Song books

This site has a lot to offer. Here is a link to Reading Music Notation. That is part one of two.

Ok possibly too much at once. I read the music notation lesson. But I still can't figure out how you know which " C " to play, when the sheet music has a C.

Well, you can take about four different approaches:

1. You can just play any open chord that matches the notation. That'll get you the background harmony for vocals, even if it's not the same voicing as the album.

2. You can play any other chords that match the notation, wherever they are on the neck. For example, if it goes C-Bm, instead of going 'up' from open C to the 2nd fret Bm, you can do a barre C at the 8th fret to a barre Bm at the 7th. Again, it's close enough for vocals

3. You can match the voicing to the top note of the melody line. If the first chord is C, and the first note is the G above the staff, you could play either of these:

-3-3-
-1-5-
-0-5-
-2-5-
-3-3-
-x-x-

and you'll get chord voicings that follow the melody of the tune.

4. You can learn enough standard notation to parse out the voicing shown on the piano track. Those are often pretty darn close to what's being done on the album - it's similar to #3 above, but you'll know which voicing it is.

If you're trying to play the melody from the notation, the E on the bottom line is the E on the 2nd fret of the D-string (or the 7th fret of the A, or the 12th fret of the bass E string... those notes are all the same note.)

If you have no idea what the strumming pattern might be, try figuring out what the timing is in the notation and try converting that into a strumming timing (e.g. "whole note - dotted whole note - 1/2 note - whole note" would be D - D - - U D -). If it's a fast melody, you may have to simplify it, but this can be a place to start. At least notice which of the down and up strokes would have a note played in the melody and which wouldn't, and strum accordingly. If you have full notation, with the chords written on the lines under the melody, your strumming pattern is right there for you to read.

If you're trying to play the melody from the notation, the E on the bottom line is the E on the 2nd fret of the D-string (or the 7th fret of the A, or the 12th fret of the bass E string... those notes are all the same note.)

That's true if it's written for guitar... if you're using piano music, the E on the bottom line of the staff is the open 1st string - the guitar is written one octave higher than it actually sounds, so unless it's written specifically for guitar, you transpose an octave to get the true pitch.

Notes written above or below the staff are meant to be played. If music is written for the guitar, the playable range runs from the note below the third ledger line beneath the staff (open 6th string) to the highest playable note... that's usually considered the 19th fret B on the first string, which is the fifth ledger line above the staff - even though many guitars have a larger range, that B note is considered playable on all guitars. In practice, most transcribers will try to avoid more than three ledger lines in either direction by using the ottava sign (8va) to indicate a passage should be played one octave higher or lower than written.

I forgot that there are pianos, thanks. Do keyboard players follow this same convention?

If you mean the ledger line, yeah... notes below GG (the note below the third ledger line under the bass clef) and above f3 (the note above the third ledger line over the treble clef) are usually written in ottava.

Not everyone follows that convention - violin music sometimes has a whole mess of ledger lines instead of ottavas.

If you mean following the transposition convention... on any instument, if you want to play true pitch and you're working from music written for another instument, you need to know if it's transposed. If you have horn music, the note written as C is actually F, for sax that same written note is Bb or Eb, etc. It gets confusing... which is why most people just play from transcriptions for their instrument.