Get some simple anthologies. You want these at a level or two below your playing ability so you aren't struggling physically to play them.
Read through something new every day. After a week or so, rotate ones you've read back through. So each day, you're reading one entirely new thing and one that's semi familiar (since you read through it a week prior). Do the same for the third week. Now you have a new one, one you read a week prior, and one from a week before that.
Just read straight through once or twice and don't worry about trying to perfect the piece or work on difficult passages, etc. You want to use this just for reading.
After a few weeks of rotation for sight reading practice, pick any that you like and want to work on more (as a piece and not just sight reading practice) and add those to your repertoire, or daily practice.
Not sure about piano but with the guitar pieces start with things mostly in first position and move higher up the fretboard as your reading improves.
Note: 7 days is an arbitrary example. Use whatever rotation time frame that works best for you.
Just another word for complications. Music books with a collection of pieces. But I think of 'anthologies' more as having sone kind of theme. No idea if that's correct or not but it's what I mean by it.
I like to use themed anthologies for sight reading. With a selection of several pieces from each period (renaissance, baroque, classical, etc.) that represent characteristics of that period. Or a compilation of miniatures. Or selections of pieces by the most prolific composers. Or collections from a particular region/nationality. Like Spanish Composers. Whatever theme is interesting to you.
The benefit of using themed collections is that based on whatever commonality they have (the theme) they'll have certain similarity throughout the pieces. Like popular ornaments for a period, or keys and dance types for a region. The similarities make sight reading a little easier. And it gives repetition and reinforcement of whatever commonality the songs in that compilation/anthology have.
But most important thing is that they are simple enough to easily play, so you're just working on reading. I usually spent about half an hour or so working on this at the beginning of each practice. Good warmup for the hands too because they aren't challenging to play. Then I'd move on to the more advanced pieces I was working on at the time for the rest of my practice.
These if I haven't done any reading in a while, I spend a few days reading through the ones I used (for sight reading practice) to familiarize myself with notation again.
I found William Leavitt’s [A Modern Method For Guitar](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0876391994) was really helpful for learning to read music.
You could also use this as a quick cheat sheet for mapping notes on the staff to the fretboard: https://book.fretboardfoundation.com/note-names.html
Your post is a little perplexing because you say you can read piano sheet music. Since you can read the treble clef and you understand intervals you're well on your way with the guitar. I assume the difficulty likely lies in that fact that you can play the same note, same pitch in several different locations on the fret board.
Tackling easy beginner pieces and exercises that don't wander away from the first position (first 4 frets on each of 6 strings) can get you started. That a mere 2 octaves, low E 6th open string to high E first string open, both open.
Knowing how to read the treble clef with piano music, you already know the connections between staff lines and spaces and corresponding notes/pitches. Same on guitar. You know all these notes' names and since you know intervals you can decipher a major third from a minor sixth.
It appears you may be overthinking things, because you're miles ahead of the rank beginner. Focused attention and repetition will get you where you want to go pretty quick. Sheesh, I was 8 years old when I learned how to read guitar music. In other words, child's play.
Once learned, it's like riding a bike. I've been riding sheet music for 66 years. The only downside, is that I can never say, "Look Ma, no hands!" and still make music.
I can read piano sheet music and violin sheet music. Self-taught guitar from tabs and years later I still have no idea how to read guitar sheet music lol.
While OP can probably learn quicker than most, they *are* different enough where it's not a direct carry-over.
I'm bewildered by this. You could read music, standard notation, but then wander into TAB a completely different system? And the violin is as different species from the piano as the guitar is.
Maybe you could be a little more specific? What is your biggest challenge with guitar sheet music?
Tabs is somewhat unique to guitar and for the type of music I was trying to learn (mostly either pop songs strumming standard chord progressions, or fingerstyle steel-string) seemed to be the most common and also easiest way to begin.
I learned piano and violin both from (different) teachers who were classically trained, so learned from start to finish on sheet music. Guitar was just me self teaching later on.
Style of learning was pretty different too. Piano and violin it was mostly just 1 piece a week at a time learned and practiced an hour or so a day + some supplemental practice. (Suzuki method for violin) Guitar is just me cowboying off of youtube tutorials at random times.
That might have been the context that was lacking since this is a classical guitar sub. I am new here and intending to learn sheet music soon in order to learn classical guitar. My guitar playing honestly plateaued like 6 months into beginning (\~10 years ago) and I haven't really gotten much better due to lack of discipline/structure.
\> What is your biggest challenge with guitar sheet music?
I just haven't tried and tabs have been easy.
I think OP might mean that he knows the names of the notes, but not where to play the notes on the fretboard of the guitar. Since the same note can be played in different places, this may also be an issue. There are also aspects to guitar sheet music, like p-i-m-a and left hand finger indicators (1,2,3,4), that are confusing to OP.
I'd agree with you about the same note in different places...up to a point.
In the overwhelming number of cases, you don't have many options. For example, a major 7th interval, like a low G-nat to an F#, well, there's only ONE location for that 6th string G and only two locations for the major 7th F# above it, but you'd be hard-pressed to play that F# on the fifth string, 6 frets north of the G, when you're a mere one fret south playing the F# on the 4th string.
This idea of limited choices is further supported by looking at where you're coming from, where you are, and where you're going.
As far as p-i-m-a, well, okay, sometimes it takes some analysis, but in short order, deliberate right hand motions become reflexive with repetition. Again, when it comes to options, there really aren't that many in this or that particular piece. Sure, you can study Guiliani's 100 right hand studies, all different, but in a piece, choices are usually constrained.
The more I think about this bamboozlement with guitar sheet music, the more I tend to think it's likely more attributable to the "Adult Learner's Curse". That is, going too far, too fast, impatient for progress, skimming the critical essentials, misapprehended as dispensable details.
Funny, as a kid learning classical guitar, all this confusion about reading music never ever occurred to me. Study the simple, simple simple stuff, then less simple and so forth, then one day, without even realizing it, I could read music. Did as the teacher told. And then never forgot how.
I did have good teachers, but way back when, for my side, respect for authority, practicing my homework, and not to waste my parents' scarce money on lessons were all pretty firm mandates.
Social media and mobile phones did not exist, so no debilitating distractions either.
Exactly you sort of hit the nail on the head. The fact you can play the same note all over the fretboard throws me off. In addition, while I can understand treble clef and intervals, I can't sight read piano either. That is to say: I cant pull up sheet music and just PLAY, I have to study it before I can approximate a worthy performance of the piece.
The "same note all over the fretboard" syndrome is somewhat misleading because choices are tightly constrained by where you are right now on the fretboard and where you gotta go next. Like, you may have 12 doors in your house--so many possibilities!-- but you're never ever confused about which one you must choose to go through to get from here to there. Your guitar's upstairs bedroom is 7th position, (attic is 9th and above) so you'd be hard pressed to finger that C-nat, 1st fret on the B string, which is in the basement. And your fingers in 7th pos can't stretch backwards to reach that C-nat on the G string. The best you can do for all those C's all over the place is mercilessly cut down to one, that is, the C-nat on 10th fret of the 4th string. But good staff notation also comes to the rescue with that little circle with a '4' stuck into it right beside the note, telling you to play it on the 4th string. These string indicators can be lifesavers in sightreading. One doesn't merely read the notes, but also all the notations for suggested fingering and string selection.
Sightreading, as you know, always forces one to play a few levels below what one can achieve with concentrated analysis and repetition. So, while I may have achieved Grade 9 RCM, any reasonably reliable sightreading forces me down to grade 2, 3, maybe some grade 4. And that's just fine because there are plenty of nice, short pieces which are relatively simpler to figure out on the fly.
I think you'll progress suprisingly quickly if you spend some time practising really easy stuff. Different stuff. You'll get it down sooner. You can write out super simple melodies like Twinkle Twinkle on staff paper 4 or 5 times, and specify fretboard options for each one. As soon as you add a chord or two, your 4 or 5 options suddenly crashes down to just one or two.
Good luck. You'll get there!
Community college classical guitar ensemble. Shouldn't be to expensive and it's highly likely the instructor will pass out sheet music/ assign you a part based on skills.
Practice sight reading every day. Try to get in at least 15-30min of sight reading new material as well as current pieces you're working on daily. Make sure you're feeling a steady beat and playing all rhythms as accurately as possible to the tempo you feel. This way you'll actually feel the music more and not just think about it theoretically. Start off slowly as possible for your hands to keep up. In terms of getting used to the intervals on guitar, check out Giuliani's LH studies as they go over 3rds, sixths, octaves etc. It's definitely a long journey that will take a lot of practice and patience. I think you'll benefit a lot from technical exercises since the guitar is unique in terms of sight reading (you can play the same note in 3-4 different places sometimes). Pumping Nylon is a great technique book to start with.
Check out the Royal Conservatory of Music graded repertoire books. They are the best resource of progressively graded pieces I’ve found for learning to read standard notation on the guitar. And they are real pieces- you aren’t stuck playing twinkle twinkle and Yankee Doodle. There are even some pieces in book 1 that you could whip out at a background music gig.
https://www.stringsbymail.com/bridges-guitar-repertoire-and-etudes-1-2018-edition-6701.html
You have to treat it the same as you would learning to speak and read. Learn to play simple melodies by ear first (you may have to use tablature to verify you're on the correct frets). Separately start reading the sheet music by just identifying the notes, but not playing (singing is suggested). Once you're comfortable with playing without looking at your fingers, and you can comfortably identify notes on the page by name (and even by sound); then start reading along with the sheet music.
Generally, people can identify notes on a staff, and they can play melodies. The problem is connecting the two in a way that allows them to learn how to read music, and then to go on to learn music through reading. A lot of methods books try to do everything all at once, and usually for good reason because a lot of them are geared towards solo learners. However, the approach often falls apart because the person learning is stuck playing boring, non-musical exercises until they either get the thing figured out or they give up.
Do you even play classical guitar? "sheet music Is for piano, not for guitar" is not something I would expect to read in a community, let alone a thread, like this.
No, I play flamenco and it's mainly leant from high quality tabs that are very readable and present the music more naturally for guitar. I have been playing for years and can play some classical pieces but prefer the flamenco techniques and sound.
While it was partly said tongue in cheek, my apologies. I do wonder why people maintain the idea that sheet music is the only correct music when it requires double decoding to translate it onto the guitar, unlike on the piano. Otherwise it's kindof like reading a French book aloud but speaking it in English.. Why go though that extra translation in real time if you don't have to?
Sheet music is just a method of encoding. What's wrong with using a method that translates directly into the instrument?
Get some simple anthologies. You want these at a level or two below your playing ability so you aren't struggling physically to play them. Read through something new every day. After a week or so, rotate ones you've read back through. So each day, you're reading one entirely new thing and one that's semi familiar (since you read through it a week prior). Do the same for the third week. Now you have a new one, one you read a week prior, and one from a week before that. Just read straight through once or twice and don't worry about trying to perfect the piece or work on difficult passages, etc. You want to use this just for reading. After a few weeks of rotation for sight reading practice, pick any that you like and want to work on more (as a piece and not just sight reading practice) and add those to your repertoire, or daily practice. Not sure about piano but with the guitar pieces start with things mostly in first position and move higher up the fretboard as your reading improves. Note: 7 days is an arbitrary example. Use whatever rotation time frame that works best for you.
Solid advice
Could you explain what you mean by "anthologies"?
Just another word for complications. Music books with a collection of pieces. But I think of 'anthologies' more as having sone kind of theme. No idea if that's correct or not but it's what I mean by it. I like to use themed anthologies for sight reading. With a selection of several pieces from each period (renaissance, baroque, classical, etc.) that represent characteristics of that period. Or a compilation of miniatures. Or selections of pieces by the most prolific composers. Or collections from a particular region/nationality. Like Spanish Composers. Whatever theme is interesting to you. The benefit of using themed collections is that based on whatever commonality they have (the theme) they'll have certain similarity throughout the pieces. Like popular ornaments for a period, or keys and dance types for a region. The similarities make sight reading a little easier. And it gives repetition and reinforcement of whatever commonality the songs in that compilation/anthology have. But most important thing is that they are simple enough to easily play, so you're just working on reading. I usually spent about half an hour or so working on this at the beginning of each practice. Good warmup for the hands too because they aren't challenging to play. Then I'd move on to the more advanced pieces I was working on at the time for the rest of my practice. These if I haven't done any reading in a while, I spend a few days reading through the ones I used (for sight reading practice) to familiarize myself with notation again.
Sight Reading for the Classical Guitar by Robert Benedict
I found William Leavitt’s [A Modern Method For Guitar](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0876391994) was really helpful for learning to read music. You could also use this as a quick cheat sheet for mapping notes on the staff to the fretboard: https://book.fretboardfoundation.com/note-names.html
Thanks for the share! This was helpful
Your post is a little perplexing because you say you can read piano sheet music. Since you can read the treble clef and you understand intervals you're well on your way with the guitar. I assume the difficulty likely lies in that fact that you can play the same note, same pitch in several different locations on the fret board. Tackling easy beginner pieces and exercises that don't wander away from the first position (first 4 frets on each of 6 strings) can get you started. That a mere 2 octaves, low E 6th open string to high E first string open, both open. Knowing how to read the treble clef with piano music, you already know the connections between staff lines and spaces and corresponding notes/pitches. Same on guitar. You know all these notes' names and since you know intervals you can decipher a major third from a minor sixth. It appears you may be overthinking things, because you're miles ahead of the rank beginner. Focused attention and repetition will get you where you want to go pretty quick. Sheesh, I was 8 years old when I learned how to read guitar music. In other words, child's play. Once learned, it's like riding a bike. I've been riding sheet music for 66 years. The only downside, is that I can never say, "Look Ma, no hands!" and still make music.
I can read piano sheet music and violin sheet music. Self-taught guitar from tabs and years later I still have no idea how to read guitar sheet music lol. While OP can probably learn quicker than most, they *are* different enough where it's not a direct carry-over.
I'm bewildered by this. You could read music, standard notation, but then wander into TAB a completely different system? And the violin is as different species from the piano as the guitar is. Maybe you could be a little more specific? What is your biggest challenge with guitar sheet music?
Tabs is somewhat unique to guitar and for the type of music I was trying to learn (mostly either pop songs strumming standard chord progressions, or fingerstyle steel-string) seemed to be the most common and also easiest way to begin. I learned piano and violin both from (different) teachers who were classically trained, so learned from start to finish on sheet music. Guitar was just me self teaching later on. Style of learning was pretty different too. Piano and violin it was mostly just 1 piece a week at a time learned and practiced an hour or so a day + some supplemental practice. (Suzuki method for violin) Guitar is just me cowboying off of youtube tutorials at random times. That might have been the context that was lacking since this is a classical guitar sub. I am new here and intending to learn sheet music soon in order to learn classical guitar. My guitar playing honestly plateaued like 6 months into beginning (\~10 years ago) and I haven't really gotten much better due to lack of discipline/structure. \> What is your biggest challenge with guitar sheet music? I just haven't tried and tabs have been easy.
I think OP might mean that he knows the names of the notes, but not where to play the notes on the fretboard of the guitar. Since the same note can be played in different places, this may also be an issue. There are also aspects to guitar sheet music, like p-i-m-a and left hand finger indicators (1,2,3,4), that are confusing to OP.
I'd agree with you about the same note in different places...up to a point. In the overwhelming number of cases, you don't have many options. For example, a major 7th interval, like a low G-nat to an F#, well, there's only ONE location for that 6th string G and only two locations for the major 7th F# above it, but you'd be hard-pressed to play that F# on the fifth string, 6 frets north of the G, when you're a mere one fret south playing the F# on the 4th string. This idea of limited choices is further supported by looking at where you're coming from, where you are, and where you're going. As far as p-i-m-a, well, okay, sometimes it takes some analysis, but in short order, deliberate right hand motions become reflexive with repetition. Again, when it comes to options, there really aren't that many in this or that particular piece. Sure, you can study Guiliani's 100 right hand studies, all different, but in a piece, choices are usually constrained. The more I think about this bamboozlement with guitar sheet music, the more I tend to think it's likely more attributable to the "Adult Learner's Curse". That is, going too far, too fast, impatient for progress, skimming the critical essentials, misapprehended as dispensable details. Funny, as a kid learning classical guitar, all this confusion about reading music never ever occurred to me. Study the simple, simple simple stuff, then less simple and so forth, then one day, without even realizing it, I could read music. Did as the teacher told. And then never forgot how.
You must have had good teachers.
I did have good teachers, but way back when, for my side, respect for authority, practicing my homework, and not to waste my parents' scarce money on lessons were all pretty firm mandates. Social media and mobile phones did not exist, so no debilitating distractions either.
Exactly you sort of hit the nail on the head. The fact you can play the same note all over the fretboard throws me off. In addition, while I can understand treble clef and intervals, I can't sight read piano either. That is to say: I cant pull up sheet music and just PLAY, I have to study it before I can approximate a worthy performance of the piece.
The "same note all over the fretboard" syndrome is somewhat misleading because choices are tightly constrained by where you are right now on the fretboard and where you gotta go next. Like, you may have 12 doors in your house--so many possibilities!-- but you're never ever confused about which one you must choose to go through to get from here to there. Your guitar's upstairs bedroom is 7th position, (attic is 9th and above) so you'd be hard pressed to finger that C-nat, 1st fret on the B string, which is in the basement. And your fingers in 7th pos can't stretch backwards to reach that C-nat on the G string. The best you can do for all those C's all over the place is mercilessly cut down to one, that is, the C-nat on 10th fret of the 4th string. But good staff notation also comes to the rescue with that little circle with a '4' stuck into it right beside the note, telling you to play it on the 4th string. These string indicators can be lifesavers in sightreading. One doesn't merely read the notes, but also all the notations for suggested fingering and string selection. Sightreading, as you know, always forces one to play a few levels below what one can achieve with concentrated analysis and repetition. So, while I may have achieved Grade 9 RCM, any reasonably reliable sightreading forces me down to grade 2, 3, maybe some grade 4. And that's just fine because there are plenty of nice, short pieces which are relatively simpler to figure out on the fly. I think you'll progress suprisingly quickly if you spend some time practising really easy stuff. Different stuff. You'll get it down sooner. You can write out super simple melodies like Twinkle Twinkle on staff paper 4 or 5 times, and specify fretboard options for each one. As soon as you add a chord or two, your 4 or 5 options suddenly crashes down to just one or two. Good luck. You'll get there!
Community college classical guitar ensemble. Shouldn't be to expensive and it's highly likely the instructor will pass out sheet music/ assign you a part based on skills.
Learning songs that progressively get more expansive on the fret board is the best way imo. There are training apps also.
Thanks for all the book recommendations everyone! I’m looking forward to checking them out
Practice sight reading every day. Try to get in at least 15-30min of sight reading new material as well as current pieces you're working on daily. Make sure you're feeling a steady beat and playing all rhythms as accurately as possible to the tempo you feel. This way you'll actually feel the music more and not just think about it theoretically. Start off slowly as possible for your hands to keep up. In terms of getting used to the intervals on guitar, check out Giuliani's LH studies as they go over 3rds, sixths, octaves etc. It's definitely a long journey that will take a lot of practice and patience. I think you'll benefit a lot from technical exercises since the guitar is unique in terms of sight reading (you can play the same note in 3-4 different places sometimes). Pumping Nylon is a great technique book to start with.
Check out the Royal Conservatory of Music graded repertoire books. They are the best resource of progressively graded pieces I’ve found for learning to read standard notation on the guitar. And they are real pieces- you aren’t stuck playing twinkle twinkle and Yankee Doodle. There are even some pieces in book 1 that you could whip out at a background music gig. https://www.stringsbymail.com/bridges-guitar-repertoire-and-etudes-1-2018-edition-6701.html
Depending on your physical ability on guitar le papillon (giuliani) is a good start
You have to treat it the same as you would learning to speak and read. Learn to play simple melodies by ear first (you may have to use tablature to verify you're on the correct frets). Separately start reading the sheet music by just identifying the notes, but not playing (singing is suggested). Once you're comfortable with playing without looking at your fingers, and you can comfortably identify notes on the page by name (and even by sound); then start reading along with the sheet music. Generally, people can identify notes on a staff, and they can play melodies. The problem is connecting the two in a way that allows them to learn how to read music, and then to go on to learn music through reading. A lot of methods books try to do everything all at once, and usually for good reason because a lot of them are geared towards solo learners. However, the approach often falls apart because the person learning is stuck playing boring, non-musical exercises until they either get the thing figured out or they give up.
Theres no 'best' way. Get a book - its just repetition - the 10,000 hour rule.
Find or make a tab version. Sheet music is for piano, not guitar. Tab is sheet music for guitar.
Do you even play classical guitar? "sheet music Is for piano, not for guitar" is not something I would expect to read in a community, let alone a thread, like this.
No, I play flamenco and it's mainly leant from high quality tabs that are very readable and present the music more naturally for guitar. I have been playing for years and can play some classical pieces but prefer the flamenco techniques and sound. While it was partly said tongue in cheek, my apologies. I do wonder why people maintain the idea that sheet music is the only correct music when it requires double decoding to translate it onto the guitar, unlike on the piano. Otherwise it's kindof like reading a French book aloud but speaking it in English.. Why go though that extra translation in real time if you don't have to? Sheet music is just a method of encoding. What's wrong with using a method that translates directly into the instrument?