Ah, sighting reading. Something I'm not very good at no matter what instrument I'm playing. But it just takes practice. Just like any other musical skill just keep practicing it and you will start to notice a difference in a little while. But yeah, sight reading can be hard!

I don't improvise. Have never been able to. But then again, I'm more into rhythm than leads when it comes to guitar. I MUCH prefer reading what I'm playing, until it's memorized of course, than trying to wing it.

I can read for guitar, bass, drums, keys, clarinet, flute, sax, oboe, vocals, brass, (lumped as brass because I don't play any brass,) violin,... Actually, I can read symphonic scores and was trained to conduct at one point. I can still read. It's like riding a bike and nearly automatic. In the studio I ocassionally take the part of page turner for keyboard players when they need it. Reading is an advantage when dealing with so many varied insturments. It also helps when mixing if you can visualize the music. When a client says, "Go to the second coda..." you not only know what he's talking about, but where it is even without the music.

I did ten years of RCM examinations piano and one of the things they test is sight reading. They have books for sight reading practice, but I'm not sure if they have ones for guitar.

If there's any advice I'd give for sight reading, it's to really look at the music first. Look at the key, the time and which chords are being used. Before you actually play anything time it in your head, make the hand positions you know you're going to use and try to time the changes between them the same way as if you were playing. In doing to so you should be able to get an idea of what the song actually sounds like. In an exam it wouldn't be uncommon for a student to look at a sight reading piece for a couple of minutes before starting - even though the piece is only two lines long.

I've only been playing guitar for 2.5 years, but it surprises me how many guitar players can't sight read (or even read standard notation - just tabs). Most of the guitar players I know have never tried.

I've always found that sight reading doesn't help my performance in any way, it just helps me learn new songs faster.

Good point. You don't play better, you just learn faster. There is little need for most guitar players to be familiar with standard notation. Lead sheets usually have little more than chords. It's all you need to base a solo on and most guitar solos are improvised, written on the fly, so notating them doesn't actually occur until AFTER the piece has been recorded. A real tab would be better than a lead sheet, but since what's being played by the lead guitar isn't something that's written down, just guided, there is little reason to learn to read music for most guitarists. The jazz player, working on standards, or the studio guitarist, never knowing what it is he's going to play, are about the only two I can think of who actually NEED this skill.

I read OK, (lol I've been through all of the RCM stuff, and the music School I went to was a Berklee Affiliate...) I know how to go about practicing, and getting better at it, just curious what everyone else's thoughts were; I personally just want to get it to the "next level" if you know what I mean. It'd be nice to be able to look at any score, any key, any position and wail it off. Some really serious music like Bach, Chopin, Paganini, Parker... Imagine being able to read so good that you could just rattle it off at a glance... I think that that would really help diversify one's playing, and truly help to "learn the craft". I've always hated Tab, and either suffered through the notation, or just figured out how to play something by listening to it.


I have a friend who plays violin really well who sight-reads Dream Theater and Megadeth solos; they sound pretty hot, she's got a fantastic sense of time and her intonation's spot on. I'm just thinking that it's time I diverted my energies to reading for a while, I'd like to be able to read off the clef a bit better, and read chord clusters.


I've often wondered; You see people who practice the "shred" thing and get good (Really good) in a year, we're talking usualy 10-12hrs a day of practice probably, but what if someone put those energies into something a little less "glorified" like the art of sightreading. Geez, I think that you'd really have a skillset (Literacy) that not many others would have. Imagine the access to different types of music? The influences you could draw upon? Hoo-boy, It could be very cool...

I don't practice sight reading at all. I do use tabs on occasion to see how a tune is played if I don't pick it up quickly by ear. However, I find that most sheet music for guitar (like the tabs in guitar magazines for full songs) contain way too much info for me. I usually only want the basics of the song like verse riff, chorus, etc... I rarely even attempt to recreate solo's note for note but I do try to get close. I certainly couldn't play any complicated solo's as I'm reading off the paper.

I DO think it's important to learn to read/write tabs. Especially write them. It's too easy to forget things. It really sucks when you come up with something cool, record it, then weeks later you cant remember how you played it. I'm pretty lazy about writing out tabs and if you have looked at my riff blog you'd see that I rarely do more than put the notes there. Writing out every bent note, vibrato, and slide just take up too much time for me.

I'm pretty impressed to think that you have the skill to play the things I've heard you do by sight reading.

Couple times I started learning notation. My interest always shifted elsewhere. So I can probably read, but very very slowly. Last time I didn't know yet where the notes where on the fretboard. I have recently improved in that area, so basically I need some refresh on identifying the lead-sheet dots as notes (an afternoon's work). And a little work on the circle of fifths in order to deal efficiently with the key signatures (a week probably here) and then practice practice practice to be able to play to speed. To that you need to add my lack of practice to playing with a metronome...

All in all you can probably say I can't sight-read xD