How important is it to learn to read music on top of tabs?

It's not that important...but then again it is. It really gives you the ability to understand music better and it broadens your ability and allows you to play with musicians who aren't guitarists. I say why not? It doesn't take that much work (well, as much as anything else you have to learn to do when playing guitar) and it changes your perspective. The best way to learn is to play piano. If you don't feel like learning to play piano just start slowly learning on easy pieces then go from there. Just remember to keep on learning new things as this will help you keep you out of a rut.

Not all music has tabs - so it helps to be able to read standard music notation.

I read music to be able to translate to guitar tab - I learned by using a set of 'Flash Cards' purchased at a music center.

There is also web sites such as:
http://www.jazclass.aust.com/1readm/mn0.htm

and software available such as:

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/win95/NOTATION/

Not to mention books dedicated to reading and transposing music.

Like learning many other topics the more you read music the easier it becomes.

Good luck!

BS :)

I don't read standard notation well, but I do use it to get a better sense of the rhythm, meter of a piece. It's helpful. The fellow who leads our band reads it well and I'm always amazed at how he can translate a vocal line or a piano line quickly to guitar (he's had some experience playing classical guitar). So it's worth spending time on, but I figure I can get better at it a little at a time -- I don't need to learn it all at once.

Here's a good place to start:

Your Very Own Rosetta Stone: A quick guide to reading notation.

get your theory right before you start seeing licks on the tabs.you may get afraid of them early and if ur a beginner you may drop your guitar.Follow the link given above .The article by david is simply great :)

Being able to read music gives you the edge over people who can't. And you'll never hear of anyone being fired from a band because they could read music.

Best,

A :-)

It's a matter of what you want to do with your guitar playing.

If you just want to twang yer thang and don't really care about being a musician, then it's not important at all.

If you want to really be able to advance your playing, it's essential.

You can't talk intelligently about theory without reading music, and it's the language of music for talking with other musicians on other instruments.

Add in that only about one-one-millionth of all the music ever written is available on tabs, and you might want to consider if you really want to limit yourself that much.

Things you can never do, or are much harder to do, if you can't read music:

1) be a session musician
2) sub into another band on short notice
3) play with an orchastra
4) compose for other instruments

That's just the top of the list, but frankly, that's quit a lot you're cutting off for what is really a very easy thing to learn how to do.

Thanks guys! Off to check out that link. I think I am going to brave it. Sounds limiting if I don't.

A long time ago one of my students put it this way:

"If tab is like having a cheat sheet, notation is like having the textbook."

Notation is alot more detailed. With notation you can play a piece of music that you've never heard before. If all you have is tab, good luck.

Of course the quality of both varies considerably.
I've found that transcribing songs helps tremendously when learning to read notation. I think it's best to learn to read and write at the same time.

I always think you should learn by ear before trying to learn how to read music

I've actually found that the fastest way for someone to learn to 'play by ear' is for them to learn note reading. You can be exposed to far more music in the same amount of time, with a visual cue for what's higher/lower, and by roughly how much.

I've been playing less than two years but making progress :D I've made a copy of some scale runs out of a magazine (interval and string skipping) which had both music notation and tab. Now that I'm getting comfortable reading the notation, it was actually quicker to go by that than the tab!

I think it's important but you have to look at it in the context of what you want to do with your playing. If you are young and want to pursue a musical career then I would say it's an absolute requirement.

With that said I personally decided when I started that learning to read music wasn't something I was going to devote time to for several reasons.

The biggest reason is that I'm an adult beginner with a limited amount of time to devote to guitar. My goals are to be able to play with my friends and maybe just maybe play in a cover band. To me it's much more important to get the physical aspects of playing down.

I'm not going to be writing many songs and all of the songs I will play I would play from memory, I won't be jumping into some session where I'll have to play a brand new piece of music that I've never seen before.

To me being able to play a piece of music correctly is more important than being able to read those notes on a piece of paper.

King - I think this is the first time I've ever disagreed with one of your posts but I don't believe you have to be able to read music to be a musician. Maybe a session player, but not a musician.

A musician to me is someone that is proficient at playing their instrument. It has nothing to do with whether or not they can read music. There are many famous guitarists out there that can't read music and it would be hard not to call them musicians, since they make their living off of playing music.

cnev, wow that is exactly how I would say it. I have decided to stick to tab as I am 40 and won't be playing any new music. Just playing to jam around at parties.

But, later on this year, I am learning keyboard so will be learning notation then.

Thanks guys!

Being able to read music notation can be absolutely totally unneeded. Guitar ro (and maybe Powertab) has tabs which give dynamics and duration of every note, plus all techniques used to get there. Addition remarks above. And if a tab tells me which note to play where, for how long, with what technique and how loud, then I guess I know enough to come close. Fitting into another band quickly? As if most bands have guitarparts that you can't figure out or have the previous one tab out.

Being able to read standard notation can be usefull, won't harm you at all and is simply a nice skill to have. But it does cost some time which people might want to spend on learning to properly play their instrument.