Sight Reading Chords

tralfamadan

I've been practicing sight reading semi-regularly for the past year or so. I can handle single note melody lines fine (as in - I see & feel improvement with practice) but as soon as I run into a chord or even just two notes stacked together I choke.

I was wondering if anyone could share any advice for sight-reading chords? Or just some sight-reading tips in general would be really appreciated.

beed84

Okay, here's what I'd do:

1. If sight-reading chords is your Achilles Heel, then just do that for the next week. 
2. Never do the same exercise over and over, as that's not what sight reading is about. Do it a few times and move to the next exercise
3. Set at a metronome at a reasonably challenging speed. Always try to look ahead. Don't try to perfect it. If you mess up, keep going and maintain the pulse and rhythm

To reiterate, sight reading isn't about getting every exactly right. If you do, then great; but mainly it's about training you to read on the fly and improving your ability to keep things together regardless of how many mistakes you make. In other words if you played three out of four bars wrong but maintained the rhythm and pulse, then you did good. Make sense?

octatonic

It is simply down repetition and variation- you get good at the thing you practice.

tralfamadan

Cheers

Sounds like there's no magic bullet, just grit and hard work.

Keefy

Sight reading is all about pattern recognition. The more you do it, the more easily you will recognise the patterns of intervals and chords.

You could also try attacking the problem from the other end. For each key, write out on manuscript paper (real or virtual) the scale harmonised in 3rd, 4ths, 5ths, and 6ths, and the main triad and tetrad chords. If you can do this as flash cards, so much the better. Then pick them out at random and work out the different places you can play them on the guitar neck.

This way, when you encounter a chord written in standard notation, it will probably already be familiar to you.