Many guitar players find learning sight reading at the guitar laborious, boring and intolerable! The reason being that many guitar players don’t have a grasp of the notes on the fingerboard.
But, many wish to go to music school or do studio work or tour with famous artists. The need to sight read music suddenly becomes very apparent and essential in order to reach the required standard.
The question is always the same. Is there something that I am already familiar with that will help me speed up the process?
The Absolute Beginner Guitarist's Guide To Sight Reading
The one thing most guitar players do know very well is the A minor pentatonic scale. This gives you many of the notes of the 5th position. Not only that but you will know the fingering like the back of your hand.
The next thing is to move away from the actual guitar and see, hear and feel the notes in your mind and see the notes on the guitar fingerboard and how the look in music notation.
Now visualise them by moving up or down in semitones going across all the 6 strings from the 5th position frets 5 to 8.
Sight Reading Basic Exercise 9
For Instance: 1st string=C B B flat A. 2nd string= G F sharp F natural E etc as we see in the notation below.
One more thing to realise is that the notes on the 1st string are the same as the notes on the 6th string but in a different octave. This in turn cuts down the amount of notes you need to learn.
This is just part 1 of this method, but it is a simple way to get started because you will already have a firm grasp of this scale and position on the guitar. Once you fill it out with the rest of the notes you will start to see patterns, arpeggios, 4ths and one 3rd [Guitar’s Tuning] and most obviously and importantly octaves as they will connect the other positions for you as you progress.
Improve Your Sight Reading On Guitar
As you become aware of all of this sight reading at the guitar doesn’t seem so daunting and it all starts to make a lot more sens.
Jazz Fusion Guitarist, Educator and Composer. Alternate Picking guitar in the styles of John Mclaughlin and Al di Meola for powerful modern guitar improvisation. View all posts by Jazz fusion guitar Improvisation lessons and modern music theory
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The Importance Of Sight Reading
Jazz Fusion Guitarist, Educator and Composer. Alternate Picking guitar in the styles of John Mclaughlin and Al di Meola for powerful modern guitar improvisation.You might approach the topic with a bit of apprehension as sight reading is often thought of as a very high-end skill that only some possess. Let me tell you right now that you can develop this skill as much as anyone else.
John Williams also acknowledged this inherent truth about the guitar but went on to say that “it is even more reason to do more of it!”
On first appearances other instruments might seem to have an easier job at sight reading. However, we must also remember that each instrument has particularchallenges.
Reading Skills: The Guitarist's Nemesis?
Pianists, organists, harpsichord… they have up to ten notes at a time (plus feet if you are an organist). Orchestral instruments have to deal with a wide range of key signatures, complex rhythms and fast tempi.
This isolation lets us get away without having to sight read. There is nothing to force us into sight reading through materials so we often read it very slowly and memorize it as quickly as possible.
Also, we predominantly choose solo repertoire which once again gives us the easy out of just taking tons of time to learn a piece, note by note, then committing it to memory. There are no other people looking over our shoulder so why should we sight read?
Guitar Sight Reading Game
On that rare occasion where we get thrown into the uncomfortable position of having to sight read, it can be an embarrassing experience that reinforces the myth that it is difficult.
It really is that simple, like I said in the beginning. Simple yes, but easy no. It requires dedication, planning and effort on your part to practice sight reading on a regular basis.
Another guitarist, a guitar orchestra, a singer, violinist. Just grab anyone who is willing to have a go and jump to it! The reason this is so effective is that it will force you to read on a regular basis. It is this regularity that will have the biggest impact.
Grade 2 Sight Reading
The organization is often one of the pitfalls in sight reading development. You must choose material that is easy for you. It should be nowhere near the complexity of what you play in your solo repertoire and you should spend some time accumulating materials that are so basic you can read them once or twice with relative ease then move on.
Gathering these materials can take time and can be off putting. To help this I have arranged graded sight reading materials in the CGC Membership. But you can do it on your own.
Violin melodies and flute melodies are great, because they don’t have fingerings. Folk melodies, and even beginner guitar studies (Sor, Giuliani, Carcassi) can be good sight reading fodder.
Grade 3 Guitar Sight Reading
I want to leave you with some actionable ways to improve right now, so here are some exercises with a download sheet below:
Probably the biggest difficulty for people is learning the fretboard in the higher positions, so here are some great ways to force your fingers on an exploratory mission:
In each of these chord progressions you need to restrict yourself to one position on the guitar. It forces you to become familiar with the notes, chord shapes and there is only one possible solution for each progression…
Position 1 [sight Reading For Guitar In 6 Position) Sheet Music For Guitar (solo)
Similar to the progressions, this passage can be played in the five different positions indicated. Stick to the span of four frets to challenge your fingerboard knowledge.
All of these exercises, and more are included in your CGC Membership but if you are not ready to join I have created a download with some of these exercises which you can download here:Sight-reading music is a skill unto itself. There are fine guitar players who are appalling readers, and mediocre players who are exceptional readers. The primary aim of sight-reading is to enable musicians to familiarise themselves with a piece of music, without actually having to learn it. To use a visual analogy, it is a polaroid picture rather than a considered portrait. It is a useful skill and, for most practising musicians, an indispensable one.
Just as a prose reader takes in words and sentences, musical sight-reading requires the player to absorb more than one or two notes at a time. The eye should be scanning ahead rather than proceeding at the same rate as the fingers. A clarinetist I knew could take in an entire line of complex music at a glance (eight to ten bars). While he was playing line one he would be scanning line two. He had time to reflect on the phrasing, articulation and dynamics he would use as well as to identify any musical or rhythmic problems. It is important that one is conscious of these two processes: the physical (playing) process and the mental (reading) process. It matters not if in the beginning the two are running practically simultaneously. It is important that the musician knows they have to be prized apart. Take a look at Ex. 1.
Grade 3 Sight Reading
Here, on the third beat of the second bar the repeated C changes to an A. More experienced readers will have noticed that change as they began to play the example. They would probably have taken in the changes in bar three as well. Less experienced readers would notice the changes later: the first change to the A perhaps one note before they played it, the rhythmic change in bar three, perhaps only as they arrived at it. The essential principle in all sight-reading involves mental preparation ahead of the physical act; allowing oneself time to prepare for change, be it a simple change, as in the above example (from C to A), or a complicated six note chordal shift from one end of the fretboard to the other. The principle remains the same.
In Ex. 2, bar two is identical to bar one. Realising this even as late as bar two will give you more time to think about and process bar three. You will have gained a few crucial seconds.
So far, I have only dealt with very straightforward sight-reading examples. But before I proceed to the more complex variety, remember that it is not necessary to practise sight-reading with the guitar. After all, sight-reading involves two main elements: rhythm and pitch. Recognising rhythmic groups and cells can be done away from the instrument, on a bus, in the pub, anywhere. Take a piece of music with you and tap out the rhythms to yourself; try to write out rhythms when you hear them.
Grade 4 Guitar Sight Reading
Ex. 3 is more difficult to absorb. Some guitarists will find it less
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