chord progression will be D and E7. Try it!

1. –2—4—
2. –3—5—
3. –2—4—
4. –0—0—

When you go the chord up the two frets you don’t need to lift you left hand fingers. Just release the pressure of your left hand fingers a bit and slide up to the new position.

This method of sliding to new positions can be used when you change between chords. Many times you can keep one or more of your fingers on your fingerboard and slide when you change to new chords. This will make it simpler to find the chord and will speed up the chord change.

Our last small guitar chord progression will use the same progression with just a different way to play the E7 chord.

Remember that all these chord progressions can be repeated over and over as intros or something else in the key of D on your guitar.

1. –2—0—
2. –3—0—
3. –2—1—
4. –0—0—

Observe that you can slide with you first finger that you hoopefully have pressed down on the second fret of the third string when you play D. When you change to the second chord you can slide to the first fret.

The above progressions use the open D-string as a fundament so to speak and this bass note makes an illusion of peace in the chord progressions. In tonal music this bass note is called a pedal point.

If you like finger picking on your guitar I will give you a pattern that can be used with these chords. I will use the common classical guitar symbols for the right hand fingers. P denotes the thumb, i the first finger, m the middle finger and a the ring finger.

1. –a———–a—
2. ———-m——-
3. ——i———–
4. –p—————

I hope you will find this small learn to play guitar lesson helpful. There are a lot of chord progressions that sounds nice but are very simple to play. In other words, I will be back!

Guitar Pro is the most well loved of the software available for editing guitar tabs. As we all know guitar tab is basically a picture of the six guitar strings with fret numbers showing the guitar player where to place his fingers on the fretboard plus other symbols indicating various left hand techniques.

First let us take a look at the most basic method of writing guitar tab – the text editor. Notepad or any other text editor is capable of writing guitar tab. Guitar, bass guitar and banjo tabs are written in ASCII file format. Most of the tabs you find on the internet are written in ASCII  format. In ASCII tab hyphens are used to show string lines and numbers represent frets. Other elements like barlines, rhythms, bends, chord symbols can be shown in many ways. Guitar Pro and other guitar tablature programs generate files similar to ASCII but if you want to edit a hand-made ASCII tab you will have to do it manually.

Guitar Pro is a tool for guitarists who want to compose, transcribe or edit their own music. This program and others, shows the music in conventional music notation as well as tab. The guitarist can start with a new tab or import MIDI or ASCII files and use the Guitar Pro interface to write his music and hear his work played back by his computers MIDI. The finished work can be exported in ASCII or MIDI formats. The composer can then edit, play back and save his tabs. You can download a free trial version of Guitar Pro.

Power Tab is another program for writing guitar tab but it is available free of charge. You can use it to write guitar and bass tabs. The Power Tab Editor also imports MIDI files, and can also export to ASCII Text, HTML, and MIDI formats.

Using TablEdit guitarists can make, edit, print and play back guitar tabs. TablEdit also generates tabs and musical notation for harmonica, mountain dulcimer, diatonic button accordion, drums, violin, tin whistle, recorder, Xaphoon, autoharp, pedal steel guitar, piano, and banjo. You can download the free trial version of TablEdit and use it indefinitely as long as you can place up with the nag messages and the fact that you cannot save edited tabs.

TuxGuitar is an open source software for writing and playing back a number of tablature formats. TuxGuitar has many handy features including editing tabs and scores, autoscroll while the music is being played back, effects like bends, slides, vibrato, hammer-ons and pull-offs. With TuxGuitar you can also manage tempo and time signature. A bonus is you can import and export files from Guitar Pro versions 4 and 5.

The huge disadvantage with reading, writing guitar music using tablature has always been the fact that tab does not show tempo and rhythm. This means that unless you are already familiar with the piece of music you are learning, you might be struggling to get the right note values and rhythm. With guitar tab software this problem is eliminated because even if you are working from imported ASCII tab the software tells you what the piece sounds like through the MIDI playback and the standard music notation features. My advice is to download all the programs and try them out to see which one best suits you. for the most recent version of all these programs, just do an internet search by product name.