Advice on learning to read music...

I rather like Mel Bay's Method for Guitar. It goes string by string, and has a bunch of basic melodies.

There's a book by Aaron shearer called Learning The Classical Guitar Part Two that would be good for you. Also the Mel Bay series book one starts with reading.

G'Day,
Thanks for the replies.

Have you both studied with these books you're recommending ?? if so, how is your progress ?? how often do you practice site reading and at what level are you at now ??
What sort of excercises can i expect with either of these books (any examples at all) ?? do the exercises get progressively harder ?? Is there a recommended time period each specific book should take to finish ??

I don't want to buy another book aimed at the beginning guitarist that starts like this...
1. How to hold your guitar
2. How to tune your guitar
3. First position notes
4. Open chords
5. Major scale
6. Maybe i'm lucky to get 6 pages that tell me what the lines on a staff represent and what 4/4 means.

I have plenty of these books and although they were very useful to me when i needed to know these things, they are not so helpful to me anymore.

I want something that is specifically aimed at the guitarist to learn to read and write standard notation, beyond a 1st grade level (read: extreme beginner).... If there is such a product.

Pearl, your suggestion of classical guitar literature makes sense as the majority of non-classical guitarist, from what i've heard, don't read music.

Sorry if i sound pedantic, but I haven't been able to find any books in stores to suit my needs. And i'd rather not waste any more money on a book that tries to teach me basic stuff i already know.

Thanks again.
J

In addition to my last post...

I'm not really looking into learning the technical aspects of fingerstyle classical guitar technique, as i assume many classical guitar instruction books would focus on. (I may be wrong, I haven't studied any classical instruction books)

I primarily play with a pick, and also some folk style fingering (definitely not classical technique) and i have absolutely no interest in learning this at the moment.

My main focus is getting access to sheet music starting with beginner material and increasing in difficulty over the months/years as my skills progress.
Does anyone know of any books that progresses in this fashion.

If i'm asking the impossible/stupid/pointless please don't be shy to tell me.
Any suggestions from someone who has been in my position before?

Sorry for the long posts but wanted to make my reasons clear. (as mud)
Time for me to stop whingeing. :?
Peace.
J

I'd get the Mel Bay book 1. It starts in "Janet and John" fashion by showing you a single note on a staff, telling you what it's called and with a chord box showing you where to find it on the neck. Then you get some exercises and simple melodies.

Yes - I use it with students to teach them standard notation, and it works; I have a 7 year old student who can play single notes from sight across all six strings.

Rhythm - 3/4 4/4 6/8 and all that - get hold of "The Right Way To Read Music" by Right Way books in the UK, or Noteboat's book. The Right Way book was £4.99 last time I bought a copy (2003). Either will give you enough theory to know what you're doing, but not enough to fry your brains.

Best,

A :-)

All beginners books will usually start with what you mentioned but it usually lasts a few pages. Most books won't spend more than a page or two going over the notes on the staff, unless they're written in very big type. :wink:

Based on what you've mentioned, you're probably better off with the Mel Bay or Hal Leonard beginners' books. Warner Brothers also has a good series called "Gutar Method" by Aaron Stang. These all, As mentioned, start out by focusing on one string at a time (thinnest to thickest) and, once you've gotten at least two strings under your belt, give you plenty of familiar childhood songs that you can use to practice your reading with. I use one of the three when trying to give adults a crash course in reading as part of their lessons.

One thing that helps adults when getting into reading music is to not think of it as a monumental task. If you can make it a point to recognize one note a day, then you'll be well on your way in less than a month. If you can do two or three notes a day, then the hard part will be over in two weeks. You'll even be able to read the notes in open position and not look at your fretting hand.

But it is, like everything else, a matter of practice. With guitar, you not only want to be able to read individual notes, you want to also be able to read chords at a glance. With surprisingly little dedication, you can start to see your open position chords in notation(which all these books usually get into toward the end of the first book) and recognize them for what they are.

Rhythms (note values) can be tricky. Don't be discouraged because there are lots of practiced veterans out there (of all instruments) who, when confronted with a complex rhythm pattern, have to break it down piece by piece.

Good luck, keep at it and don't be afraid to start off very easy. The point is to do whatever it takes to get you to know what they are.

One additional benefit you will find is that once you're comfortable with note reading, you'll start to take in whole measures and groups of measures at once. Not only in single notes but also as chords. So, for instance, if you see a bunch of notes that make a G arpeggio, your fingers will automatically find themselves in the shape you want. This "big picture" reading should also carry over to when you read TAB and you'll find yourself a better TAB reader as well, as most beginners with TAB usually read from number to number and take ages to develop a "multi-dimensional" reading ability.

Keep us posted on your progress!

Peace

I've taught from Mel Bay for years, and if you apply yourself to the books, you will end up reading well.

Book 1 devotes about the first 9 pages to strings, tuning, holding the guitar, etc. I understand they have an expanded version out, with about twice as much material - but the same basics: the keys of C, Am, G, and Em in open position is what you get in the first book; after that, the other six each do a couple of key signatures.

Bay's method doesn't introduce positions until you can solidly read accidentals and key signatures in the open position. After that it marches on up the neck.

Though I could read music before I started playing guitar, I used that old seven volume Mel Bay set to teach myself how to read music on guitar, before moving on to the Berklee books. I agree with Noteboat, the Mel Bay books will have you reading on guitar quite well.

You might want to consider the Berkeley Method books.

Book 1 has about 3 pages of very simple excercises to go over the notes in 1st position, then it proceeds to work you like a rented mule :)

I can recommend Solo Guitar Playing by Frederick Noad. I learned out of it and taught out of it a bit. It's 'classical' guitar but a lot of the book is learning the notes and sight reading. It goes at a pretty nice pace; you're not presented with big complex pieces to play; just little 2 and 4 bar examples. The new one's got a CD too, so that could be helpful.

I think fingerstyle teaching, if not classical guitar teaching, is good when learning to read single and dual lines of music, and you get more into sight reading in Noad's books than strumming and playing tunes. Might be a bit boring if a person wants to instantly sound like they're playing something, but for learning the notes on the strings, I think it's a good way to start. Plus Noad has a rather laid back, easy to understand way of teaching.

Best regards.

Melodic Rhythms for Guitar by William Leavitt is a great book

I also teach from the Berklee method and use the Noad book with classial students.

Berklee gets into position playing very early - as soon as a couple of keys are covered, you're moving up to second position. But I think the exercises may be a bit harder than Jmin7b5 is looking for - eighth notes are introduced early on, and by page 30 or so you're doing 16ths in at least some exercises.

Noad has the level right, but since it's written for a classical guitarist, most of the exercises include counterpoint. Bay (and Berklee) are done specifically for the plectrum guitarist.

The Aaron Shearer Series has a Part One and I don't know what's in it but part two sometimes refers to part one. I think it's thigs like how to hold the guitar, and things like that, but if you're interested you can always get both books.

But to answer your quesiton here is the Table of contents for Book Two:

Music and The guitar - The 5 Basic Materials of Music
Learning to Read Music - Rhytymn, Directing the beat, Notation, Meter/Time signature, Metronome,...
Beginning to Read Music - the Open 3rd and 4th Strings, the Pre-Reading Procedure, Duets for Study, the Open Second String, Notes on The Fretboard, the Open 5th and 6th strings, etc/
Solo Playing of Music in two parts - Syncopation, G sharp on 3, 3/4 time and the dotted Half value, the dotted quarter Value
Beginning Free Stroke: sounding Two notes simultaneously - F# on 1 and C# on 2, the Key signature, Further Training of the fourth finger, accidentals in Music, ...
Beginning Arpeggios: Sympathetic Movement - Single Beat Measure of Three Counts, further training of A, Right Hand alternation, C on 5 Quintiple Meter, alternation on a single String...
Playing Scales - rest Stroke alternation, Playing Chords With P and the Fingers, the Complete Open Postion G Major Scale form
Further Development of Chords and Arpeggios - Hemiola, Mixed Meter, Chords of Four Notes, triplets, Technical slurs, Scales D, Chromatic, A Major, E Major
String Damping, Right hand and Left Hand
Solfege
Memorizing Music - blah, blah

There's a lot here. A good portion of the exercises are duets but there's plenty of solos to keep you busy. I've learned a lot from this book on my own but if you can find a teacher willing to teach from this book it's probably even better. But then again, your teacher will have to know how to read the music!! There's no tab in this book, its' all in notation so you get used to reading it. it' starts off pretty easy and gets greadually harder then seems like it gets pretty hard but I've never gotten that far in it.

Some of the exercises have names like: Lullaby and Dance of four, Scale song, Dance of the Downward Skip at the very beginning. It goes on the names like Cantilena 11, Etude Moderne, The Gondolier, P,I.M,I, Etude, further on. Then goes on to song names like sontana in C, Etude in e Minor, Musette even further on. Some exercises are not too long some are most of one page some take up two pages.

I bought this book mid last year figuring i would work on it until the end of the year. What actually happened is that every so often i pick it up and go back to it but start back at the same easy stuff at the beginning and work my way up to where i left off before! I bought it to learn to read music but it's a bit much for me. Maybe Mel Bay is the way to go....

It's a serious book; there's a lot here. But if you get through it I think that there's a part three!

jane
sorry for any typos

WOW, thanks for the thorough replies everyone.

The Mel Bay books sound like a good place to start, so I'll check them out.

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Thanks again.
J