Intro to sight reading (Guitar) ;-)

I may get some flack with my thoughts on this but I don’t really care.  I find that anyone who sight reads tends to be a more well rounded musician.  I have even made the comment at times that the difference between a guitar player and a musician is that the musician can read music.  Thats up for anyone’s interpretation.  You’re not telling me anything by saying “You don’t have to know how to read music to be a musician,” blah blah blah.  Well, I think you do, to be a “musician”.  To be successful? to be famous? Do you need to have the ability to read music?  Nope.

Most people turn down the path of learning to sight read on a stringed instrument like guitar.  They resort to reading Tabs (the fast track to playing).  I have used them but only to see others interpretation of a song, and almost 90% of those interpretations have been only outlines of the actual song, again, in my opinion, bad interpretations.

So, for what it is worth for those people who have never really looked at the oprotunitiy of reading music as a benefit:  I am saying it is well worth your time to even try and master the basics.  Which could be nothing more then plucking out the main notes of a piece of music.  You get out what you put in.  Just like reading words, the more you read the better you get.

Sight reading also leads you to more money and steady gigs and better teaching jobs.  Like I said, even if you only know the basics that alone will start to open your eyes to your own playing and open doors to your future music knowledge.  I am going to do a string of blogs dedicated to sight reading for guitar and I am going to take it nice and slow for everyone.

For the start of it all lets just get our feet wet with the rudiments.  There are only a few things we need to get started with to get things going in the right direction.  I take it everyone has had some kind of music staff knowledge and knows the difference between the bass cleff and the treble cleff.  With a six string guitar we are only going to be concerned with the treble cleff.  So, we have to get failure with the notes of the treble cleff.  This is going to take most of us down memory lane for a moment.  We have five lines and four spaces.  The lines of the staff are (starting from the bottom working to the top) E G B D F.  That is right,  Every Good Boy Does Fine.  The spaces of the staff (starting from the bottom space) is F A C E.

The goal here for us is for the next week we want to look at a note on the staff either line or space, and be able to instantly recite what that note is.  I promise you if you just read one sheet of music a day, by the end of the week you will have gotten this goal in the bag.  The faster we can recall these notes the faster we are going to be able to make the translation to our hands to be able to play them on our guitar.

I have here two links that may help you along our path. One is Free Music Theory Worksheets and the other is Music Fundamentals. The first link has pretty good practice games.  Flash card types of tests to keep you on your toes.  The other link is for an overview of the basics in a .pdf file.   I said if you can read (again i didn’t say play, I said read) one piece of music a day then you are well on your way.  Once you feel you have the note names down, then here is a piece of music you can use as your weekly read: Ode to Joy.

Practice hard and learn what I said here and get ready for next week when we get our hands on the guitar with a video – we’ll begin putting these notes to our fingers.  Trust me you can do this!!!

“GO PRACTICE”

Tagged: bestbuy, bestbuymi11, guitar lesson, guitar music staff notes, mi11, musicinside11, Practice, sight reading, students, teaching, terry collier
Filed: How To

Rate: (Average: 6.67 out of 8)