learning to read music?

The best way to learn will be through books (with a teacher if you can). The internet has some resources, but reading music is really about reading from a printed page. It's just too hard to scroll & pick at the same time :)

Pick a book that looks like it goes at a comfortable pace for you. I've had students come with Mel Bay, Bill Bay, Fender, Alfred, Hal Leonard, and others. They all will cover reading in first position - they just present it at different rates, with different material, and in slightly different orders (Bill Bay, for instance, introduces techniques like slides and hammers before completing the notes on all six strings - his father, Mel Bay, took the opposite tack).

Be prepared for it to take a while. I've had some students who covered half of Mel Bay's book 1 in a week or two... some of them then get the idea that they'll continue at that pace, and go through the 7 book set in 3-6 months or so. That ain't gonna happen, and there's no method books that'll make it go faster.

To get you on your way to learning the note names, the following free game is something i've found very useful.

http://familygames.com/free/notecard.html

Apart from actually knowing the names of the notes, i've found rhythm a bit of an issue when reading music. Get a metronome and practise clapping out the rhythm of the music on the sheet. Start off with a tune you know, so you get an idea of how things sound and then build up to more difficult pieces.

Mart.

For most of us it took us a few years of constant work to learn to read written text.

Music notation is a written language, and it will take the same kind of hard work to learn to read it as it tood to learn to read regular text.

There are no shortcuts, but it's not like it's that hard either. It's merely the product of constant effort. The more you do it, the better you get.

There are lots of memory aids out there, but ultimately, it requires you sit down with a piece of music, and read it. And then do it again, and again, and again . . .

The Mel Bay method book vol 1-3, is available now as a single bound book for about $12. Most good guitar players can learn the first position notes very well in about 10 weeks just incorporating playing the lesson daily into their practice. I honestly think trying to go faster than that is a mistake, as you want this stuff to be known so well that you don't even think about what you're doing, it just happens between your eyes and your fingers without your brain realizing it's working.

After that, things get a bit more compliated, and your progress will slow down. But if you stick at it, you'll be able to figure out anything in any position in about a year. You might not be able to sight read it, but you can figure it out fairly quickly.

After between 2 and 3 years, a hard working adult musician will be able to sight read all but the most difficult pieces in any position.

Some great advice from the other posters. :)

One thing that helped me a lot was to scan whatever I was trying to read and blow it up to a much bigger size. Particularly if I was also trying to find the note on the guitar as well.

A bit like the big print in kids books. It just made it a lot easier to pick out which note was on which line until I got used to reading it.

As they said, it's not too hard really, but it does take a fair bit of time before it really sticks. I had a set of flash cards that helped learn the names and positions (probably a similar idea to the game that incognito linked to).

Good luck. :)

Ive been using the hald lenoard guitar method, and I found it teaches you to read music very naturally. I think the best part about it is that it you leanr the notes on the fretboard at the same time.

At first I was "cheating" by reading the music ahread of time and writing the letters in above the notes, and I actually think this was a good thing in the early strages when it took all the concentration I had to remeber where the note was on the guitar, but now that I am getting comfrotable with that I went back a whited out all of my letters, and practiced the same lessons again to leanr to sight read them.

An interesting thing has happened, and I dont know if it is good or not. Wheras before I started to learn notation I was able to memorize peices, now I can't play anything unless I have the music in front of me. Maybe in time I will regain the ability to emorize fingerings.

An interesting thing has happened, and I dont know if it is good or not. Wheras before I started to learn notation I was able to memorize peices, now I can't play anything unless I have the music in front of me. Maybe in time I will regain the ability to emorize fingerings.
I'd say it's definitely a good thing. When you get a song down cold it will become very hard to forget. Having music to begin with is good because you can focus on learning the actual mechanics of the piece without worrying about memorization. Memorization will come in time as you improve your performance of a song. It doesn't work the other way around.

An interesting thing has happened, and I dont know if it is good or not. Wheras before I started to learn notation I was able to memorize peices, now I can't play anything unless I have the music in front of me. Maybe in time I will regain the ability to emorize fingerings.
What's happening is that you're reading them instead of memorizing them. That's not necessarily bad, but if you want to know the piece by heart you'll have to learn it just like memorizing a speech or a poem. You read well enough now that you don't have to memorize a song before being able to play it, but remembering music is still an important skill.

For me learning to read music came in a couple of steps.
Early on in middle school band I learned to read music by playing scales and following each scale in notation (kind of a slow proccess but effective)
I re-learned recently, after 25+ years away from music, out of a beginners book (Hal Leonard I think) that taught the notes on one string at a time and gave a couple of songs to play after each lesson. (kind of a crash course but if you set your mind to it you will certainly succeed)
Bottom line is. Learn what the notes are on a musical staff, learn the length of various notes, learn where these same notes are on your guitar.
Then start learning what various marking mean as you come accross them.
The main thing to learn to read good IMHO is to throw away those TABs and play only music written in notation.