How to Read Classical Guitar Music
Like any other instrument, classical guitar music is written on a staff. There are great resources all over the web that teach and train reading on the staff. Notation reading should be fluent and effortless.
Starting from the bottom line of the staff, a sentence can be used to figure out each of the notes on the lines. “Every Good Boy Does Fine” is the most common sentence. “Even George Bush Drives Fast” is another. A young student came to me and he had made up his own sentence, “Elmo Gave Barny Dead Fish”
The spaces spell a word from bottom space to top: FACE.
Stop Guessing
With these tools a beginning player SHOULD NEVER GUESS the note which they are going to play. It’s not about putting your fingers down and hoping, it’s about knowing. That means at the beginning stage of reading music, one should talk through the sentences or words if need be and know the notes. Often time students have a disassociation between the actual note names and where to put their fingers. Their intellectual concept of the staff is well developed but their muscle memory is not. The key is to train both at once. This can be accomplished very simply by saying the note names aloud while playing them. This works well playing melodies but fails with polyphonic music. Practice reading individual melodies, in multiple positions on the guitar, first.
Numbers, Letters and Strange Markings…
In addition to all the standard notation stuff, classical guitar music has some very specific things that go on in it. To notate left hand (LH) fingering, we use numbers:
1=LH index
2=LH middle
3=LH ring
4=LH pinky
To those former pianists (recovering pianists?) this can be a bit confusing as the thumb is normally considered 1. For the right hand (RH) we use letters:
p=RH thumb
i=RH index
m=RH middle
a=RH ring
c=RH pinky
Most times the pinky is not used on the right hand, but sometimes a “c” pops up.
The other strange markings or words are going to be musical instructions on things such as tempo, articulation and dynamics. It’s also possible that some markings or words are indications of special or extended techniques, but most pieces of music will have a legend or key for those markings. Here is an online dictionary of music terms for your reference. It can also be helpful to have a reference around like The Harvard Dictionary of Music
The key to getting better at reading is doing more of it. Which sucks. A lot. But there’s no way around it. With all the free music (check out the links page for some websites) floating around on the web, there should be no shortage of music to read. A book of jazz licks
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Dear Christopher Davis,
I am a beginner at classical guitar, but I can play well. Though I still to master reading sheet music, and I was just wondering how do you tell the difference between notes thar look the same? For example: first fret D, sixth fret A, and eleventh fret low E all look the same when read.
Well, Zach, you can’t really tell the difference. You just pick one. This is what makes sight reading on the guitar so hard. Unless the editor/composer has written in string numbers or fingerings, there’s no way to really tell where to play it.
Thanks so much for this introduction! I’m a pianist so I can already read music but it sure helps to know the different notations for guitar. I have a question: I am learning a piece of music which seems to indicate that three strings are to be held down simultaneously with one finger. (This is really hard for me but not impossible.) Above the notes (a pair of eighth notes, the first of which is a chord) there appears a Roman numeral “II” and a dotted line extending to the second note. Does this mean anything special? It is not a chord marking because the music which I am using does not use those. Thanks!
Usually roman numerals above the staff are position indications. In that case, it’s probably an indication to barre (hold down more than one string with one finger) across the second fret. The dotted line tells you how long you’ll have to hold down the barre.
Thank you so much! I’ve been reading more of your blog and I love it! Keep it up.
Hello, again. I just had another question. I was looking at some sheet music / tablature and I saw some numbers in circles right next to some of the notes. What do they mean?
Hi again Zach! numbers in circles indicate strings. 1 would be the highest (first string), 6 is the lowest.