Reino Tulonen
Member
Same thing with me. I can read and play but doing both simultaneously is hard. But I guess it's like learning a new language, the more you learn it, the smoother you can speak and read it.
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Get some sight reading books or anthologies and practice at least 25 minutes every day. Maybe there are some tricks and short cuts that might help to speed up the learning process to an extent but the main thing is just doing it day in day out.
+1, I'm in the same camp, started on piano and gradually learned theory. I moved onto clarinet, trombone, guitar, classical guitar, then bass. As usual there is a shortage of bassists around my parts so I do some bass work reading jazz charts where I sight read a lot. Most of it is world's easier with bass than guitar, mostly utilizing basic modes and chord theory/progressions. It just takes practice with key signatures. In my jazz classes they made us learn the Maj. and Min. scales for all 12 keys. It took some work but paid off.It's probably worth noting that sheet music is probably pretty orthogonal to most modern guitar playing. Especially with the widespread use of new tools like tabs, videos, (etc).
That said - it's not completely worthless. Sheet music is an important tool for musicians to communicate with one another.
I started with piano when I was like 7, so sheet music is my "first language". But I still have problems tracking up and down a fretboard with sheet music. Tabs just make so much more visual sense, to me. I think that part of the problem is that I don't really bother to *know* what the letter-value notes are along my fretboard. Most of the time.
I think that would probably be the #1 thing. (and I have to agree, with the notion that you should sometimes, write the letters of the notes on your sheet music - - when you can't immediately look at a note and *know* what the note is, you won't need to write-in every note.)
And I would give this advice for reading notes on the staff:
Know your treble and bass cleff.
The Treble Cleff, you can call the "G-Cleff" - because the curly part centers on the note (line): "g". That's a landmark. The "c" (high c) is also the second space from the top. Those are the two main landmarks I use. Everything else is an interval from those.
The Bass Cleff, you can call the "F-Cleff" - because the two dots straddle the line which is the note: "f". That's a landmark. The low "c" is the second space from the bottom. Those are the two main landmarks I use in the bass cleff.
In between, is middle-c, which is one extension-line up from the top of the Bass Cleff, and one extension-line down from the bottom of the treble.
More than one extension line is a pain in the ass. Nobody likes them. But they are a fact of life.
#2 problem with reading sheet music:
Know your time-signatures: 4/4, 4/8, 3/4, etc.
(I don't really have any advice for this)
#3 problem with reading sheet music:
Know your key-signatures. Being able to keep track of sharps and flats is pretty easy. But losing-track of key signatures can screw you up. This somewhat easier on a visual instrument, (at least for me) like piano, where you can look at your sharps and flats, in terms of white/black keys. But for me, where your gaps on the fretboard are, is infinitely more difficult. I just never got the knack for it, which is why I try to just "hear" what I'm playing, and intuit where the next note is supposed to be. And I know that that's an approach that's probably crippling me as a (bass) player.
Here's another suggestion - if you sing, AT ALL, and if you're not completely opposed to organized religion, find a church, and join the choir. Probably not a "modern"-type church, but one that has a more traditional-style worship. You'll be forced to practice sight-reading like crazy.
Berklee Press have some great books, Especially the Melodic Rhythms book.