Learn to read music!
Okay, so we’ve all heard the joke. ‘How do you make a guitarist stop playing? Stick a piece of music in front of him!’ As amusing (or not!) as this may be, it’s true that there are many of us that don’t read music at all. And while this is no great drawback to playing the instrument, there are situations where it can be very useful to be able to read notation and not just tablature.
For a start, understanding how the basics of music works can be immeasurably useful in simply understanding what you’re doing. Reading ‘the dots’ also helps you to communicate with other musicians. Being able to write out a basic chart, for example, can save hours when you’ve got lots of songs to learn for a rehearsal or a gig, or a sudden dep job. Being able to read might also get you that gig you’d otherwise have to turn down.
But learning to read can be daunting for a non-reading guitarist who can already play, as the ability to get around on the instrument will be vastly superior to the ability to read the notes. So it’s perfectly understandable that the fun aspect of playing ‘cool stuff’ is more tempting than a page’s worth of quarter notes. Luckily we don’t have to be able to read as well as a classical musician, who invariably will have learned from day one. But, as more and more guitarists are beginning to understand, it’s a skill that can only ever be useful.
“Being able to write out a basic chart can save hours when you’ve got lots of songs to learn for a rehearsal or gig, or a sudden dep job.”
Learning to read music for guitar is a skill just like any other to do with mastering the instrument, and needs regular and diligent practice if we are to improve and maintain that ability. But with focused study there’s no reason why it can’t be attained to a good level.
The good news is that there are many scenarios that don’t require you to read pages of complex notes and signs because, rather than an entirely notated ‘piece of music’ in the traditional sense, we often encounter ‘charts’ which are more of a guide than a directive to play an exact set of notes from beginning to end (although there are those too).
For example, we might see a chart for a ’60s style pop tune with a set intro melody or riff that the guitar has to play, and which will be notated, but the verse might just be written as chord symbols where it’s down to the stylistic awareness of the guitarist to choose an approach that works for that style of song. An experienced, versatile guitarist will be able to interpret the chart, taking into account its genre, what the general vibe is, and even who the other players are.
This month’s feature is split into three parts. The first is rather dry, but deals with essential areas of music theory which are important to understand, like time signatures, key signatures, and knowing what the note names are when you look at the musical stave.
The second part deals with the fretboard, as one of the biggest challenges to any new reader is not only deciphering what the notes are on the written page, but then to figure out where those notes are on the neck. The guitar is a notoriously tricky instrument on which to read, since there are numerous places where you can play the same note at the same pitch. That said, experience comes in handy here too, as does simple common sense.
The third part features three separate mini tunes in different styles, which present a variety of reading ‘scenarios’. There are two ‘charts’ for each song. The first is a ‘genuine’ one, which means that it is written in a way that you might see ‘in real life’; and the second is the transcription of my interpretation of these charts, so you can see exactly what I might have played in a gig situation, so you get an idea of the thought processes behind my musical choices.
If you’re new to reading music, a good thing to do would be to listen to the audio track first, without a guitar in your hand, and try
