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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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Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
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
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.
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.
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.
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'.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
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
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.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
Feedback
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.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
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Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
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
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 kind of approaching it from a more scientific point of view. Scientists aren't always the coolest or most creative of people.