Anybody have note reading tips for classical guitar?
Years ago I took lessons using the Noad books on beginner guitar playing. I always had difficulty reading sheet music. Back then, I was studying every day so I was able to get my reading / playing up to a decent level. It’s been years since I’ve picked up the guitar and I want to play again but I’m starting at square one with reading notes again. Any ideas to make note reading easier and tips so I won’t forget how to read? Are there any books that address this problem?
The way I would go about this depends on how much you remember. If you remember absolutely nothing, pull out the Noad (or buy it or an equivalent, like the Shearer method) and go through it again. You’ll pick it up a lot faster than you did last time because you are remembering instead of learning.
If you remember a bunch of notes but forget a bunch, too, you may be able to skip the first step. Try reading an online tutorial and then grabbing a book of graded studies, such as the Introductory Book of the Royal Canadian Music Academy series. The idea here is again, to just get reading notes again. You could do the same thing with music found online, but you have no idea what the difficult level will be going into it. Even easy pieces have sections that are difficult for reading music.
A general tip would be this: Instead of trying to remember all the notes on the staff and guitar, just remember where a few notes are. Maybe it is easy for you to remember where D is. Then, when you see something a step away D, but aren’t sure what or where it is, just figure it out in relation to the D, rather than go through FACE or Every Good Boy Does Fine, or whatever other method you have. If you have a few of these spread out over the staff and the neck of the guitar, its faster to get to notes and eventually the other notes will fill themselves in.
Are you familiar with guitar tab? Here is a video teaching a simple version of Fur Elise by Beethoven: http://www.fuzzymonkeytabs.com/furelisesimple.html
There’s also a finger picking version here: http://fuzzymonkeytabs.com/tabs.html
but that’s way hard.
References :
Go back to the Noad books and do it again. Reading music is like anything else; the more you do it the easier it gets. Also, get The Baroque Guitar, The Classical Guitar, and The Romantic Guitar. These three books contain standard guitar literature from each period, transcribed by Frederick Noad and published by Amsco. The pieces in each book progress from easy to difficult and have excellent fingerings edited by Noad. Stick with it and you will find that it’s not that hard to get used to reading and this will transfer to any other guitar playing styles.
References :
Classical guitar teacher
Forget tabs. If you learn to read regular sheet music, it will eventually be more useful to you. Besides going back to your old instruction books, there are websites that might help refresh your memory.
http://guitar.lovetoknow.com/How_to_Read_Guitar_Sheet_Music
http://ocmusic.com/online-lessons/flanotes.htm
http://www.ehow.com/video_2379119_read-guitar-sheet-music.html (ehow has a lot of instructional videos that might help you)
Since you did ask for a book, you might try this one "How to Play Guitar:Everything You Need to Know to Play the Guitar". It’s available through Amazon.com It’s very, very basic, so you might see if you can find a copy at your local library to borrow. Then start practicing with some actual guitar sheet music (or any sheet music. You can play notes from the treble clef line of many piano arrangements–music is music)
http://www.amazon.com/How-Play-Guitar-Everything-Need/dp/0312287062
References :
The way I would go about this depends on how much you remember. If you remember absolutely nothing, pull out the Noad (or buy it or an equivalent, like the Shearer method) and go through it again. You’ll pick it up a lot faster than you did last time because you are remembering instead of learning.
If you remember a bunch of notes but forget a bunch, too, you may be able to skip the first step. Try reading an online tutorial and then grabbing a book of graded studies, such as the Introductory Book of the Royal Canadian Music Academy series. The idea here is again, to just get reading notes again. You could do the same thing with music found online, but you have no idea what the difficult level will be going into it. Even easy pieces have sections that are difficult for reading music.
A general tip would be this: Instead of trying to remember all the notes on the staff and guitar, just remember where a few notes are. Maybe it is easy for you to remember where D is. Then, when you see something a step away D, but aren’t sure what or where it is, just figure it out in relation to the D, rather than go through FACE or Every Good Boy Does Fine, or whatever other method you have. If you have a few of these spread out over the staff and the neck of the guitar, its faster to get to notes and eventually the other notes will fill themselves in.
References :
Guitar Instructor, classical guitarist.
http://phillyguitarlessons.com