Reading Music

Matt_McG

Classical guitar music often has hints to fingering. It might just be a position, or an indication of a partial barre, or of which string to start a phrase on. Cues, rather than explicit like tab. It really helps, though.

i always found it helpful, although I almost entirely ignored right hand fingering.

jpfamps

Reading music is a very useful skill, especially for playing in ensembles; imagine trying to organize an orchestra of non readers!

However, as has been pointed out above reading the guitar is not easiest instrument to read on. eg a friend of mine used to play second guitar / keyboards in the Micheal Jackson show in the West End. He sight reads for keyboards but not for guitar, so it's not merely an issue of not being familiar with notation.

It would be great to be able to pickup a score and be able to play it.

However, learning to read music is time consuming, and given most people have limited time to practice, I guess that time could be more usefully employed working on something else.

The other issue of course is that a lot of the music that many of us want to play is not written out, so the only recourse is working it out yourself.

Also, speaking to couple of players I know who do reading sessions it is not unusual for the guitar scores to be arranged by people who have little understanding of what the guitar is capable of, so are often unplayable!