Design Notebook

Sight reading is the art of looking at a piece of music and playing it right then and there. This is something you can do with any instrument, including your voice. Most people struggle to sight read until they truly master their instrument of choice, and even then they may have trouble figuring out how to play things in a certain way. If you have been learning how to sight read recently, some of the tips below may help you cultivate your abilities a little easier. Here are some tips to help you improve your sight reading when playing the guitar.

Different Types of Guitar Music

Before you can learn to sight read, you need to know what you will be sight reading. Imagine that you have, in your mind, a piece of music (could be something you cooked up yourself on that lazy – I mean creative – Saturday evening, or a song that is in your bloodstream). How do you communicate it to someone? You could, of course, play it out loud and hope that the listener can reproduce it on his or her own. Otherwise, you would want to be able to describe it somehow. Thus you need to appeal to the language of music, the way the music is written so others can play it as well. There are a couple of “languages” that have become quite standard by now, including:

• Guitar tabs: These are quite visual and very easy to read, especially if you are new to the game. The lines actually represent the strings and the notation involves writing down the number of the fret that is to be pressed. It’s hard to describe for how long a note lasts though, in spite of several tweaks to the default conventions that try to incorporate a way to describe the time.
• Sheet Music: It is one of the oldest and most comprehensive ways of writing and reading music. The elaborateness of it is accompanied by a small price tag though, which is that it comes with a bit of a learning curve. Also, the system has so many variants that you may have to struggle a bit to figure out which specific sub-system a particular sheet of music is written in. If you practice reading sheet music long enough, you should be able to weed through the complexity of it and get to the heart of the guitar parts within it.

How to Sight Read Effectively

Sight reading is different for everyone, so do not get discouraged if you cannot do it well right from the beginning. The first thing you need to do is understand where the notes are on a piece of sheet music. Every line and space has a note that corresponds to it, and you need to figure out how those notes relate to the guitar. On top of that, you need to understand the value that each note has when it comes to rhythm. This will impact how a piece of music sounds when you play it.

Really the only thing you can do is practice sight reading frequently until you get the hang of it. Try playing music that you don’t know and then listen to how the music is supposed to be player. If you try it first, you won’t be relying on your ear to show you how it should be played. With the right amount of commitment, you can be a master of the music in no time.

Reasons to Learn about Sight Reading

One of the most heated debates in the guitar world is whether learning to sight read music sheets is really worth the trouble. Considering there are many rock gods and guitar heroes who get along just fine with the simpler system of tablature, why bother? It is true that if you want to restrict your music experience to playing the guitar, then you might find that sight-reading is a bit of an overkill. However, if you want to be a professional player (even if it is only on the guitar), knowing how to sight read is one of the most useful skills that you might develop.

There’s the added kick of knowing that you are at an advantage when you are conversant with both systems. Also, if you intend to learn any music theory, or play on instruments besides the guitar, sometimes sight reading is the only way to go. You don’t even have a choice. You might as well craft your skills now so you can benefit from them in the future. You would do it to become a police officer, wouldn’t you?

Final Thoughts

With all of this in mind, you need to ignore anyone who tries to be deliberately elitist about sight reading. If you are in a situation when tabs suffice, then that’s all that you need to know at that point of time. Sheets aren’t inherently more divine; they are just a more comprehensive system. Often people who understand both will switch to tabs when the simplicity is more important than the extra expressive power of sheet music (that comes with added complexity in the bargain). You have to figure out what the right option is for your situation and go from there.

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