Can You Read Music?

I'm not speaking about tablature here, I'm talking about sheet music. I'm terrible at reading music and it takes me a long time to get through each measure. I spend a lot of time with The Real Book which is basically a huge collection of jazz standards. Most of the time I just focus on the chords and rhythm of the songs but when I go to learn the melody I usually end up getting stuck and have to take time to listen to the song over and over again to figure it out and usually pick up parts by ear.

When I'm learning rock tunes I try to avoid a lot of tablature. I prefer a layout with just the chords and the lyrics. More often than not tablature offers an unorthodox way of playing a lot of tunes. For instance, not having the fingering for an entire chord or having to do an extrordinary stretch when you can hit the same note on the next string.

I'm not speaking about tablature here, I'm talking about sheet music. I'm terrible at reading music and it takes me a long time to get through each measure. I spend a lot of time with The Real Book which is basically a huge collection of jazz standards. Most of the time I just focus on the chords and rhythm of the songs but when I go to learn the melody I usually end up getting stuck and have to take time to listen to the song over and over again to figure it out and usually pick up parts by ear.

When I'm learning rock tunes I try to avoid a lot of tablature. I prefer a layout with just the chords and the lyrics. More often than not tablature offers an unorthodox way of playing a lot of tunes. For instance, not having the fingering for an entire chord or having to do an extrordinary stretch when you can hit the same note on the next string.

Headbanger88

About the extraordinary stretch: Often times notes are meant to be held long while other notes are played. An example:

|-5------------5--------------|
|---8--------8---8--------8---|
|-----9----9-------9----9-----|
|-------11-----------11-------|
|-----------------------------|
|-----------------------------|

|-------------------------------|
|-10-8--------8-10-8--------8---|
|------9----9--------9----9-----|
|--------11------------11-------|
|-------------------------------|
|-------------------------------|

The above piece is a small excerpt from "Las Abejas" by Barrios. I used to play it the way it is put on the bottom, but I found that I should do it the rigt way, although the stretch was very difficult. The A-note on the 5th string just sounded so much better if it rang while the G, E and C# continued after it.

Yes, but like most classical guitarists, I am a horrible sightreader. I have looked at tab, then the sheet. The sheet is always correct, gives far more information, and is overall a better choice. However tabs aren't really that bad if you already have heard the piece many times.DejaVu72

Reading classical music is a ***** and trying to sightread it is suicide. I always get these guitar books from my stepdad that have just a bunch of sheet music in them. One of these books was called "Classical Guitar Technique" by Aaron Shearer. It starts off easy enough but if you're like me and try to skip to the "Music of The Masters" section you're just staring at a wall of sixteenth notes thinking "You know what, screw this!" It really is a pain in the ass, a lot harder than reading jazz standards which usually involve a simple melody layered by complex chords.

[QUOTE="DejaVu72"]Yes, but like most classical guitarists, I am a horrible sightreader. I have looked at tab, then the sheet. The sheet is always correct, gives far more information, and is overall a better choice. However tabs aren't really that bad if you already have heard the piece many times.Headbanger88

Reading classical music is a ***** and trying to sightread it is suicide. I always get these guitar books from my stepdad that have just a bunch of sheet music in them. One of these books was called "Classical Guitar Technique" by Aaron Shearer. It starts off easy enough but if you're like me and try to skip to the "Music of The Masters" section you're just staring at a wall of sixteenth notes thinking "You know what, screw this!" It really is a pain in the ass, a lot harder than reading jazz standards which usually involve a simple melody layered by complex chords.

When learning guitar, I picked easy songs that I liked to play. I would listen to the most difficult and greatest composers as a motivation, then later I started just gradually learning more and more difficult pieces. But like John Williams said, there is an idea that practice should be hard work, but this idea, as he put it, is destructive. Always enjoy your practice, or find a way to enjoy it. I find that my first few sentences are the best way to enjoy it.

Anyways, that's my method of learnign guitar.

[QUOTE="Headbanger88"]

[QUOTE="DejaVu72"]Yes, but like most classical guitarists, I am a horrible sightreader. I have looked at tab, then the sheet. The sheet is always correct, gives far more information, and is overall a better choice. However tabs aren't really that bad if you already have heard the piece many times.DejaVu72

Reading classical music is a ***** and trying to sightread it is suicide. I always get these guitar books from my stepdad that have just a bunch of sheet music in them. One of these books was called "Classical Guitar Technique" by Aaron Shearer. It starts off easy enough but if you're like me and try to skip to the "Music of The Masters" section you're just staring at a wall of sixteenth notes thinking "You know what, screw this!" It really is a pain in the ass, a lot harder than reading jazz standards which usually involve a simple melody layered by complex chords.

When learning guitar, I picked easy songs that I liked to play. I would listen to the most difficult and greatest composers as a motivation, then later I started just gradually learning more and more difficult pieces. But like John Williams said, there is an idea that practice should be hard work, but this idea, as he put it, is destructive. Always enjoy your practice, or find a way to enjoy it. I find that my first few sentences are the best way to enjoy it.

Anyways, that's my method of learnign guitar.

I couldn't agree more. I'm self taught and although my stepdad is a guitar instructor and professional musician he never really taught me anything. I found it was hard to take lessons seriously from a person you live with and besides, the last thing he wants to do is teach guitar at home after doing it all day. They way I learned everything I know was from finding songs that I liked and learn the chords and progression. Eventually I started to remember the chord names and took note of how progressions were structured. This led to an ability to write music, imitating songs that I've learned but adding my own bit of flavor to it.

After playing for two years I started to get an ear for jazz, particularly Bossa. This was a bit of an adventure because chords were no longer just major or minor anymore. You have seventh chords, sixth chords, minor seventh flat five, you name it. I started off slow, like picking up the intro to "Girl From Ipanema" and moving forward. Now after five years of playing I've developed a good technique for playing Bossa as well as a firm knowledge of chords. Hell, after all of this time my stepfather actually took notice of my playing and now we can jam together.

There was a point where I wanted to learn classical music. I think the day I got my first acoustic guitar I spent the day trying to come up with a fingerpicking technique. The thing is, I never got too passionate about learning classical. I did however get into a big flamenco phase where I tried to learn how to play Rio Ancho but alas, trying to play like Paco De Lucia is an act of futility. The only thing I got out of it was an original song loosely based off of Rio Ancho because a quarter of the way through it I just messed around and made my own stuff up.

I don't play an instrument. Amazing isn't it?:oaaaaarrrrggggg

:o