My 16 year old son is learning how to play guitar
He's getting a little help from my brother who
plays guitar and has been in a band
He is learning chords and doing very well
Can even play some music by ear
I would like to have him play some Godsmack but
we can't find anywhere on-line where he can get the chords for Godsmack songs, for free at least
We have found many places with tabs but he plays and reads the chords and notes
Any help would be greatly appreciated

Oh!! *gets excited* hehe.

Check out Ultimate-Guitar.com for tabs, chords, and more.

If your son is gonna start playing Godsmack, I suggest using Drop D tuning if he hasn't already.

Also when you look up Godsmack at Ultimate-Guitar.com you might notice that there is a thing called Guitar Pro 5, it's a nifty program that reads out the tabs of songs and also sounds it out for you, really cool. But if you do decide to download it, it's only a 15 day trail. But then there is another program similar to GP5 that's called TuxGuitar, both can be found on that site when you look up either pro (GP5) tabs, or power (tuxguitar) tabs.

If you need any other help just ask, or PM me. I can talk guitars all day lol.

A quick note....

if your next response was gonna be "But where are all the chords"? The reason that not a lot of tabs are just the chords is because Godsmack consist of heavy riffs which are better to be tabbed out. But if you're looking for pretty much anything from "The Other Side" then you'll find chords.

Also, youtube could be your best friend for looking up cover songs from other people.

Thanks so much for the info.
I really appreciate you taking the time to break it down for him like that

I know how to play chords and can read music
so I know where the notes are on the guitar
A Gold Star for me
Jon will need to learn how to read tabs
I know I'm asking a lot of my son to be able to play GODSMACK
What was I thinking
He's has figured out chords for Spiral on his own so there's a little hope
I listen to "The Other Side" every night before I go to bed

He'll have to stick to bands like the "Foo Fighters"
who we just saw in concert
Lots of chords there

Hey no problem at all, I love helping others learn how to play guitar. Even though I'm no expert, I would love to give lessons.

Godsmack was the first band that I started learning off of. And I know your son could learn their songs easily.

For example "Spiral" is such a simple song to play, the verse riff consist of only 2 strings and about 4 notes. The chorus is simple as well. You'll find them on that site I gave you.

As for chords, my favorite GS song to play is "Voices" I love it! Took me some time to get it down, but I got it now and I perform it every time I do open mic, including lyrics.

Anyways, when I have the time I wanted to type out some things to explain tabs a little bit more.

E| ---------------------------------------(1st closest to your feet. Thinnest)
B| ---------------------------------------(2nd string)
G| ---------------------------------------(3rd string)
D| ---------------------------------------(4th)
A| -----8-------8-7-7-0----8------8-7-0---(5th)
D| --0----0-0-------------0---0-0---------(6th closest to your head. Thickest)

The example above respresents the 6 strings on the guitar. The top string on the tab
is the 1st string, and the bottom string on the tab is the 6th string. Why the last string
is the closest to your head is the 6th, I have no idea but that's how it is.

The letters on the far left is the tuning for each string, in this case the tuning is
DADGBE (drop D) Note that there is no tuning of EBGDAD, so if you get confused
later just know that EBGDAD looks wrong and is wrong. It should be the other way around.

Now for the numbers on the tab. You'll notice an "0" on some strings, in this case the 6th string.
That means, play the string "open" which is when you don't press down on any frets/notes, just pluck the string and that's it. All the other numbers you'll find on tabs respresents the fret to play.

So if you see a number 8 on the 5th string, that means play the note on the 8th fret on the 5th string. If you see a number 10 on 4th string, just play the 10th fret on the 4th string, and so on.

Sometimes in tabs you'll find something like this.... 5/7
That just means to slide up from the 5th fret to the 7th fret.

There are also bends, scrapes, and other advance techniques shown in tabs. But I wouldn't worry about that just yet. Just get the basics of reading tabs down, and go from there.