Guitar Players I Can't Read Music? | Sight ReadingTips | Tim Pierce | Learn to Play

[@jordantothesmith]

This is motivating. Even with someone as skilled and as seasoned as Tim, he's still open and willing to learn. Guess there's still time for me to learn sight reading after all. haha

[@efa666]

This is GOLD. If only KZbin was around when I started learning music!

[@guitargod6997]

The easiest way for a beginner guitarist to learn to "sight read" notation is to start with a good classical text from guitarists like Christopher Parkening. Another key is to learn Segovia's Major and Minor Diatonic Scales (all you will ever need) because not only are they effective for developing finger dexterity in both hands and tone, but you will learn to associate the notation with notes at different fret positions over the entire neck. Apart from learning to read graded Sor or Carcassi studies, an excellent approach is to learn Elizabethan lute music arranged for guitar. You acquire lovely pieces in your repertoire, while developing reading skills. Study Bach. Lastly, if you can use a notation program as part of a DAW or Sibelius or Finale, for example, to create simple arrangements, you will learn quickly.

[@jaysjams1517]

Great video. I have been playing guitar for 32 years and I'm 2 weeks into piano lessons. Reading sheet music is a new adventure for me, but I can sort of see patterns while tackling the playing and reading at the same time.

[@johncarter6519]

I teach full time, and I try to get every one of my students to learn how to read, even intermediate and advanced students. It helps so much in developing your ear and hand-eye coordination. The students who stick with it, though it can be really difficult for most, always are more confident when they pursue other areas of music, and theory becomes a lot easier for them as opposed to those who want to jump right in to theory with no prior knowledge.

[@drutgat2]

Tim, your playing is amazing. I can recognize notes on the treble clef, and sight sing to an extent. My failing is that I get really confused by durations of notes once they go into a finer increment than a dotted eighth note. And after playing for over 30 years, I am currently teaching myself all of the notes on the neck (not just the first five frets). It is diffficult, but worth it. I wish I had done that years ago.

[@northof50now]

Reading music is such a perishable skill. In school, I played the trumpet, baritone horn and drums. Unfortunately, between not knowing all the notes on the guitar [most common mistake] and being able to pay the same note in multiple places on the neck - it hasn't really helped in my quest to learn guitar. Excellent vid Tim.

[@owenjacka2658]

northof50now I would read trumpet music from the stave at school too dude but was never taught guitar in a classical sense so I stuck to my tabs! Would be good to learn more and I hope Tim might do some more videos on this because he’s so good at explaining and teaching in ways other people don’t seem to approach!

[@stephenmead5488]

As written, the pickup would fall on the “&” of the 3rd beat. As played the pickup fell directly on the 3rd beat which is a dotted 8th followed by a 16th. Nit picking I know, but I’m surprised that the instructor didn’t “pick that up”.

[@Smollie1]

This was amazing

[@rowegardner9673]

This was fantastic! A whole series on this would be wonderful. Thanks guys.

[@alarconclaudio]

Great video! hopefully we will find more content about sight reading on guitar... congrats Tim!

[@lawboss]

Please keeping bringing him back!!!

[@owenjacka2658]

Awesome lesson breaking down some concepts into sight reading from notation which is something I’ve always considered not being able to do, having always read from tabs, struggled somewhat with timing on the stave so would then listen to the track to help with that. Would be awesome to see more videos with more tips and advice on reading notation when playing guitar! Thanks Tim, your channel is honestly my favourite on KZbin. Such a fountain of knowledge and introducing guitarists that may have been playing for years to concepts that have never crossed their mind! Much love from the U.K. keep up the good work!

[@guitargod6997]

Reading tab is painstakingly slow in comparison to reading standard notation once you are comfortable with it. Like driving a Ferrari compared to a Model T.

[@RichardMcLamore]

gotta read bass clef too: (& someone could say that being able to handle that weird viola clef would be useful too). guitar's scored the way it is to make it easier to read the range it can hit. but if you learn to read like piano's scored it gets you thinking about playing the guitar as the polyphonic instrument it is: capable of playing multiple parts simultaneously.

[@drothberg3]

My first high-level guitar teacher had me work through Rubank’s Advanced Clarinet Method. There weren’t many decent guitar books at the time that weren’t classical guitar. It was before the Berkeley stuff came out. The range of guitar and clarinet is the same. There were scale studies and classical and folk melodies in every key. There were also single-note duets that we’d play together. I really enjoyed that.

[@gilbertrockstv8557]

Super rad Tim. I am working as an elementary school music teacher and having a blast teaching basic sight reading. You have to start with the basics and then it gets easier and easier. Hope you are well my friend.

[@dapperdanman1956]

Such a great guy Tim Pierce! thanks for your post. Music is in the cosmos!

[@tmitz73]

Dudes, what I great lesson, anything that helps my reading is a welcome tip. My old teacher used to recommend buying easy music for other instruments and in different registers as exercise. Thank you for your great videos and music Tim!!!

[@bgadie]

Not every day I get to add something to a Tim Pierce video but here goes. The musical term for a pick up is anacrusis. Not a term most guitarists would use but just something I remember from my musical theory classes.

[@timpierceguitar]

Wow thank you so much

[@joethrelfall6370]

@@timpierceguitar hows your sight reading going?

[@reggiebellamy7112]

I love this lesson and the demonstrations Tim! Thanks so much,I really helps me!

[@MikeBradleyofficial]

What a fantastic tip!! There is still hope! 😂

[@YonathanLeibovich]

Knowing where the notes are is the easier part of sight reading.. Hardest thing about it is the rhythmic parts.. all the patterns and syncopation.. yaiks any tips for that?

[@guitargod6997]

Practice makes perfect....almost.

[@ThefabulousJF]

You need to learn the patterns. There are only 4 ways to split a quarter in 16th - train these so you can play them when you see the whole group and not the single notes. And then add breaks. And punktation. And ... the jurney begins ;-). Ask your drummer or even take a few lessons with a good drum teacher - it's not hard to do (hey even drummers can *g*) but need some time and the right start/mindset.

[@imbra]

There's an android app called "Rhythm trainer". Get that, and work through the exercises. Thank me later ;)

[@drothberg3]

Agreed. I have no problem with the notes. It’s the rhythms that are challenging.

[@jaycheek254]

You should team up with Warren Haynes sometime! My two favorite guitar players in one room.

[@johnmcgrath8886]

That's a very enlightening video -thank you

[@doctiberius2717]

Simple single line melodies are fine but site reading notes stacked on top of of one another to make chords not so easy. There are many ways to get by, I have always started by looking at the time time signature and how many sharpes or flats there are at the start to indicate what the key is. With a standard song or familiar peace of music this helps get a head start. Then I look for anything unusual that I don't recognize and try to get a handle on it some how. Then decide how to voice each part.

[@NickGranville]

I think it’s partly that guitars players don’t typically learn from reading when starting. Violinists or pianist learn from reading often in their first lesson; guitarists, can have multipole and do no reading. I do a lot of reading gigs, and I teach my students a few strategies to get the going then it’s just practise. If they stick at it they get it over time

[@patrickfoster4586]

Great content as usual Tim! Thanks so much, your work is certainly appreciated. Cheers! 🤘🎸

[@McphersonStompboxes]

Great vid Tim, super helpful as I stopped reading about 20 years ago, I'm going to have to get back into it, thanks!

[@ericruddphotography]

Sweet chemistry between you two. Love the lesson.

[@dananthony6258]

Lmao at his being in a minefield. Omg do I feel like that sometimes.

[@AZFunk]

Can't stop drooling over that Les Paul

[@danielperkins4610]

3:33 was a minor 6th. yes it's nerdy.

[@sjaakvandam2170]

Not nerdy. You are correct.

[@jeffgomez88]

I was thinking the same thing. I knew it sounded like a minor 6th.

[@dananthony6258]

Omg that les paul I’d awesome.

[@fableclub6319]

He sang a minor 6th, sort of, not really a 5th. Great exercise, though. The best way to get better at sight reading is sight singing along with your playing and acapella. You have to learn to internalize the symbolism.

[@taopagan]

Love love love your channel! But I must point out a common mistake made in this lesson. Music for guitar is written an octave higher than the actual pitch of the note. Another way of saying this is that the actual pitch of the notes you are playing are an octave lower than where they are written. If you pull out your old CSN songbook (for example) you'll probably see the marking "8vb" written below the staff. The marking is combined with a dotted line to indicate how long it should remain in force. This instructs the player to play the music one octave lower than it is written. To convince any doubters, this may be demonstrated by examining the actual frequencies involved. "Middle C" is designated C4 in scientific pitch notation with a frequency of 261.6 Hz. The frequencies of the six open guitar strings (in standard tuning) are as follows: 1 (E) 329.63 Hz E4 2 (B) 246.94 Hz B3 3 (G) 196.00 Hz G3 4 (D) 146.83 Hz D3 5 (A) 110.00 Hz A2 6 (E) 82.41 Hz E2 It's easy to see that "Middle C" - at 261.6 Hz - corresponds to the note fretted on the first fret of the B string.

[@timpierceguitar]

Wow thanks for the insight!

[@PMmusic251]

Yes that is correct, but note that a seasoned arranger would transpose the guitar chart to the correct octave. So when Tim refers to C on the A string 3rd fret being the C on the first baby line below the staff, he is correct assuming he is reading a chart written for guitar, which is obviously the case with the Happy Birthday chart they are reading. Now as a studio musician, or when playing sight reading gigs as in a big band, you would assume that a chart written for you would be transposed for guitar. However if you are given a piano chart for instance, you would know that you need to transpose what you see an octave higher. Physics only tell you half of the story here. In real world situations it all depends on the context.

[@danielyarritu3719]

Tim Pierce Guitar There’s supposed to be an 8 below the treble clef in guitar music to indicate that the music is transposed an octave lower than written but no one uses it. It’s pretty much never mentioned in method books either, so unless you compare the notes to a piano you’d never realize that guitar transposes by an octave. Even the folks at Finale made this mistake when they came out with their guitar tab function years ago (the tab was programmed for concert pitch and the octaves would all come out wrong). It’s interesting to realize that everything below the C on the second string is actually in bass clef- so the bass strings are really bass notes- just bass notes in the upper range. This also explains why the Real Book has melodies that appear to be in a low range on the guitar- they’re supposed to sound an octave higher than we guitar players think!

[@ChuckHaney]

G is not the next line up from C, E is. E bottom line, G next line up.

[@karaokeitaliano]

It is such an humbling video, seeing a great session guitarist like you getting excited like a kid confronting new challenges. Kudos!!!

[@ptomo66]

Hi Tim! I’m a bit confused. From this video I get the impression that you “kinda” know how to read music yet in your Grammy videos they clearly put music in front of you for 70 plus songs! Can you read music or no?

[@davidames9339]

Tim Pierce... damn.

[@dr7246]

Actually, you weren’t playing those 16ths correctly. It might be good to redo this, bringing counting and subdivisions into the mix.

[@timpierceguitar]

Yup , you caught our mistake ! We will do another video and do what you are suggesting

[@dr7246]

Tim Pierce Guitar :-)

[@Manubasone]

Yeah these are actually straight 8th's as Pickup like you play them. Or you can play them as swingin' 8th. Love Your Videos Thank you so much Tim!

[@joethrelfall6370]

@@timpierceguitar count an have what I call buzz words for certain rhythms or subdivisions.

[@drothberg3]

How do you get a guitarist to stop playing? Put sheet music in front of him! How do you get a pianist to stop playing? Take the sheet music away! (From Mozart in the Jungle)

[@gojoe36]

Sight reading takes practice as all things, but one thing about music is it follows certain chords. You can always tell what is coming next, so sight readers already know where it's going. Our strives toward music theory, will always make us better at reading music. My first guitar teach taught these things and he could tell you what chord is coming next in a song. I said that's impossible to do all the time, he always nailed it all the time. I took him a song one time I wanted to learn, and he listened to it through the intro and first verse. He stopped the tape only 1 time and plucked 2 chords, scored the whole thing out on paper. He played classical guitar in an orchestra....freaking Genius.

[@allancrow134]

I'll pass...(not Joe Pass) on the music reading thingy. :) I'll live with my limitations...I'm OK with that. :)

[@fredrikgrahn1571]

That fifth in 3:35 was quite sharp right? Good show anyway!

[@BrazenNL]

Solfège. The most hated class in any music school. On another note, sight reading itself is just a matter of practice.

[@ericruddphotography]

Ha! Brazen, I was just going to say the same thing. In my theory class, my professor would write out a chord progression on a staff, then play on the piano the root of the first chord in the progression. We would then be tested on our ability to sing the intervals in that first chord (in solfége), then move similarly through the other chords in the progression. I sucked at it.

[@BobbyCulpepper.srv3fender]

Sight reading is not so hard in the beginning, until you get to a song in a key other then C, and you have several sharps or flats, then all the time you've spent memorizing fingering is out the window

[@ronfrey6639]

Ah now why yall going and doing me dat waz ?

[@paulgiannamore-guitar9195]

How Do You get a pianist/ horn player/ orchestra to stop playing ? Put tab in front of them !!

[@torchandhammer]

Diet soda pop?

[@nadasonic6]

so Tim, you've been a top session player for years... and have never sight read music before today...? interesting!!!

[@AlexAquarius963]

"accidentals" before the downbeat. "pickups" is slang.

[@trentindeed4118]

No