Learning to Read Music

By | February 19, 2015
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Learning to Read Music – Tips for Tackling a New Piece of Music

So you are getting ready to learn a new guitar piece. You sit there staring at the notation or tablature. Then you jump in, trying to play through the piece. Ouch, it sounds pretty terrible to your ears! Maybe it sounds so bad, you just want to walk away! Don’t give up – here are a few tips that have helped me over the years.

Learning to read music can be challenging, but if you can break it down, it does get easier.  First of all, is it a piece of music you are familiar with, or have heard before? Sometimes your ear can help get you started. Just remember that you need to pay attention to the arrangement in front of you. Notice the time signature and the key.

The next thing I do is look at the music. See if you notice any patterns emerging. Very often measures will repeat themselves – you may not need to learn as many as you think! If a measure appears over and over again, take the time to master that one. You will be rewarded in muscle memory that will save you lots of time and effort!

Try to play the piece slowly from the beginning, noting the measures you have difficulty with. Those are the ones you will need to put the most time into. There is nothing wrong with learning a piece one measure at a time. Very often I set a goal at the beginning of a piece: if I can play the first line smoothly, I move on to the next line. If I can’t play it smoothly, I work it one measure at a time until I master it, then I go to the next line. I will work the entire piece that way until I can establish a flow.

What if you can’t play a particular measure at all? Then it’s time to really look at the fingering you are using for that measure and “think outside the box”. When you can’t play a measure it’s one of three things: (1) your fingers are not stretching enough. It might be time to revisit those chromatic scale exercises again. (2) You are trying a fingering “habit” that is not going to work for the measure. What is your little finger doing? Is this a measure that could benefit from changing up the fingering? Lots of people tend to neglect the development of the little finger and rely on the third finger, which can be limiting. See if you can work up a fingering for the measure that is different from what you were originally trying. (3) Have you identified the chord that would be associated with that measure? Playing from the actual chord structure can sometimes present a totally different fingering that will solve the problem.

The main thing is don’t give up! No one ever learned a piece by giving up. If you break it into manageable chunks, you will be able to learn the entire piece of music, and you will be developing valuable skills at the same time. Good luck!

Gail Lees
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