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Here is a site reading website I've been using for a few weeks that I thought might be of interest to some of you guys: www.sightreadingfactory.com
It generates random melodies in all keys at different levels of difficulties. It is a great supplemental resource to elevate your sight reading skills quickly. I actually see the annual subscription for one year as a donation because of how much it is benefiting me. check it out.
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04-28-2014 06:56 AM
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This is great! Thank you for posting.
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How many exercises have you done before a noticeable improvement of your reading skill?
I am thinking to practice it by reading the songs in real book. The trouble is we don't have a sound recording on most of the songs.
We can easily find some improvised songs but not the standard tunes
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good site...
a must look at for most of us here...
time on the instrument..
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Interesting site. Only problem is that to learn sight reading, I think it helps enormously to be sight reading melodies that are familiar to you, so you can associate the melody with the visual notation on the staff.
I've considered creating with Sibelius an e-Book type thing of classic melodies for guitarists to use to learn their sight reading skills. Would this idea be of interest to those who would like to improve their sight reading skills and have some fun learning arranging skills at the same time?
Jay
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$30... That's more than fair. So you either print out a ton of examples and start or add to your sight reading folder or whatever your using now... and the ability to practice from your phone, pad etc...
I'm not sure... if you've tried to get your sight reading together and.... it didn't happen, not sure this will make it happen.
Might help you get a boost from being something new, but you could pick up one new or a couple used fake books to work on sight reading and learn some jazz tunes in the process.
When all is said and done... most guitarist are never going to become sight readers. Most don't even know what sight reading is...
But all that said... I checked out the examples, the lines somewhat suck, ( I just read through their most difficult examples),
but I'm sure would help. I don't like their subdivision usage... or lack of. Looks well organized.
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Hey, Reg! I agree about the site and sight reading skill development. But I'm curious. You said something identical to what another poster on another thread commented regarding many pro jazz guitarists not being able to sight read well. Given that many come out of Berklee or Juilliard, University of Indiana, or some reputable school of music, I find it surprising. Is it true?
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Being able to read well and sight read well are just very different...and if you are not required to sight read...and you don't do it on your own...
I can read pretty well...but sight reading? Totally different skill...
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That looks like a great resource. Another great free resource is a classical guitar website from which you can print guitar duets of Bach's "Inventions". I can't find it right now but will edit this later with a link.
Lots of 16th notes in the Bach inventions which as a guitar player I find scary in general (16th notes that is), but somehow the fact Bach wrote the music makes it much more playable.
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Coolvinny, Barry Galbraith's Play Along with Bach (Bach two-part inventions 1-15) is a great book. It's available through Jamey Aebersold.
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For an endless supply of public domain Classical Music to read through
IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music
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Originally Posted by bako
Wow. Thanks.
And nice sight reading website.Last edited by johnny67; 04-30-2014 at 05:52 PM.
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I'm confused, Jeff. What do you mean "different skill"? The notation is the same. If you mean the ability to read a part perfectly the first time, that is not everyone's thing, of course. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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That's what sight reading is. Being able to read and play, looking at the music, not the guitar. If you can't sit down and read it and play it, you're not sight reading, you're just reading and playing.
its a very specific skill.
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Interesting. I never thought of sight reading being a different skill that reading. Practicing reading leads to improvement in sight reading.
I think the value us in not reading melodies you know. When you practice reading you want to exercise your ability to recognize the notation and the location of those notes on the guitar. It's not about ear training exercise. Very often you will read something that's contrary to where your ear tells you to go.
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Maybe i'm alone on that!...I wonder if it's because I started reading after I had been playing a good while...I knew where the notes were already...so the symbol didn't immediately translate to a location...
Interesting indeed...I can sit down with a piece of music and read you all the "note names" or scat the melodic rhythm much easier than sitting down and playing right off the paper. I always did think I had some kind of learning disability though...well, that's what they'd call it in 2014...Last edited by mr. beaumont; 04-30-2014 at 06:40 PM.
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That was my understanding of sight reading also, the ability to play what's on the page in front of you and that's why having known melodies to sight read is counterproductive to learning sight reading because you tend to fake it and convince yourself that you're doing it. Variations with different intervals, rhythms and notes all over the staff really separate out the true sight readers ( of which I'm not! )
I think it's a useful skill in playing with others as invariably someone will have music that you've not seen before.
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I also view Sight Reading as different than Reading.
Reading is useful if studying a text or writing out a line. Sight Reading is about playing what they put in front of you for the first time. By working Sight Reading, one is automatically working on their Reading, so I tend to focus on that. 10 minutes a day or so.
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Sight reading takes much more discipline to master it seems than just reading.
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Hey target and the general topic of sight reading. Personally ...sight reading is being able read what's notated and also being aware of what's implied... A somewhat simple example could be ... Being aware when to swing and how to articulate and phrase, all the implied details that generally are implied by style and reference. The actual notational sight reading.... Or recognition of rhythm and melodic notation, isn't just getting the notes out... Sight reading also includes how you play them with reference to the music and the setting.
But generally, like I said, and this is not good or bad, right or wrong, just what it is.... Most guitarist can't even get out the notes, we've just not been trained and haven't put in the time, and somewhat like it's playing out here.... Most don't even understand what sight reading is. It's not like it's a required skill to play guitar.
Like I mentioned in last post... If you want to play in a jazz style, you might as well put your reading time working on the style of music you want to be able to play. I don't think reading Bach anything will help your jazz chops.
I 'm only saying this because most won't put in enough time to translate sight reading skills from classical studies to develop into jazz skills. Generally I strongly endorse reading skills... All sight reading, but I'm just connecting the dots and trying to give advice that might help.
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I'll never claim to be a great sight reader, but there's almost never been a period in my life when I haven't been in a jazz big band, a swing band, or a rehearsal band.
Most musicians on the other instruments do it, so I don't know why guitarists should be different.
It's always led to gigs, and meeting other musicians, so there are benefits beyond improving your reading skills.
Monday night, I played in a jazz big band that does charts by many of the current great arr./composers, and the charts
always have some lines that you have to play with the other instruments- not just changes.
My weak spot is sight reading at fast tempos, and this band plays a lot of fast tempo charts that have lines in them,
and some of them I find impossible to sight read.
We're doing a concert in a little while, and one of the toughest charts we're playing is "Swingin' For the Fences" by Gordon Goodwin.
It's at about 288bpm, and it opens up with a bop chorus featuring guitar, sax and trombone, and i just watched the notes go flying by!
You can never take parts home in these bands, so I found it on youtube, and copied it by ear, and it's tough to play even when I have it memorized, so how do these writers expect us to play stuff like this at sight?
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Right Reg. I divide reading into three categories:
1) the symbols and notes on the page,
2) the rhythm
3) the location of the notes on the guitar, the hardest.
You can drill all three separately until you get a good handle on doing them all.
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I checked out some Gordon Goodwin vids. This is baffling. They want you to sight read this stuff? It sounds like fast bop tempos/rhythms with horn arrangements more in the style of the swing era. No telling how much Gordon Goodwin's band rehearses. Originally Posted by sgcim
I'll never claim to be a great sight reader, but there's almost never been a period in my life when I haven't been in a jazz big band, a swing band, or a rehearsal band.
Most musicians on the other instruments do it, so I don't know why guitarists should be different.
It's always led to gigs, and meeting other musicians, so there are benefits beyond improving your reading skills.
Monday night, I played in a jazz big band that does charts by many of the current great arr./composers, and the charts
always have some lines that you have to play with the other instruments- not just changes.
My weak spot is sight reading at fast tempos, and this band plays a lot of fast tempo charts that have lines in them,
and some of them I find impossible to sight read.
We're doing a concert in a little while, and one of the toughest charts we're playing is "Swingin' For the Fences" by Gordon Goodwin.
It's at about 288bpm, and it opens up with a bop chorus featuring guitar, sax and trombone, and i just watched the notes go flying by!
You can never take parts home in these bands, so I found it on youtube, and copied it by ear, and it's tough to play even when I have it memorized, so how do these writers expect us to play stuff like this at sight?
I'll bet this can be very difficult but musically rewarding. I hope GG pays well. What's great about real swing is you don't have to be able to read a thing if you got that rhythm
Sounds like a tough gig you got there!
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As someone trained in classical guitar from twelve years old, reading notation and 'sight reading' were taught as one. I understand the distinction between reading a new score to work out the parts and reading a new score at the moment of performance. Certainly the latter is harder, though many of the parts written for classical or other style guitar in movie themes, for example, are not as challenging as playing Villa-Lobas for the first time. But if you read notation regularly, your skill does improve. And I think it is safe to say that most studio session musicians sight read very well or they would not get a call for the job. I would guess that the Louis Bonfas and Tony Mottolas of the session world read very well.
As for interpreting the rhythm and jazz style, well that is understood. In fact, when I first started using Sibelius, I didn't understand why, when I inputted notes in real time playing the synth keyboard, the program kept making the notes on the staffs look more complicated (triplets), till it dawned on me quickly that musical timing was so precise that the program was notating my jazz triplet feel to the lines. But I've learned how to adjust the playing for cleaner notation the first time around.
As for reading the notes and translating what you read into knowledge of the fret board notes and positions, well that is a 'given'. That is the beautiful thing about practice - you do improve and learn. The task may be daunting to a beginner but all just part of the deal to most musicians.
Sure, there is a difference between just studying a score and playing it correctly the first time. The latter is far more difficult, but centuries of pianists have proven that it is something you do get better at by doing it.
There is a tendency on the Boards here to create 'either - or' style propositions. Either you can do this or that but not both. That is just not accurate. One can read notation well and have good ears. When I see notation for the guitar with a Bach piece or something, I am so conditioned that just the architectural look of the phrase - the flow of the notes in a measure at a time - communicates to me. In other words, I don't read each note in the phrase separately - I apprehend the phrase 'all at once', more as you would hear it. Of course, the faster the tempo, the harder it is to read an unfamiliar piece, and I do not claim to be the best on the planet by any means. But read music for fifty years...you should get better.
BTW, I do not usually 'write out' single guitar solo lines in a group context. I do improvise over the written out melody over an accompaniment. So an 'improvised' solo line in a song you know well is still a restatement of the melody or a variation.
The point is that the web site is good and interesting, and randomly generated notation and the challenge of reading it is a good exercise, but not as effective as reading and practicing a piece of music as such, because it is the association of the visual notation and the aural musical phrase that becomes conditioned. My suggestion to those who wish to improve that skill would be to study lute music as played on guitar. As a young teenager, I learned many lute tunes by John Dowland, Francis Cutting, and other composers, inspired by the albums of Julian Bream. Many of these pieces are easier than Bach to play, and they make nice additions to your repertoire. Reading Bach, however, is still excellent sight reading material, and certainly much easier than playing Benjamin Britten cold. The hardest music to sight read that I ever dealt with was the Hans Henze pieces on Julian's magnificent original Twentieth Century Guitar album. The main issue was that my copy of Henze's score was not edited with fingering for guitar, just the original score. Now that is harder to read for sure. So I did the editing.
In any case sure you can play jazz without reading notation well, but it does not hurt. In fact, I just recently realized something very fundamental about using a written score to stimulate an approach to improvising or developing a solo that touches on the hoary old argument here over the issue of "what scale to play over what chords" and the approach of "scales versus chord tones". Most of you know that I cannot deal with the argument of the modal and scalar approach which I find a distracting waste of time. But can anyone guess what technique or approach I might be hinting at to use for varying your improvisation line that would incorporate the written music?
JayLast edited by targuit; 05-01-2014 at 03:38 AM.
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Hey sgcim.... I apologize for sounding like I'm against sight reading, I get at least 1/2 my gigs because I can read anything...even those burning 16th note lines. I was trying to find some type of happy functional medium that might work better for the majority of guitar players.
Sounds like your having great time and it's working you. I dug your post, thanks.
Generally one has trouble sight reading what one has trouble playing technically. You can't expect to read what you need to rehearse just to play.
I was reading Henry's post above about organized approach to reading, that sounded great. There's lots of details under each of those categories. That point about where on the fretboard....
I've posted way too much BS on this topic...
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