10 Key Principles to Help You Prepare To Learn to Sight Read Faster as a Seasoned Guitar Player

If you would like to do certain things with your guitar, learning to sight read will be very helpful. Such as being a working musician, having to play with other instruments. 

For most instances, as long as you are relatively comfortable with score, you can successfully communicate with other instrumentalists, vocalists, do song writing.  This article is for you if you want to become as sufficient at sight reading as you are reading a book. 

Musical Score as a Language

And that’s really what it’s about, musical score is a very beautifully written out language. Knowing the key principles that outlined below to help you both get started at learning to sight read. 

This is a skill that requires persistence and practice, just like guitar. So remember to set aside time regularly to train yourself on sight reading. 

Preparing to Learn to Sight Read as a Seasoned Guitar Player

When you are preparing to learn how to sight read as a seasoned guitar player compared to a complete beginner, there are a few things that can help you to get up to speed quicker.

Being able to play guitar without looking at your fingers

As a seasoned guitar player, someone who has been playing for a while. I hope you are comfortable with playing the guitar without looking at your fingers too often. This skill will develop more as you learn to sight read. If you are struggling with this then just start with a small section of the guitar and then expand as you get more comfortable.

Get confidence with your triads, fifths and octaves positions on score

You want to be really good at spotting relationships between notes and which ones form a third, or fifth, or octave. Combine that recognition with theory will speed up your sight reading a lot.

Understanding theory

One of the biggest things that will make a difference is knowing your key signatures. You want to be able to remember what the key signature is for, be able to relate that to your root notes and scales quickly. And when you read through the music, do able to quickly identify which notes have sharps or flats.

If you know your root notes well, and can relate the key to the scale positions you know on the guitar. Both horizontally and vertically. Then it makes it a lot easier. Especially once you are comfortable with their triad and arpeggio patterns too. It becomes really easy to find things on the guitar.

Recognizing chord shapes

As a more experienced guitar player, you will probably be quite comfortable playing chords on the guitar. So for you, the important thing is being able to recognize the chord shapes and forms. Being able to recognize different inversions of a chord, you will be able to relate it to your triad chord shapes all over the guitar. This will both speed up your sight reading, and your ability to get to the chords quicker too.

Final note

I hope these few things will help you as a guitar player to start to learn to sight read. Sight reading is started from the very beginner with a lot of other instruments, guitar is one of the instruments which has its own notation system. Which is why if you can become great at guitar without being able to sight read. But if it is something you want to do, and you can work on these things to prepare yourself. You will make your life a lot easier.

The Best Guitar Lessons in East London can be found at Guitar Tuition East London. There you will find a team of friendly teachers and staff to support your guitar playing. Helping you every step of the way to improve your guitar playing until you reach your goals.