Reading Music

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57Deluxe57Deluxe Frets: 7329
If you were able to have a chance to understand how to start to read music for the guitar, without any pain or hours of repetitive lessons of cramming, would you embrace it?
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  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    edited October 2019
    I think everyone would, much in the same way it would be nice to be able to speak another language without ever having to do any work to learn it.

    But reading music take years of work, sight-reading takes decades.
    If you think of it as a chore it will never happen.
    Learning to read on an instrument other than guitar is much easier btw.
    Piano is best for this.


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  • RockerRocker Frets: 4947
    There is a more urgent need for a way of learning how to play guitar without the need to spend countless hours learning chords, scales, riffs etc
    Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. [Albert Einstein]

    Nil Satis Nisi Optimum

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  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    edited October 2019
    Rocker said:
    There is a more urgent need for a way of learning how to play guitar without the need to spend countless hours learning chords, scales, riffs etc
    I'd like to climb Everest from the comfort of my armchair.
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  • DLMDLM Frets: 2513
    Rocker said:
    There is a more urgent need for a way of learning how to play guitar without the need to spend countless hours learning chords, scales, riffs etc
    Flag as trolling like SirAxeman's flat earthery, beg for reinstatement of Facepalms or send "professional help"?
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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10357
    Rocker said:
    There is a more urgent need for a way of learning how to play guitar without the need to spend countless hours learning chords, scales, riffs etc
    Lol, yeah everyone could use a shortcut in this regard. 

    I do believe learning the guitar is actually made more confusing by modern approaches like Tab, Caged box's etc. I'm having good success teaching the 3 simple things. Learn where the notes are all over the neck. Learn the intervals to build basic maj and minor scales. Learn how different intervals sound when played over chords. That's it .... just 3 things theory wise but the motor skills still take many years to develop to the point you can play effortlessly.

    Going back to reading real music I would love to but I'm not sure how practical it is for a modern guitarist. Most gigs I'm involved with feature a light show and music stands are banned from the stage. Be useful if you work in a pit at a theater though  
    www.2020studios.co.uk 
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  • EricTheWearyEricTheWeary Frets: 16254
    Danny1969 said:
    Rocker said:
    There is a more urgent need for a way of learning how to play guitar without the need to spend countless hours learning chords, scales, riffs etc
    Lol, yeah everyone could use a shortcut in this regard. 

    I do believe learning the guitar is actually made more confusing by modern approaches like Tab, Caged box's etc. I'm having good success teaching the 3 simple things. Learn where the notes are all over the neck. Learn the intervals to build basic maj and minor scales. Learn how different intervals sound when played over chords. That's it .... just 3 things theory wise but the motor skills still take many years to develop to the point you can play effortlessly.

    Going back to reading real music I would love to but I'm not sure how practical it is for a modern guitarist. Most gigs I'm involved with feature a light show and music stands are banned from the stage. Be useful if you work in a pit at a theater though  
    Years ago I used to know Robert Robertson a bit ( little brother of BA Robertson for those of a certain age). He was a classically trained guitarist and worked mostly as a bassist doing pit work. His idea of practice was to spend a couple of hours sight reading a musical he'd never worked on. 
    Mind boggling stuff.
    I wouldn't knock reading music just because I can't do it but it always seems to me that the source for rock and pop music is the recording. If you are covering or want to learn from a song by, let's say, The Beatles then the source is the original recording. There was no manuscript that they sat around in Abbey Road interpreting. 
    Quite a few books on how to read music for guitar if you want to go into pit work or session work or similar but I'm sure it's just a lot of hard work. 
    When my son was doing clarinet grades he was learning a small part of the range of the clarinet at the same time as how it was represented on the page. That blob on the page means your fingers go there. Very few people learn guitar that way and it has a much bigger range than a clarinet, there are multiple places to put your fingers, you have to do several notes at once...it's not hard to see why it's a relatively rare skill. 
    Tipton is a small fishing village in the borough of Sandwell. 
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  • Matt_McGMatt_McG Frets: 321
    I can read music on guitar. It didn't take that long to be able to do it OK. A couple of months, maybe a bit more, but less than a year. When I was taking classical guitar lessons, I got to the point where I could sight-read pieces sight-unseen up to a fairly decent level of difficulty, and where I could play pieces I'd played before (but not memorised) all the way up to the limits of what I could physically play.

    Although, I discovered when I did a pit thing for a Brecht/Weill "opera" that what I had taught myself to do was to read very "guitaristic" music, and I found some of the (on paper) very simple music, quite hard to read. Either because it was intrinsically quite unnatural in terms of fingering (because written by non-guitar aware composers), or because it was in more flats than I was generally used to reading. So I'd definitely need to practice reading music idiomatic to the styles I would be expected to play, before I could just do it. But, I don't think reading music is quite as hard as is sometimes made out.

    I've only done that pit thing once (for a one week run), though, so I'm a _long_ _long_  way below the level that actual profession pit musicians are at.

    Reading on other instruments is a piece of piss, though. You could learn to play saxophone, say, including reading music, in an amazingly short amount of time.
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  • Does guitar tab count as "reading music"? Its really numbers on lines in the end. Rhythm reading and understanding is important too as it allows you to learn riffs or phrases quicker if you know the timing of it, where in the bar it falls, what beat its on, etc.

    I can read music but I've never taught any of my learners to read the notes in treble clef, only rhythm symbols and tab. Its half by ear and half visual presentations.
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  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    Does guitar tab count as "reading music"?
    Usually not to people who can read standard notation.

    I remember I was doing a repair for someone and he was telling me about how he recorded his album 'all analogue'.
    I said 'oh great, what tape machine did you use'?
    He said 'we didn't use one- we used Pro Tools'.

    For this chap the fact that he was recording with guitar amplifier mic'ed up into Pro Tools meant he was recording analogue, rather than using a modeller or plugins.

    Tab vs standard notation is a bit like that- if you don't know what you don't know then tab might appear to be reading music right up to the point someone puts a proper score in front of you and says 'read it and play it with the band'.
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  • octatonic said:
    Does guitar tab count as "reading music"?
    Usually not to people who can read standard notation.

    I remember I was doing a repair for someone and he was telling me about how he recorded his album 'all analogue'.
    I said 'oh great, what tape machine did you use'?
    He said 'we didn't use one- we used Pro Tools'.

    For this chap the fact that he was recording with guitar amplifier mic'ed up into Pro Tools meant he was recording analogue, rather than using a modeller or plugins.

    Tab vs standard notation is a bit like that- if you don't know what you don't know then tab might appear to be reading music right up to the point someone puts a proper score in front of you and says 'read it and play it with the band'.
    See a lot of new learners fear they will have to read music in order to play the guitar but in my 11 years teaching I've never ever taught anyone to read notation. Some don't even look at the tab I give them and attempt to memorise by looking at me play but they've forgotten it by the time they get to practice at home.
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  • DLMDLM Frets: 2513
    57Deluxe said:
    If you were able to have a chance to understand how to start to read music for the guitar, without any pain or hours of repetitive lessons of cramming, would you embrace it?
    It's a really negative way of looking at learning, isn't it? I've wis'd @Octatonic for saying basically that. 
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  • robertyroberty Frets: 10893
    edited October 2019
    I could sight read on clarinet when I was 12. Now I can't read a note

    I'd like to have a better idea of the notes I'm playing. It's useful to know the major third of A is C# and then think "C#" and just grab any of them on the neck without having to think relatively.  I think reading music on guitar would help with that

    edit: I've just ordered this, it's been on my mind, https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Reading-Studies-positions-through-position/dp/0634013351
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  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    octatonic said:
    Does guitar tab count as "reading music"?
    Usually not to people who can read standard notation.

    I remember I was doing a repair for someone and he was telling me about how he recorded his album 'all analogue'.
    I said 'oh great, what tape machine did you use'?
    He said 'we didn't use one- we used Pro Tools'.

    For this chap the fact that he was recording with guitar amplifier mic'ed up into Pro Tools meant he was recording analogue, rather than using a modeller or plugins.

    Tab vs standard notation is a bit like that- if you don't know what you don't know then tab might appear to be reading music right up to the point someone puts a proper score in front of you and says 'read it and play it with the band'.
    See a lot of new learners fear they will have to read music in order to play the guitar but in my 11 years teaching I've never ever taught anyone to read notation. Some don't even look at the tab I give them and attempt to memorise by looking at me play but they've forgotten it by the time they get to practice at home.
    I'm not saying everyone should read- it is really only useful for people who want to be a certain type of professional player, or be able to take scores and play them for their own enjoyment.
    I still think it connects you more fully to the music to be able to read, but I agree it isn't necessary.

    To use another analogy take the difference between an automatic or a manual car.
    In the past the only way to drive a car was to drive a manual gearbox.
    Now most people drive automatic because it is easier and now can get you better fuel economy and the tech is so good it surpasses the manual gear box in almost every metric.
    But there are certain types of driver who hate them and insist on doing it 'the proper way'.

    It is hard to give up on the old ways of doing things if you have hundreds or thousands of hours invested.

    I don't think I'll ever shake the notion that it is better to be able to read than not be able to read, even if its use is declining.
    But if I was a 14 year old now learning the guitar I probably wouldn't bother.
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  • JalapenoJalapeno Frets: 6378
    I'd love to be better at reading (not necessarily sight reading), but able to follow/pick out a melody.

    Even proficient readers I know (horn players mainly) say sight reading is something you have to maintain or ability tails off.

    Imagine something sharp and witty here ......

    Feedback
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  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    Jalapeno said:
    I'd love to be better at reading (not necessarily sight reading), but able to follow/pick out a melody.

    Even proficient readers I know (horn players mainly) say sight reading is something you have to maintain or ability tails off.

    Absolutely.
    It is doubly difficult for guitar players because there are multiple places to find the same note.
    When you go to music school you learn how to read in certain positions.
    I have no idea how anyone would teach themselves this.
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  • sev112sev112 Frets: 2739
    I’ve shown my daughter what the chords she is playing on her uke and guitar look like on a piano keyboard
    ive also shown her where middle C to top C are on the keyboard and where they are on the guitar, and that you can play those notes in different positions on the guitar, and where the open guitar strings are on the stave

    ive also shown her how simple patterns of crotchets and quavers and rests look like on a stave

    but nothing more than that - purely so she can see the relationship between what she does on her guitar / uke and how written music might represent that.

    when she’s ready to want to do play music from notation we can do that, but she’s got the very basic linkages to start off with if she wishes to


    at the moment she’s focussing on playing more 6 strong than 4 string, and using hammer ons and pull offs on strummed chords, so sheet music can wait a bit more 
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  • RolandRoland Frets: 8591
    The challenge for guitarists is that a standard score doesn’t provide all of the information needed to play a piece. A saxophonist plays one note at a time (Roland Kirk excepted) and each note has its own key combination. A pianist has multiple notes, and also has to decide which fingers to use. When this isn’t obvious there are additions to standard notation which tell. A guitarist not only has finger choice, sometimes on both hands, but also which string to use, which is where TAB comes in. 

    It it didn’t take me long to learn standard notation. It was probably about as long as it took to memorise the notes on a guitar. 

    Would I learn to read music? Yes. Would it enable me to sight read guitar music? Only simple pieces because I’d have to play it, or at least think it through, to decide fingerings. 
    Tree recycler, and guitarist with  https://www.undercoversband.com/.
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  • I value my ability to read music, albeit at a relatively modest pace. To me, it provides nuances and the ability to choose where you play notes and chords, which TAB doesn’t offer. Music theory is something I enjoy, and find hugely valuable. It does take a bit of time in order to get reasonably started, but, like riding a bike, you do retain the ability even if you get a bit rusty at times.
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  • Roland said:
    The challenge for guitarists is that a standard score doesn’t provide all of the information needed to play a piece. A saxophonist plays one note at a time (Roland Kirk excepted) and each note has its own key combination. A pianist has multiple notes, and also has to decide which fingers to use. When this isn’t obvious there are additions to standard notation which tell. A guitarist not only has finger choice, sometimes on both hands, but also which string to use, which is where TAB comes in. 

    It it didn’t take me long to learn standard notation. It was probably about as long as it took to memorise the notes on a guitar. 

    Would I learn to read music? Yes. Would it enable me to sight read guitar music? Only simple pieces because I’d have to play it, or at least think it through, to decide fingerings. 
    It's a bit better than that. I used to learn classical pieces from music on a stave and it did sometimes tell me which string to use for a note, which finger to use to fret it and which finger to use to strike the string. Yes, a score written by a guitarist for a guitarist, but the ability to convey the information does exist. 
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  • LastMantraLastMantra Frets: 3822
    edited October 2019
    I think that learning how to read music, or getting into theory, changes the way you look at music. Whether that's good or bad is debatable, but most of the guys I listen to don't seem to get that hung up on it.
    It's kind of approaching it from a more scientific point of view. Scientists aren't always the coolest or most creative of people. 

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