Looking to expand your guitar repertoire without breaking the bank? Welcome to Guitar Shed, your ultimate online destination for free guitar sheet music. Whether you’re a beginner strumming your first chords or a seasoned classical guitarist tackling complex pieces, our extensive library offers something for everyone.
In our easily navigable tabs, you’ll uncover over 1300 meticulously typeset pieces of free guitar sheet music, presented in both traditional notation and guitar TAB. This vast collection is your gateway to exploring diverse musical styles and enhancing your guitar skills, all readily accessible at your fingertips.
These high-quality, printable PDFs are available for you to download and use freely, anytime you wish. Save them to your device, practice directly from your laptop or tablet, or print them out for a classic feel – the choice is entirely yours.
At Guitar Shed, we pride ourselves on offering a rich selection of classical music alongside popular tunes, all expertly written or arranged for the guitar. Many pieces are also enhanced with comprehensive video guitar lessons, providing additional support and guidance as you learn.
Read Music Your Way: Notation or TAB at Guitar Shed
Understanding that guitarists have different preferences and skill levels, Guitar Shed provides the flexibility to download or print notation and TAB separately. This is particularly beneficial for those already proficient in reading standard music notation, offering a more economical printing option by avoiding unnecessary pages.
Dive into our expansive library, ranging from simple melodies perfect for beginners to challenging works for advanced players. Use this music to significantly broaden your repertoire, delve deeper into the works of your favorite composers, or hone your sight-reading skills – even if it’s just a few notes or measures each day.
Even seasoned guitarists can benefit from the simpler pieces in our collection. They provide excellent material for focusing on nuanced musicality, such as phrasing, expressive playing, and personal interpretation.
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Easy Guitar TABs and Chord Charts for All Guitars
The beauty of guitar music lies in its versatility, and the pieces you find at Guitar Shed are no exception. You can explore our sheet music on classical guitars, acoustic guitars, or even electric guitars – allowing you to adapt the music to your instrument of choice.
If you’re specifically searching for easy guitar TABs, the first section of our library is designed with you in mind. TABs are an invaluable tool for beginner guitarists, enabling you to quickly grasp and play your favorite songs. However, they are also a fantastic entry point into the world of classical music. Our TABs are conveniently printed beneath the standard musical notation, allowing you to visually understand the relationship between the two systems as you learn.
Many pieces in our collection also include guitar chord diagrams. These chords open up exciting possibilities for collaboration. Try using them to accompany other musicians, strumming along as they play the melody. Alternatively, explore finger-picking styles by breaking down the chords into beautiful arpeggios.
Guitar Sheet Music for Every Skill Level
Guitar Shed is committed to supporting guitarists at every stage of their musical journey. Our collection of classical guitar sheet music and guitar TABs is carefully curated to cater to all skill levels, ensuring you’ll always find music that challenges and inspires you.
Beginner-Friendly Guitar Songs
Our extensive selection of easy guitar sheet music is thoughtfully categorized to assist beginner guitarists in finding accessible and enjoyable pieces.
Within this section, you’ll discover famous national anthems and beloved hymns, traditional folk songs, and festive holiday music. We also offer a wealth of classical pieces spanning centuries. Many of these have been composed by guitarists themselves, ensuring they lie comfortably under the fingers. Beyond original guitar works, you’ll also find transcriptions and arrangements of diverse instrumental music, expanding your musical horizons.
Many pieces in our beginner collection are perfect for quickly learning and playing in fingerstyle. Others may require a bit more dedicated practice, and that’s where our comprehensive tutorial videos become an invaluable resource.
Versions are provided in standard notation and guitar TABs, and to further aid your learning, many include chord names above the staff notation.
Challenging Pieces for Advanced Guitarists
For more experienced players, Guitar Shed offers a myriad of intermediate and advanced pieces to truly test and refine your skills.
This section features substantial works frequently performed in concert halls worldwide. Much of this music has been specifically written or arranged by guitarists for guitarists, reflecting a deep understanding of the instrument’s capabilities. You’ll find compositions by the great player-composers of the 19th-century European tradition, as well as transcriptions of piano and lute music, and captivating airs from ballets and operas.
Given the technical demands of these complex pieces, most are presented in standard music notation. However, some also include guitar tablature to assist with particularly challenging passages. Crucially, many are complemented by in-depth video lessons to guide you through the intricacies of the music.
Explore Composers, Genres, and Themed Collections
Over centuries, the world has accumulated a vast and rich repertoire of classical guitar music. Where access to guitar sheet music was once limited, Guitar Shed now brings a virtual library to your fingertips.
Masterworks from Musical History
Much of the music from past eras has sadly been lost to time. However, countless masterworks have endured, offering a glimpse into the musical styles and sensibilities of different periods. These are typically categorized chronologically into musical eras: the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods.
At Guitar Shed, we’ve organized our guitar sheet music into these historical groups, making it easy for you to explore music from specific eras that pique your interest.
Easy-on-the-Eyes, Modern Editions
Historically, many player-composers, particularly in the 19th century, wrote instructional books for the guitar. These books are a treasure trove of studies, exercises, and charming pieces perfect for learning and enjoyment.
While many of these original books are available online in facsimile, Guitar Shed offers these pieces in clean, modern notation and typefaces. This makes them significantly easier to read and learn from, allowing you to work through them comfortably at your own pace.
Discover Famous Guitar Composers
If you’re drawn to the music of a particular composer, our ‘Collections by Composer, Period or Genre’ link is your shortcut to discovery. For instance, if you’re in the mood to play some Giuliani, this feature offers a much faster way to find his works than browsing through general menus.
You’ll also find direct links to the works of renowned masters like Francisco Tárrega and Johann Sebastian Bach, simplifying your search for their iconic compositions.
We’ve also created dedicated sections for giants of the 19th century, including Matteo Carcassi, Fernando Sor, and Ferdinand Carulli. For those interested in more recent composers, we feature collections by artists like Barrios.
Within these composer collections, you’ll even find some delightful guitar duets. We’ve also included YouTube recommendations to introduce you to some of the fantastic guitar duos performing today, providing inspiration and showcasing the beauty of ensemble playing.
Themed Music Collections
Guitar Shed is constantly expanding its library by adding curated themed collections. You can easily find these in the “Collections…” tab, offering music for specific occasions and interests.
Currently, you’ll find books of beloved Christmas songs and passionate Spanish guitar pieces. Collections of Celtic music and hymn book arrangements are also readily available for you to download and play, catering to diverse musical tastes.
Music for Special Occasions
Our popular section dedicated to wedding and ceremony music is a valuable resource for guitarists performing at these significant events.
This collection is thoughtfully categorized by ability level and includes many traditional favorites that are often requested for weddings. You’ll also find some beautiful and perhaps unexpected pieces, such as our lovely tremolo arrangements of Ave Maria and Spanish Romance, adding a touch of elegance to any ceremony.
Below the music links, you’ll discover an article packed with invaluable tips for playing at ceremonies. This resource offers practical advice on how to prepare for the event and how to handle unexpected situations, ensuring you feel confident, prepared, and perform at your best when the stakes are high.
Get the 30 Classical Guitar Favorites Book
30 Guitar Favorites: A Must-Have Collection
Our 30 Classical Guitar Favorites Book consistently ranks as a user favorite. This collection presents a selection of fun and accessible pieces in both notation and TAB, making them enjoyable and easy(ish) to learn for a wide range of players.
Many pieces are arranged as two-part or multi-part compositions, while some feature the melody line only, offering variety and catering to different ensemble preferences.
Discover historical gems like an ancient piece by Richard the Lionheart. Enjoy learning popular American, English, and Spanish folk songs such as Home on the Range and The River is Wide. Explore charming dances and operatic preludes. Delve into insightful studies by renowned composers like Sor and Aguado, enriching your technical skills and musical understanding.
You’ll recognize famous tunes like Brahms’s Lullaby and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, alongside well-known folk and traditional airs such as Amazing Grace, Greensleeves, and many more, creating a collection of familiar and delightful melodies.
Simply click on the gold button above to download this treasury of guitar favorites and begin exploring these timeless pieces.
Free Tutorials for Beginner Guitar Pieces
The final tab in our library provides access to a wealth of free video tutorials. These lessons focus on popular beginner pieces, many of which are drawn from the Royal Conservatory of Music’s esteemed Bridges guitar series, ensuring high-quality instructional content.
Here, you’ll find hours of expert instruction, freely accessible whenever you choose to learn. The videos guide you through in-depth studies of your chosen piece, demonstrating how to analyze the relationships between different musical sections and how they contribute to the overall structure. This analytical approach enhances your musical comprehension and clarifies any potential confusion.
These tutorials also offer a treasure trove of practice tips designed to deepen your understanding of the music you’re playing. They introduce high-level interpretive techniques, applicable even to beginner pieces. These techniques range from shaping musical phrases to emphasizing different voices within a composition, adding depth and expressiveness to your playing.
Elevate Your Expressive Playing: Make Your Music Sing
These expressive skills are not exclusive to professional concert guitarists. They are valuable methods that enrich your playing at any level, transforming even a simple piece into a compelling and expressive musical communication – the kind that captivates listeners.
To advanced, experienced players, much of this beginner music might initially seem straightforward. However, when you study these pieces in depth, guided by our tutorials, they become anything but simple ‘beginner’ tunes.
These videos illuminate nuances that are often overlooked and equip you with the tools to practice and bring those nuances to life in your performance.
The result is that you’ll be able to play these pieces to an exceptionally high standard, demonstrating musicality and expressiveness beyond the typical beginner level.
Unleash Your Creativity: Write Your Own Guitar Music
Feeling musically inspired? Why not try composing your own guitar pieces using our free blank sheet music paper? It’s available as an instant downloadable PDF, ready to print and use immediately. Simply select the blank standard music staff paper, or choose from combinations of staff, chord grids, and TAB to suit your compositional needs.
You can utilize music paper in countless creative ways. For example:
- Compose original pieces in standard music notation specifically for classical guitar, exploring the instrument’s unique voice.
- Create your own melodies and chord progressions for acoustic guitar songs, and then add lyrics to complete your compositions.
- Label chord grids and add fingerings as visual reminders for chord shapes and transitions, aiding your practice and memorization.
- Write out pieces you are currently learning. This is a highly effective method for memorizing music and simultaneously improving your overall memory skills.
- Practice music theory concepts by writing out and counting rhythms, or explore harmony theory by writing down chords and analyzing their relationships.
- Even use it as stylish note paper or unique wrapping paper! The iconic horizontal lines of the staff will signal to your friends that they’ve entered your creative musical world!
TAB or Standard Notation: Which Should You Read?
Guitarists commonly use two primary systems for reading music: Tablature (TAB) and standard notation. Understanding the strengths of each system can help you choose the best approach for your musical goals.
Understanding Guitar TAB
Tablature is a notation system specifically designed for fretted instruments like the guitar. It uses six horizontal lines to represent the six guitar strings. Numbers placed on each line indicate the fret to be played on that string.
This visual representation of the fretboard makes TAB relatively easy to learn, especially for beginners. It directly mirrors the guitar’s layout and doesn’t require prior knowledge of musical notes or music theory. However, TAB’s primary limitation is its lack of precise rhythmic notation. Consequently, players often need to rely on listening to recordings to accurately understand the timing and rhythm of a piece.
Understanding Standard Notation
Standard notation, in contrast, is a universal musical language. It uses a five-line staff (stave) to represent both pitch and rhythm with precision. This system is read by musicians of all instruments across various genres and musical traditions.
TAB vs. Notation: Who Uses Which?
TAB is particularly popular in genres like rock and pop music, where a faster learning curve and immediate gratification are often prioritized. Its straightforward visual layout is exceptionally helpful for beginners eager to play songs quickly.
However, guitarists interested in playing more complex compositions, particularly in classical, jazz, or other notation-based genres, will find standard notation more advantageous. It offers precise rhythmic information and includes essential performance details like dynamics (volume), articulation (how notes are played), and other expressive nuances crucial for accurate interpretation.
Furthermore, if you aspire to a deeper understanding of music theory, harmony, and composition, standard notation is the more effective tool. If you plan to collaborate with musicians who play other instruments, standard notation is essential as it’s universally recognized and adaptable across all instruments and musical styles.
The Benefits of Reading Guitar Sheet Music in Notation
Developing the ability to read guitar sheet music in standard notation unlocks a vast new world of musical possibilities and significantly enhances your musicianship.
While guitar TABs are undoubtedly helpful in showing finger positions on the fretboard, especially when learning by ear, and remain a valuable tool, standard notation offers distinct advantages:
- Access to a Vast Musical Library: Standard notation opens up access to an immense library of compositions spanning diverse genres and historical periods, from classical masterpieces to contemporary works written for various instruments, many of which are adaptable to the guitar.
- Composer’s Intent and Accurate Interpretation: Standard notation enables you to interpret pieces more closely to the composer’s original intentions. It captures crucial musical details, such as precise rhythm, dynamics, tempo markings, and articulation, which are often simplified or absent in TAB, leading to a more nuanced and accurate performance.
- Enhanced Musical Understanding: Reading standard notation deepens your grasp of music theory, harmony, and composition principles. It fosters a more holistic understanding of music as a language, contributing to your overall musicianship and enabling you to analyze, interpret, and learn music more effectively.
Choosing the Right System for You
When deciding between TAB and standard notation, carefully consider your musical goals, the genres you wish to play, and your long-term musical aspirations.
Tablature provides a faster entry point to playing and is highly practical for learning songs quickly. Standard notation, while initially more challenging to master, offers a more comprehensive and well-rounded musical education, making it particularly invaluable for classical guitar, jazz, ensemble playing, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of music.
Many guitarists adopt a hybrid approach, combining TAB with standard notation. This strategy leverages TAB’s immediate practicality while building a stronger theoretical foundation through notation. This is why you’ll often find guitar TAB printed directly beneath the standard staff in resources like the free guitar sheet music available at Guitar Shed.
Many guitarists also continue to learn pieces using TAB even as they are developing their standard notation reading skills, recognizing that both systems offer unique strengths and contribute to a well-rounded guitar education.
Effective Practice Strategies for Your Free Sheet Music
Downloading your chosen music from Guitar Shed is just the first step in the learning process. It’s natural to feel the urge to immediately start playing and hear how the piece sounds.
However, unless you are specifically practicing sight-reading, jumping straight into playing is not the most effective way to approach learning a new piece. True progress and mastery come from methodical, patient, and structured practice.
Here’s a step-by-step approach to help you make the most of your free guitar music and learn pieces effectively and efficiently:
A 7-Step Process for Learning Classical Guitar Pieces
These seven steps will guide you in learning new pieces with greater efficiency and musicality. (For a more detailed exploration of this process, download our free ebook Learn Any Piece in 7 Easy Steps, accessible via the link above.)
- Divide into Small Sections: Break the piece down into manageable sections that sound musically complete, often extending slightly across bar lines to maintain musical phrasing.
- Understand All Notes and Musical Markings: Carefully examine each section and identify all notes, rhythms, and musical markings (dynamics, articulation, etc.). Look up anything you don’t fully understand to ensure accuracy.
- Clap and Count Rhythms Aloud: Practice clapping and counting the rhythms of each section aloud. This develops your rhythmic accuracy and helps you understand how different rhythmic patterns fit together within the music.
- Practice Right Hand Alone: Isolate the right-hand part and practice it separately. While it may not sound musically complete on its own, this focused practice is invaluable for developing right-hand technique and clarity.
- Practice Left Hand Alone: Similarly, practice the left-hand part in isolation. Pay attention to fingerings, shifts, slides, and note durations. This develops left-hand dexterity and accuracy.
- Play Hands Together with Corrective Pauses: Begin playing hands together, but incorporate “corrective pauses.” This means stopping and suspending the tempo whenever you encounter difficulties or inaccuracies. This prevents you from practicing mistakes and allows you to solidify correct fingerings and rhythms.
- Play Hands Together in Rhythm: Once you can play hands together accurately with pauses, gradually begin playing in rhythm. Start at a slow, deliberate tempo, ensuring accuracy and control. Gradually increase the tempo as your proficiency grows.
Additional Practice Tips for Guitarists
Once you’ve established a solid foundation using the 7-step process, incorporate these additional practice tips to further refine your playing and maximize your practice sessions:
- Master Steady Tempo Before Rubato: Before introducing rubato (expressive tempo variation) or slowing down/speeding up for musical effect, ensure you can play the piece accurately and musically at a steady, consistent tempo.
- Verbalize Challenges: When you encounter a tricky passage, articulate the specific problem aloud. For example, “The finger change in bar 12 is not smooth,” or “The rhythm in measure 25 is uneven.” Clearly identifying the issue is the first step to solving it.
- Strive for Memorization: Make a conscious effort to memorize every piece you learn, even if you don’t ultimately achieve full memorization. The process of memorizing will significantly accelerate your learning and deepen your understanding of the music.
- Practice with Purpose: Ensure every repetition during practice has a specific purpose. Actively focus on improving a particular aspect of your playing, such as tone, rhythm, or phrasing. Avoid “autopilot” practice, where you play mindlessly without focused attention.
- Utilize Video Recording: Record yourself playing, both for performance practice and to objectively evaluate your playing. Listening back to recordings allows you to hear what is working well and identify areas for improvement from a listener’s perspective.
Usage Rules, Copyrights, and Legal Information
If you are a music teacher, you are welcome to use our sheet music free of charge with your students. The guitar Christmas music collection, featuring familiar melodies like Jingle Bells and Silent Night, is especially popular and engaging for student learning.
Our Goodwill Offering
All pieces listed on Guitar Shed are in the public domain, meaning the original compositions are no longer under copyright protection.
However, please note that these particular arrangements and typesetting are copyrighted. You are granted permission to play and share them freely for non-commercial purposes, in the spirit of goodwill and musical sharing.
If you choose to share or perform these arrangements, we kindly request that you credit Allen Mathews or ClassicalGuitarShed.com whenever possible.
Please be aware that you may not find sheet music or guitar tabs for certain popular acoustic guitar songs in our collection. This is due to existing legal copyrights on those contemporary songs, which prevent us from offering them freely.
For example, we cannot provide music by artists like Johnny Cash, Chet Atkins, The Beatles, or Willie Nelson, nor guitar solos by artists like Steve Vai, due to copyright restrictions. However, you will find a vast collection of timeless classics that continue to inspire guitarists today.
Download Your Free Guitar Sheet Music PDFs and Play!
Enjoy exploring this extensive collection of free PDFs, available in both standard music notation and guitar tablature, all provided by Guitar Shed. We encourage you to bookmark this page and return often as you continue your musical journey.
Have fun making music!
