You will need a very basic grasp of how to play notes or scales on the guitar, and beginning-level understanding of how written music notation works. At the very least you may wish to review these two lessons before continuing:

• Introduction to Notated Rhythm
• Introduction to Notated Pitches

Why Should You Learn to Sight Read?

We can all think of at least one famous guitar player who never learned to read music. But we can also think of famous musicians who were blind, or even deaf. Few people would credit their success to a disability or to a skill they never learned.

Imagine that you can open any of the hundreds of thousands of pages of sheet music ever written, and perform new music instantly with no rehearsal. Many musicians have learned to do that. And so will you, if you care to invest the time.

Hints to Help You Read

Here are some of the things to consider before reading a piece of guitar music:

Key Signature

This one can be a challenge because the first music you sight read will not have a key signature. That's because music with no key signature is often in the key of C major, like this example. Otherwise, the key signature will give information about what notes are modified for the duration of this piece of music. For instance, a key signature with an F♯ means that, unless specified otherwise, all instances of "F" are "F♯".

The default key signature (i.e., no key signature) means that all notes will be natural unless an accidental is written next to the note.

Time Signature

This one is also unclear in the beginning because most music you see at first will use something called a "common time" signature by default. In common time, the music is grouped into four main pulses. Most popular songs fit this description. For now, don't worry about it too much.

Position Markings

Found only on guitar music. Indicated by Roman numerals, position markings indicate the fret at which the first finger is placed. The Roman numeral III means that the first finger plays all notes on fret III, the second finger plays all notes at fret IV. The lowest note would be a note on fret II played by the first finger temporarily stretched out of its place.

Finger Markings

Indicated by Arabic numerals, finger markings allow the composer to show the player what fingers should be used to play each note. Normally, the composer chooses to do this because he or she is a guitar player, and has determined that a particular fingering will have a bad result and that an alternative is better.

Sight-Reading Example 1

Let's review the available information: No key signature suggests a key of C major. Four over four means common time.

Note that the fret indicator is Roman numeral I. The best way to play the first note is with the ring finger. Any other finger would compromise the fret position by forcing you to move the index finger.

Every guitar player will need to learn tab eventually. When you can find it, a well-written guitar tab provides you with all of the information needed to expertly perform a piece of guitar music, including information that is highly specific to the instrument that may be harder to express using standard music notation.

First Look at a Tab

Tablature (or "tab") uses six horizontal lines to represent the six strings of the guitar. The top line represents the highest-pitched string (high E), and the bottom line represents the lowest-pitched string (low E).

Numbers on the lines indicate which fret to play. A "0" means play the open string, "1" means first fret, "2" means second fret, and so on.

Although much attention has been paid to reading notes, so far we've spoken little of how to read rests.

Reading rests is actually very important. Rests determine the space between notes, so if you don't read the rests correctly, you also won't be reading the notes that precede or follow the rests correctly.

The good news is that there is a system of notating rests and each rhythm in this system corresponds exactly to a written note rhythm. So you do need to learn to recognize the rest symbols (and understand their value or duration), but you don't need to learn anything completely new.

Important tip: When reading or performing music, you must also perform the rests. Although the rest is silent, you must count through it mentally to maintain proper timing.

When reading or playing guitar music, fingering refers to the specific indication of which finger will play what fret.

Don't Count On Fingerings

In the rare event that fingerings are written, they are probably helpful to observe. But you should observe them to get a sense of how to use your fingers tactically while playing complex music–not in order to actually learn to read.

The position marking tells you where to place your hand. Once you know the position, you can usually determine the fingering by following a simple rule: each finger is responsible for one fret in that position.

Before you read a piece of music, you want to look at the range of the melody and try to determine what position would be best to read it with.

Then, it's a good idea to look at the key of the example. And play the corresponding scale in the guitar position that best matches the range.

Getting Ready to Read

When we look at a piece of music that we're about to read, we want to quickly know the answer to a few questions, like:

• Is this written for my guitar, or some other instrument?
• What is the range of this thing? What's the lowest note and the highest note?
• According to the range, where should I play this on guitar?
• What's the key signature? What notes should I be watching out for?

Be sure to play through all of the examples. Turn off your phone and get to work! You have to get through a bit of drudgery to learn this skill. Although sometimes your practice may be a little difficult, being able to read music is not boring!

C major, Position I

In this position, we'll start with G, the 5th note of the key and climb up, using plenty of open strings. We can access the low G, and even lower, but our highest note is not very high.

C major, Position V

For C major, this position is a little more flexible. We still have access to low "A", and now we can reach a high "C" as well.

Once you've learned to sight-read some scales, now it makes sense to practice reading some of the more common scale patterns.

Practicing scales is useful for many reasons. One is that most real-world music contains melodies that basically just climb up or down a scale, or climb up and down using a special pattern, as they do in these examples.

Reading C major melodies in thirds

Let's try reading this melody. Fingerings are not indicated, but the fret position is. Do not use open strings. You will need to begin with your second finger on Fret VIII.

Reading G major in thirds

This one uses the same fingering as the C major above. Do not use open strings.

If you try to find some introductory stuff on sight-reading, most of it's going to be written in C major. That's great, but in real life, most songs are more complicated.

Let's look at some melodies in different keys.

The following melody is in G major. The first thing you should do is decide the position you'll play it in. The decision was not made for you. Now you're on your own.

Sight-Reading Example

What Key Is It In?

Now Let's determine the key. Look at the content of the notes and figure out what major scale those notes belong to.

This example has one F♯ in the key signature, so it looks like a G major, right? Let's play a G major scale in the open position, from the lowest note used to the highest note.

While sight-reading, many structures will be encountered. Some are so basic that they form the core of the musical universe. The advanced player will instantly recognize them, greatly simplifying the process of sight-reading.

Sight-Reading Chords

Chord patterns, both horizontal (chords played melodically, as an arpeggio) and vertical (chords with notes played in harmony together) are recognizable over time.

In the first measure of the example is a root position C major chord. Whenever the sight-reader sees a structure on three consecutive lines or three consecutive spaces, they will recognize a triad (basic chord).

All of the structures you learn to play on the guitar also can be notated, and reading notation will be much easier when you can quickly recognize a notated structure that you already know how to play.

You will find that arpeggios are commonly used in melodies.

Here we'll systematically practice a few.

Basic arpeggios in C

Let's warm up with these one-octave arpeggios in C.

The advancing sight reader begins to register leaps, acting upon them quickly to avoid stumbling. By comparing the distance between two notes on the staff, the distance of the leap can be estimated.

Leaping in the key of C

This exercise is aimed at helping you practice recognizing leaps in C. Each measure includes movements of either a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh or octave. Hopefully you can see from this example that each type of leap is visually consistent on the staff and you can eventually learn to recognize them in your sight-reading.

At some point, you're going to end up a bit confused by the octaves question which is basically this:

What octave should I play the music in?

Key points for octaves

1. Guitar music is written up an octave which means that it really sounds an octave lower than it is written. Think about a man singing and a woman singing. When a man sings the same song, he often has to use the "lower octave". That's because his range is different.
2. Because guitar music is really an octave lower, if you want to read other treble clef music not written for guitar, you should transpose that music up an octave. This is not difficult to do because all of the note names are the same, but higher up.
3. If the music is written for guitar, no change is needed.

Octave Transposition Example 1

If you play it on the flute, it'll sound pretty happening. But if you play it on guitar, it's not going to sound so brilliant. That's because the guitar's rendition of it will sound one octave lower than the flute.