Use a Chord Chart the Right Way Before You Play

Knowing how to use a chord chart or tab well is one of the most undervalued skills in a guitarist’s toolkit. Most players treat a chart as a set of instructions to execute. They pick up the guitar immediately and start fumbling through it. That approach puts you in reactive mode from the start. Dave Isaacs, a Nashville-based educator and creator of this five-step song-learning system, teaches a different move: consult the chart before you touch the instrument. This article covers exactly why that matters, and how to do it. For the full picture of where this step fits, see how Dave’s five-step system works as a whole.

Use a Chord Chart Before You Ever Play a Note

Dave Isaacs builds his song-learning process in a specific sequence, and this step comes second. First, you listen to the recording with no instrument in hand, just your ears and attention. That first-listen approach trains you to hear the song on its own terms. Then, and only then, do you reach for the chart.

His instruction is precise. “Once you’ve done that a bit, then you go to the chart. You go to the tab. But don’t pick up your guitar yet.” That phrase, “don’t pick up your guitar yet,” is the whole point. The chart is a reading exercise at this stage, not a playing exercise. You are working with your eyes and your ears together, not your hands.

Most players skip this entirely. They open a tab, put the guitar in their lap, and start executing. As a result, the chart becomes a crutch rather than a tool. They follow it without ever asking whether it is accurate or whether it matches what they already heard.

Get direct video feedback on your playing from Dave Isaacs at ArtistWorksStart →

Follow Along with the Recording While Reading

The specific technique here is straightforward: play the recording and follow the chart or tab simultaneously. Think of it like reading along in a book while listening to an audiobook. You are tracking position, checking the structure. Connecting what you see on paper to what you already know from your first listening pass.

Because you did that first listening step already, you have a reference point. So when you reach a section that surprised you during listening, you can now look at the chart and see how it is written out. Often the chart will clarify what you could not quite identify by ear. That is a genuine win. In other cases, however, what you see will not match what you heard. That is useful information too.

This reading-along process also gives you the song’s structure in a way that passive listening alone does not. You start to see where sections repeat, and notice where a part is written differently than it sounds. You spot how the chart has laid things out in ways that will affect how you practice. All of that is information you want before the guitar is in your hands.

Evaluate the Resource, Not Just the Song

This is where Dave Isaacs pushes the concept further than most teaching does. Using a chart is not just about finding out what to play. It is about deciding whether the resource is trustworthy. “This is also where you have to evaluate your resource. Does your tab seem accurate?”

That question matters because free tab sites are notoriously inconsistent. Some tabs are transcribed by skilled players with good ears. Others are rough approximations that share only a passing resemblance to the actual recording. If you start playing from a bad tab without evaluating it first, you encode the wrong version into muscle memory. Fixing that later costs significant time.

Here is the thing: you can often judge tab accuracy without playing a single note. If you have done your listening step carefully, you already have a mental model of the song. So when something in the tab looks off, pay attention to that reaction. Your ear is flagging a discrepancy. Trust it.

Mark the Problem Spots and Keep Moving

When you use a chord chart or tab and something does not line up with the recording, the right move is not to stop and solve it immediately. Instead, mark it and continue. A pencil mark, a sticky note, a comment in your notation software, whatever your system is, flag it and move on.

This matters because stopping every time something seems wrong turns the reading pass into a debugging session. You lose the forward momentum of tracking the whole song. Furthermore, some discrepancies resolve themselves when you see more context further along in the chart. What looks wrong in one section occasionally makes sense once you see how it connects to a later part.

Those marked spots become your research targets in step four of Dave’s process. For a full breakdown of how to approach researching and solving specific problem spots in a song, that article covers exactly what to do with the flags you are collecting here.

Arriving at the Guitar Already Familiar

By the time you actually pick up the instrument, you have done two things: listened carefully and read the chart against that listening. As a result, the chart is no longer a stranger. You know where the tricky sections are, and which parts of the resource you trust and which parts carry a question mark. You know the song’s shape.

How you practice when you first pick up the guitar depends heavily on how much preparation you brought to that moment. Players who skip the chart-reading step tend to start at bar one and grind through to the end. Players who use a chord chart the way Dave Isaacs describes show up with a plan. They know where to focus. They know what to watch out for.

That preparation is not just efficient. It is also more motivating. When the guitar feels like familiar ground rather than an obstacle course, you play better from the first attempt. Treating a chart as something to evaluate rather than something to obey keeps you in the driver’s seat. That is the discipline Dave’s five-step approach is built around, and this step is where it becomes a habit.

Learn guitar with Dave Isaacs at ArtistWorksStart →

Continue Learning

Explore the rest of this series:

• How to Approach New Songs: Dave Isaacs’ 5-Step Guitar Process
• Conscious Listening Practice: The One-Week Song Challenge
• Should You Listen to a Song Before You Try to Play It? Yes — Here’s How
• How to Practice a New Song When You First Pick Up the Guitar
• Stuck on a Hard Part? How to Research and Solve Guitar Song Problems
• How to Memorize a Song on Guitar and Get It Performance-Ready