In my case I'm wearing hearing aids so it's no substitute for good ears. I can hear relative and very little pitch recognition so I read music but when the tabs came around it was a relief.

You can use triads as your chord shapes as it's a very basic components of the chords. Then you can add notes to it to define it. I use triads myself and they makes it easier to navigate the fretboard.

I like rock/metal myself and the 70s/80s are my favs.