This page contains free BSL (British Sign Language) guitar tuition videos and TABs/notation that have been adapted to be as visual and Deaf-friendly as possible.
If you are interested in learning in-person, I also provide BSL guitar tuition (the fee is £17 per half-hour paid upfront as 4 lessons at a time – £68). Please contact me at tom@tomhunt.co.uk if you would like to book a trial lesson or for more information.
I hope the videos and handouts listed below are useful. Everything on this page is free but if you’d like to support me you can ‘buy me a coffee’ here:
Please use the menu below to navigate the page.
1. Intro
2. Videos
3. Song TABs (Rocksmith-style)
4.’Hearts TABs’
5. Chords and strumming songs
6. Articles
Intro
I have worked as a guitar and bass teacher for Heathlands School For Deaf Children for several years and have really enjoyed seeing my students progress. Working at the school has motivated me to find creative ways to make my lessons as accessible as possible, which has shaped all of the content you see on this page.
For example, here is a video of one of my Heathlands students performing the song ‘Love That’s Gone’ by La Sera using coloured strings and the app Rocksmith:
I am still improving my BSL skills and exploring new methods for tuition, so please check back for more content soon!
Videos
Important Guitar Terms – Strings and Frets:
How To Read My Hearts TABs Using ‘Thunder’ By Imagine Dragons:
Beginner’s Rock Song – ‘Smoke On The Water’
These TABs show the strings with the same colours as used in the software ‘Rocksmith‘. Rocksmith is a great and fun app for learning guitar and has been very popular with my Deaf students. It uses the colours red, yellow, blue, orange, green and purple to represent the 6 strings on the guitar. See pic below:
Here is an example TAB in this style:
Here are some more Rocksmith-style TABs of famous songs. Some have been simplified slightly to make them more beginner-friendly. Please click on the image to make it bigger:
Rolling Stones – ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’
The Beatles – ‘Here Comes The Sun’
The White Stripes – ‘Seven Nation Army’
Imagine Dragons – ‘Radioactive’
‘Hearts TABs’
My ‘Hearts’ Tabs are also based on the string colours used in the software ‘Rocksmith’. My student electric guitar has been re-strung with these colours (see pic):
Here is how to read ‘Hearts TABs’:
- The colours represent which strings to use (see the guitar picture above)
- The numbers represent which frets to use
- Each heart lasts for 1 beat and all of the hearts move at the same tempo. This means that if there are 2 numbers within 1 heart, they should be played twice as fast as 1 number within 1 heart.
- The letter Z means 1 beat of rest (don’t play anything for 1 beat)
See below for an example:
This next heart TAB uses half beat rests:
This Hearts TAB is a great crowd pleaser:
Chords and Strumming Songs
How to read chord charts (using the string colours seen in the app ‘Rocksmith’):
If you’ve not used the app ‘Rocksmith’ then you can use this photo to help you:
The chords above can be used to play thousands of songs.
Here is a simple Bob Marley song that uses the A and D chord. You can strum each chord once or keep strumming while you sing the words.
Articles
I wrote this article a couple of years ago to share useful Apps and resources for Deaf music students: https://tomhunt.co.uk/guitar-lessons-for-deaf-students-my-experience-and-some-useful-resources/
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