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By: Peter Edvinsson
A guitar is a fantastic instrument to play. It is easy to play
and very difficult depending on what you play. Let's take a look
at learning to play guitar sheet music! I have found in my teaching experiences that many pupils find
reading sheet music on guitar to be very difficult. Admittedly there are a lot of factors that make reading guitar
sheet music notation more of a challenge than on other
instruments in certain aspects. However, the most important factor is in my opinion that many
guitarists never decide to learn to find the notes on the
guitar. Instead they cultivate the habit of listening, playing
and calculating where the specific note probably is to be played
on the guitar. Such a strategy is too slow to make it possible to sight read
sheet music on guitar. A wish and then a decision to really
start learning the notes on the guitar is much better than to
use the before mentioned method to find the notes. You have to start from where you are if you want to progress and
become a good sight reader on guitar. In my teaching experiences I have found that many people that
play guitar wants to be somewhere else than where they ought to
be. The problem with playing too difficult guitar pieces is that
it's difficult to develop note reading skills, learning to sight
read and of course to learn the guitar pieces properly. We will start this little tutorial on reading guitar sheet music
by finding a few notes on the guitar fretboard. You will find the note E on the first open string if your guitar
is tuned with the most conventional tuning. This note can also
be found on the second string and the fifth fret. E on the third string is on the ninth fret. I would suggest that
you practice playing the note E in these positions back and
forth until you can find the note E without effort. You will also find the note E in a lower octave on the fourth
string and the second fret. On the fifth string you will find
the same note on the seventh fret. The sixth string is an E one octave lower. Let's invent an
exercise to help you find the E notes on the guitar fretboard: The task is to play the strings on the guitar in this order: 6 5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 As you play the strings the notes you play shall be the note E.
This means that the sixth string and the first string are open
strings and on the other strings you have to find the right fret. Try to play slowly in an even tempo until you don't have to
think about where to place you fingers. When you find this easy
to do you can proceed by choosing another note, for example G
and use the same method. Knowing the notes on the guitar fingerboard is important in many
ways. To find your way around on your guitar will be a great help for
you, not only when you play guitar sheet music but also when you
are playing by ear or try to figure out the name of a chord or
are playing by ear! About the author:
Peter Edvinsson is a musician, composer and music teacher. Visit
his site Capotasto Music and download your free sheet music and
learn to play guitar resources at http://www.capotastomusic.co
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