Reading Music for the Guitarist
To learn to read music or not? Do guitar players need to read music? In my opinion, reading music for the guitarist, can’t hurt. I will introduce you to reading music for the guitar. I will start with the first two strings, the E and B strings. E is the first string and closest to the ground. First learning two strings at once will speed up the reading of the basic notes in the open position, which is using open strings. Second, this will also teach you the spacing of strings on both the left hand and right hand. First, some basic information on what is included in reading music.
The Staff
How do you read music for the guitar? Let us start with the staff. It consists of five lines and four spaces. It is divided into measures with bar lines.
Treble Clef
The guitar is written in the treble clef. For example, the piano uses both the bass clef and treble clef. Also, another name for the treble clef is G clef. The curly part of the treble clef circles the second line from the bottom, the G line.
Reading the Rhythm
First, we will work with whole notes. As you pick the notes, this starts beat one. Then continue to count to four till starting the next note with one. Stay steady, like the second hand on a clock. Get a metronome and use it. Even if you place it on the lowest setting. The importance of this is playing the note changes in time, not some notes ahead and some behind the beat. Be strict in this, don’t play easy notes faster than the harder ones. You can play with more feeling later, for now, this is how I want you to read.
Other rhythms we will learn will be the quarter notes, one beat each. Half notes, which get two beats each. Dotted half notes, getting three beats. And Eighth notes, which get half a beat.
Time Signatures
Many different time signatures are available to play music in. The first one we will learn about is the 4/4 time signature. This means a whole note will take up a whole measure. Pick the note and count to four and let the note sustain through till the next measure.
Quarter notes get one beat each. We will need four of these to complete a measure. Pick quarter notes on each beat.
Half notes get two beats each. Pick the note with a half note on beat one and let it sustain till beat three where you would have another half note for beats three and four to complete the measure.
Dotted half notes will get three beats and need a quarter note, for example, to finish the measure. Pick the dotted half note and count to three, before playing the quarter note for beat four.
Eighth notes get only a half count. This is equal to your foot going down for one eighth note value. The second eighth note is played when the foot comes up. A complete measure of eighth notes would consist of eight eighth notes.
This kind of covers 4/4 for now. Next, you might learn 3/4 time signature. This is a waltz feel. 2/4 would be like a march type of feel. Then onto other time signatures like 6/8, 12/8, would be some to learn about later. Odd time signature examples are 7/8, and 5/8. But for now, we will work on 4/4.
The First String Notes
Starting on the first string, play open E. Next play F which is located on the first string, first fret. Lastly, play the last note G, first string, third fret.
Now we will learn where these notes are on the staff.
The Second String Notes
Next is to learn the B string notes. Just like open E, play open B on the second string open. Then play C on the second string, first fret. Now play D on the second string, third fret.
This is where the notes are on the staff for the B string.
Take these two strings and play from open B to the highest note so far, G on the first string, third fret.
Play this going up and back down many times, repeat the G note. This will help your fingers and picking hand to memorize the distance on the fretboard. This can be a warm-up exercise.
Practice playing the next few examples for week one. It’s not important to memorize the exercises, just memorize the notes on the staff and the notes on the guitar. This is so you can play these notes with any music you might read in the future.
For the next two strings, click on my link to see strings three and four here.
Until next time, have fun practicing!