Problems With Sight-Reading on Guitar

[jasaco]

The second approach is to use notation software. There is no faster way to learn notation than to see the piano key you just pressed appear as a note on a staff.

Jay, can you name such a program that you like? Does it require having a midi keyboard hooked up to your computer or is there a virtual keyboard on the screen and you just click a note with your mouse? Even better, for guitarists, would be one that puts a virtual fretboard on the screen, rather than a piano. Otherwise, one will end up, yes, knowing the name of the note and where it is on the piano (no challenge there) but still not having it under one's fingers on the guitar. For that, the Segovia sounds better.

[Jonah]

Jay,

with all respect it is too complex... most of the musicians I know do not even think about.
after all the goal is to sight-read music for pleasure, not to learn sight-reading the rest of the life...

1) grammar 2) pronunciation 3)alphabet

that is all one needs to learn sight-reading...

In practice: learn alphabet and keep improving your technique and harmony knowledge in the style you play...

(fretboard knowledge is part of technique)

[targuit]

jasaco - My program is Sibelius G7, a now legacy 'starter' program I bought for $60 on sale at GC back some many years now. Today Sibelius has an analogous low cost program that would surely satisfy the needs of the vast majority of guitar or keyboard players. I play both, but I credit the program for stimulating my development as a keyboard player. Very synergistic to guitar playing, btw.

I have a low cost Yamaha synth keyboard hooked up via USB to a desktop computer. The Yamaha synth came with a CD to import the USB drive to the computer. Sibelius then recognizes the synth as a potential source for note input as well as the library of sounds source for the midi file output from the notation program (guitar, percussion, strings, vibes, etc.). So you can input notes via the synth keyboard in step or real time.

One can input directly on the computer screen with a virtual fret board, which is quite handy at times. And of course the computer keyboard can also be used. The hardest part perhaps is learning to play very mechanically in terms of tempo when creating the notation. If you play with a significant degree of swing, for example, when entering the notes in real time, the program will notate exactly what you play in terms of tempo. That can fudge up the notation. There are some tempo parameters that can be modified, but to get the sheet music the way most musicians would want to read it, I find it best to simply play mechanically to enter the notation precisely and cleanly. Then, for performance, you can alter parameters to impart degrees of swing or latin feel, rubato, etc.

I will say that it is a vital part of my rehearsal library of midi files and transcriptions, not to mention for composing. I cannot think of living without this now. The synergy for your playing is significant, though there is a 'learning curve'.

There is a tendency on the forum for some to think that if you use a notation program, it is somehow because you are 'enslaved' to sheet music, cannot improvise, or some other nonsense. Quite the opposite. Now, the Yamaha synth itself has an LCD screen with piano staves as well, but the computer screen is a lot larger and brighter.

In some ways using a notation program is like using Band-in-a-box, but you are creating all the music, not the program. They certainly could be complementary. (I don't yet own BIAB.) And creating the music is what it is all about, isn't it?

Jay

[christianm77]

There are few jazz standards I know that is not legible by sight to a good reader of notation, though the degree of difficulty varies. Perhaps the hardest to read cold might be Charlie Parker style solos with odd rhythmic meters.

I've found the Mike Longo book 'How to Sightread Jazz and other Syncopated Type Rhythms' has a good method for this. That said, it's been a couple of weeks since I've dipped into the Omnibook, and it's always hard!

[christianm77]

What about writing notes straight to paper (the old fashioned way) and checking to see if you are right by putting it into Sibelius afterwards?

I suppose you could always play it as well...

[targuit]

As Burt Bacharach once said in an interview video, I can write music on a cocktail napkin sitting in an airplane, drawing the four lines of the staff...he actually said that. The interviewer corrected him. But that is true. I do write music the old way, but only if I cannot get access to my computer and Sibelius.

The benefits are multifold. Working on melody and rhythm, for example. Seeing what you hear and play become this beautiful sheet music is artistic to me in a big way. Then, you hit "play" and you hear it back as vibes, strings, piano, woodwinds... You put the notes in, and the program plays them back out. No excuses if it does not sound right. You wrote it and in my case played it.

Next best thing to having a Swedish womens' modeling group as your backup band every night....

Jay

[MartinC]

My first post. I'm a 56 year old guitar player and recently started studying jazz again. I've been obsessed with flamenco for about 30 years, but lately have been taking out the real book at night. I did study jazz back in my teens and learned enough to pass an audition to get into SFSU's jazz band. I blew the audition my first semester by showing up with a strat, but when I returned the second time, they gave us the head to Joy Spring and said learn it, be ready to comp, play the head, and solo. Come back tomorrow because we know you guitar players are crummy readers. None of the other players got a day to look at the audition tune. As it happened, I already knew the tune, but spent most of the night shedding it. Next day, I played what may have been the best jazz solo I ever played, and although I flopped the reading part, I got in the band.
What I found out is that to play in a big band, you have to read really well. I struggled the entire semester. I also realized that playing in a big band was one of the most fun gigs you can do. In fact, if I can manage to re-gain enough skill in jazz playing in the next few years, I'll certainly try to get in another big band. So, for those who wrote that reading is optional for a jazz guitarist, I'd say not in a big band. Also, most all other instrumentalists playing jazz read really well. If jazz is your thing, you are at a huge disadvantage if you can't read IMO.

[CP40Carl]

I find it bewildering to see the reluctance of some guitar players to become musically literate. It is as if they post messages in the hope of getting blessings from more accomplished players to say that they don't need to bother learning to read. No experienced or professional player of any credibility will advocate musical illiteracy.

In reality, if you intend to play jazz with other musicians, as opposed to sitting in your bedroom, the skill is simply essential. There is no question about this. And yes, it is possible to be a musically illiterate jazz guitar player, in the same way as it is possible to be an illiterate poet; you can memorise passages but what an advantage to also understand and be able to read the written language.

None of the saxophone, trumpet, double bass, trombone or piano players I know have tried to justify musical illiteracy. Come on jazz guitarists, let's not let the side down, learn to read - you might even become better musicians...

[cosmic gumbo]

As the classic old joke goes - how do you get a guitarist to stop playing? Put sheet music in front of him.

[goldenwave77]

As the classic old joke goes - how do you get a guitarist to stop playing? Put sheet music in front of him.

And the Nashville response---"Do you read music, yeah...but not enough to hurt me."

Forgive me, for being polemical, but not without value, I hope--as again, we are debating false dichotomies. Sight reading is not good or bad--it is (can be) both. Let me explain:

What sight reading will do: First, it will teach you: 1.tunes...play a bunch of F or E flat standards. If you do this, you ought to learn ....2. the common fingering patterns (esp. if you play them in different fretboard areas); 3. common harmonic patterns (I tend to be a "bottoms up learner"---give me 20 detective stories to read--and I'll have a fair idea of how they work---the conventions, etc.--maybe even be able to write one...that's another project of mine); 4. help ear training--after you've read the tunes you should know, kinda, what they ought to sound like...now work on playing them without reading; 5. how to analyze tunes---a light bulb went off in my head when I opened up The Omnibook after a discussion of bebop's primarily chord tune emphasis---and started looking for all the "skip to another note runs"---either "on the line, on the line, on the line" or "in the space, in the space, in the space" and these are chordal, 6. how harmony works---how to "get to there" from "here". There are probably others, as well but access to written music cannot help but reinforce/reveal stuff that is more difficult to piece together, without this ability. Tal Farlow, a "by the ear" guy famously said he'd wished his reading had been better.

What sight reading may not do: I offer the e.g. of my ex-wife, who is really, really smart (aced physical chemistry and quantum mechanics in college) but who spent 12 yrs. taking piano lessons and sight reading, but not learning music...couldn't improvise...couldn't sing a line...couldn't really explain to you how tunes worked, and probably couldn't tell you a tune's chord progression. She really wasted her parent's money and didn't really like music but did it to placate her parents. She really learned the musical equivalent of typewriting, instead of how to appreciate literature.

My take: It takes almost as much effort/energy to "not learn to read" as it does to "learn to read". Even if "complete reading fluency" is not achieved, a la Johnny Smith who was legendary for his sight-reading as well as his arranging ability in the studio, so much more becomes available to you that it is foolish not to do it. The case of my ex-wife is extreme, and not typical. Like anything in life, it gets easier by doing it, not by "not doing it".

One final query to piano players: Hal Galper talks about his childhood piano teacher chastising him for "playing by ear" and "not reading the music". In the novel, Body and Soul (highly recommended), the main character, a piano prodigy is tutored by a European-trained maven who cannot understand why the character "takes so long to play stuff"...the character replies "I need to hear it in my head" and the maven says "just play the music...play the music". Presumably this is "imprinting" of sorts, or the neurological re-tooling process that works together with "playing by ear" after the stuff is imprinted...so that complete musical fluency can occur. Have any forumites with piano (or other experience) also been told this?

[targuit]

Goldenwave - I play piano (self-taught) as well as guitar (classically trained). I realized very long ago as a young teen that it was one thing to 'read music' and another to play by ears and develop them. But I do believe that the two skills - reading notation fluently and playing by ear - are complementary and in fact synergistic. I also work daily with Sibelius creating transcriptions as well as composing. I only wish that the current technological advances in computers, videos, the Internet, YouTube....were available when I was first learning. I am as excited about the keyboards as playing guitar. When I play along with Bill Evans, it is a thrill. Best teacher one could find.

My advice to anyone serious about music and playing guitar would be to learn piano as well and to use a notation software program. As you noted, sure there are relatively illiterate musicians who are good players, but today that is the exception at least in the jazz and certainly the classical world.

[goldenwave77]

Goldenwave - I play piano (self-taught) as well as guitar (classically trained). I realized very long ago as a young teen that it was one thing to 'read music' and another to play by ears and develop them. But I do believe that the two skills - reading notation fluently and playing by ear - are complementary and in fact synergistic. I also work daily with Sibelius creating transcriptions as well as composing. I only wish that the current technological advances in computers, videos, the Internet, YouTube....were available when I was first learning. I am as excited about the keyboards as playing guitar. When I play along with Bill Evans, it is a thrill. Best teacher one could find.

My advice to anyone serious about music and playing guitar would be to learn piano as well and to use a notation software program. As you noted, sure there are relatively illiterate musicians who are good players, but today that is the exception at least in the jazz and certainly the classical world.

Well I think that's the main thrust of what I was saying. Re: piano, this is sound advice (pun intended). Diz and Miles said the same thing. Learning instruments is like learning a foreign language....the first one is by far the toughest, since we're also learning musicality, syntax, etc. Additional ones are added relatively more easily. (As I've said before musical training is neurological programming of a sort, and I think computer-aided stuff has amazing potential. I've been suffering "practice withdrawal" as my BIAB program is inoperative since downloading some backing files from a guy who I thought I was going to take non-pedal steel lessons with. I've decided to bag the non-pedal steel...the idea of another instrument interface plus the technique involved makes this a project for someone younger...like Jerry Garcia said he could be mediocre on both (steel and regular guitar) or better on regular guitar. I'm much more advanced on regular and can actually play something that sounds like real music, whereas steel is just a tough instrument...at least to me.) I'll be looking to sell my '54 Fender dbl-neck 8-string.