To “read” music means to see the notes on the page and play them. Standard musical notation is a language of its own. And part of mastering classical guitar is learning to use musical notation.
Also popular on guitar is TAB. TAB is short for “tablature”, and has been around since at least the 1600’s. While it has its benefits, the information it provides is extremely limited. It’s a tool, and can be useful. But for deep study and musical understanding, nothing beats musical notation.
Here are some places to start:
- Beginning Music Theory – Here you’ll find tutorials on how musical notation works.
- How to Read Music for Guitar – This is a premium course for beginning music-readers. It covers the basics, especially as they pertain to guitar music.
- How to Learn Classical Guitar Pieces – Here you’ll find a 7-step method to learn pieces quickly and easily.
- How to Clap and Count Rhythms – Decipher musical rhythms, with this lesson on how to vocalize and clap rhythm.
And other popular articles:
- The Good and Bad of TABs – Discover pros and cons of TABs.
- How to Practice Sight-Reading on Guitar – “Sight-reading” is playing from notation at sight, in rhythm, usually seeing the music for the first time. Here are practice methods to build this skill.
- Supercharge Your Sight-Reading – This is a short premium course with practice methods to quickly build your music-reading abilities.
- Musical Parts and Voices – Classical guitar music has many notes stacked on each other on the page. This tutorial shows you how to separate the bass, melody and accompaniment parts.
All Articles on Reading Music:
- 3 Steps to Change the Fingering in a Piece of Classical Guitar Music
- 7 Steps to Learning Any Piece Quickly and Easily (video series)
- 9 Guitar-Specific Musical Notation Symbols Explained
- A Guide to the Fine Details: How to Mine Your Music for Gold
- An Alternative to Music Notation Software
- Chord TABs: Learn Classical Guitar Pieces Faster with this Secret Code
- Clap and Count Rhythm Aloud: How to Learn the Rhythms in Your Music
- Classical Guitar TABs: Both Terrible and Wonderful
- Course: Play and Read Music in the Higher Positions on Guitar
- Dotted Notes in Music – How to Count Dotted Rhythms
- Guitar Sight Reading: Tips and Methods for Practice
- How to Choose Your Next Piece of Music to Play
- How to Play Guitar From Chord Charts and Lead Sheets
- How to Play Rests in Music: Theory and Notation
- How to Play Stacked Rhythms on Classical Guitar
- Key Signatures Made Easy: A Quick Way to Find the Key of a Song
- Lessons in Music Theory for Guitar (and everyone else)
- Musical Parts and Voices: How to Interpret Classic Guitar Music
- Musical Roadmaps: Navigation Symbols and Definitions for Sheet Music
- Note Duration – The Different Types of Musical Notes (Music Theory Lesson)
- Practical Musical Analysis: First Steps in Learning New Music
- Strong Beats vs. Weak Beats
- TABs to Notation: How To Bridge the Gap
- The 8 Most Common Rhythms (and how to simplify tricky rhythms)