Acoustic Guitar Central: Learn to Read Standard Notation

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INSTRUCTION
Learn to Read Standard Notation
Break through the limitations of tablature and open up a whole new world of musical communication. Like learning a new language, reading music requires patience and practice—but it's easier than you might think.

By Scott Nygaard

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Languages are best learned as a child, when you don’t even realize there’s an option: “To get what I want, I need to make these sounds.” So most people who didn’t learn to read standard musical notation as a youngster rarely learn to read music at all. Some may find it as formidable as math, while many guitarists think, “Standard notation? I don’t need that. I can learn from tab or chord diagrams, by using my ears, or asking my friends.” But imagine you’ve moved to Spain. While you may be able to get by in Spain without learning Spanish, your new life would definitely be improved if you learned at least some rudimentary Spanish.

The same is true with music. If you want to be a musician, it’s helpful to know the language musicians use to communicate musical ideas and thoughts. And most musicians use standard notation. Guitarists do tend to run in packs, so it’s possible to go through your musical life without interacting with musicians who play other instruments, but if you limit yourself to playing guitar music written in tablature, you’ll miss out on an awful lot of great music and musical ideas.

Standard notation is not as difficult to learn as it may seem. Guitarists are fond of using the excuse that standard notation is not ideal for the guitar, because an individual note can be played in different places on the guitar neck, so that it’s hard to know where to put your fingers without tablature. But this complicates the matter unnecessarily. Sure, you can play a note in different places on the neck, but you don’t need to know all the options. One will do. If you stick to first position, the open strings and the first four frets, you get a range of two octaves and a fifth, the basic range of a clarinet or a violin played in first position. That’s plenty of notes to get you started reading.

Learn to Visualize Pitches
Standard notation tells you two main things: pitch and duration—the sound of a note and how long it lasts. Pitch is indicated with the first seven letters of the alphabet, starting on A and moving up to G, then starting over again on A. Diagram 1 shows you where these notes fall on the musical staff and on the guitar in first position. You may already know the names of many notes on the guitar, but your job is to learn where they are on the staff. Play through the notes in the diagram, saying them aloud as you do so, and look at where they fall on the staff. Pick a few notes to memorize. For example, the lowest line on the staff is E, and the highest is F. The middle line is B. The first line below the staff is C; the first line above is A. The lowest space is F, the highest space is E. (You can also memorize all the lines—E, G, B, D, F, from bottom to top.) Memorize as many as you can and remember that all other notes will just be a line or space or two away from those you’ve memorized.

Diagram 1

Sharps and Flats
Of course, there are more than seven pitches. Five more are created by sharping or flatting the seven “natural pitches.” We won’t get into the details of scale construction and harmony here. All you need to know is that a sharp (#) placed next to a pitch raises it a half step, which on the guitar corresponds to one fret, and that a flat (b) lowers a note a half step. So if you see any notes on the staff with a # or b in front of them, simply move your finger up or down a fret accordingly. Key signatures simply do this to all notes within a given piece. If you see sharps or flats at the beginning of a piece, this just tells you to sharp or flat all those notes whenever they occur.

Duration
The location of a note placed on the staff tells you what the pitch is, and the symbol given to that note tells you how long to play it. Note-duration symbols are based on the most common time signature, 4/4. So a note that lasts for a full measure of 4/4 is called a whole note

, a note that lasts for a half a measure is a half note

, a note that lasts a quarter of a measure is a quarter note

, and a note that lasts for an eighth of a measure is an eighth note

, etc. A dot placed after a note increases its duration by half, and a curved line connecting two or more of the same notes ties them together. Each duration indication has its counterpart in silence, known as a rest (shown in Diagram 2).

Diagram 2

All music can be indicated by combinations of these symbols, and you can determine where in time each note should occur by counting “one two three four” and playing the notes at the appropriate time. The more you become familiar with how different combinations of notes create different rhythms, you more you’ll learn to see those combinations as one. For example, many people see a dotted quarter, a dotted quarter, two quarters tied together, a quarter note, a quarter note, and a quarter note rest, and immediately start dancing to the “Bo Diddley groove.” [Diagram 3] When you’re reading rhythms, try to get a sense of what those rhythms feel and sound like. What does an “eighth note, quarter note, eighth note” rhythm sound like? Memorize the sounds of small groups like this and it will help you read faster.

Diagram 3

Practice
If you’re going to learn to read music, you’ll need to practice—a lot. But this doesn’t need to be difficult, expensive, or time consuming. There’s plenty of music to work on in the pages of this magazine; I also recommend obtaining some songbooks and/or fakebooks and practicing reading vocal melodies. You may intend to be able to learn to read more complicated guitar music, but when learning to read, it’s best to start with simple, single-note melodies.

Look for cheap fakebooks/songbooks at garage sales or used bookstores. They don’t need to be filled with songs you want to learn. You’re just going to play through the melodies and move on. Books of fiddle tunes are also good. Most fiddle tunes have a simple eighth-note-based rhythm and a limited range that’s easy to play in first position on the guitar. Remember, speed is not an issue. Just take it slowly, read through the tune, and move on.

The most important thing about learning to read is consistency. You should try reading a little bit every time you pick up the guitar. Get yourself a fakebook with 1,000 songs and a tune book like The Philips Collection of Traditional American Fiddle Tunes or O’Neill’s Music of Ireland, and read through one song and one tune every day. Soon you’ll be reading standard notation like a pro.

This article also appears in Acoustic Guitar, Issue #161

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