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Reading Guitar Sheet Music or Tab

Being able to read guitar sheet music can be an invaluable asset in today’s world.  As we know, becoming a pro guitarist means entering a very competitive field.  You will need every advantage you can muster, and then some.  So before we go any further let’s first answer a basic question: isn’t being able to read guitar tabs good enough?  If you’re looking to make a name for yourself or a living as a guitarist then the answer would be “no”.  By no means does this negate the importance of tab, but in a world that is often oversaturated with guitar players, knowing how to read sheet music can make the difference between success and failure.  Let us break things down so we can understand them.

1. Guitar Tabs

While tab or tablature seems to be a rather new invention that came along with the electric guitar, in truth it has been around for quite awhile.  Even before the invention of the instrument we know today as “guitar”, we see examples of tablature being used especially with fretted instruments such as the lute. Examples of tab in the Western world today date as far back as the 1300’s. In Asia tablature was used even before that.

In today’s world guitar tab is made up of six lines that represent the six strings of the guitar (four in the case of a bass guitar) on which numbers are placed which correspond to the frets on the guitar. Most of the tab formats do not show you the rhythm.  The information which is presented gives you a good picture of what strings and frets should be played. The tab format does not give you information in regards to the notes (pitches) being played.

2. Guitar Sheet Music

The sheet music for guitar on the other hand provides you with rhythmic as well as pitch (note) information. It is important because it’s like getting a detailed blueprint of a hotrod car. It allows you to see inside and understand exactly how the parts work together.  This is fantastic because you can use this information to fix your own hotrod if it breaks down, or build a new one. In pretty much the same way, knowing how to read sheet music allows you to understand and break things down, analyze the Masters and use those techniques when building your own compositions.

Being able to “see” inside the music gives you a huge advantage by allowing you to control and direct the musical flow of your ideas in such a way as to get maximum impact. To put it in plain english, the ability to understand sheet music will allow you to create and juggle musical ideas with skills far beyond what most other guitarists possess.

It can’t all can be reduced to a question of guitar tablature versus notation though.  Guitar sheet music does have its shortcomings when it comes to the problem of marking strings and frets to be used. Traditional notation for the guitar does allow for the string to be identified. This, when used together with the indicated note gives you the fret number.  However this tends to fill up the visual space making the notation much harder to read and follow.  A combination of both notation with tablature attached seems to be the best answer. Sheet music will also allow for the indication of the finger that needs to be used for certain note.

While a combination of notation and tablature will yield best results, we will focus more on notation in this article because of the simple fact that most guitarists already know how to read tab, so it is the learning of music notation that will set you apart from the rest of the crowd.

Learning to read guitar sheet music

If you understand the benefit of being able to read sheet music but you feel intimidated by the look and feel of music notation, take a deep breath and relax because things seem a lot worse than they actually are.  Everybody  knows the feeling of looking at notation for the very first time and feeling like you are looking at ancient hieroglyphs.  In truth notation is not nearly as complicated as it seems at first glance.  It’s just takes a little patience and perseverance to learn but the results are definitely worth it.

I know you might be thinking of that you will never be able to crack the code of notation. Guess I’ll just have to prove to you that it’s not nearly as difficult as you may think by teaching you some notation basics right here and now.

Basics… The notes

Guitar sheet music is usually written on staff comprised of five parallel lines.  You can write notes either on the line or in between the lines.  An easy way to remember the notes that are on the lines of the staff is by remembering the following acronym: Every Good Boy Does Fine (E G B D F). This corresponds to the notes on the lines of the staff as read from the bottom up.  To remember the notes that are in the space is between the lines, just remember FACE (F A C E as read from the bottom up). If you have to tell me what note resides on the fourth space of the staff, as read from the bottom up, you can easily recall FACE and figure out that E note. And there you have it, less than a minute and you already know all the notes that are on the staff. If you put a blank staff in front of you and quiz yourself over what note lies on a particular line or space, you’ll soon be able to recall them automatically without using the acronyms listed above.

Final words… don’t let the notes get the best of you

So as you can see learning how to read music is not really that hard, and while it may take a little bit of time to take it all in, the benefits are huge.  Stick with it and you will soon see yourself standing head and shoulders above the herd of guitarists out there.

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