Do I need to learn to read sheet music for guitar?
In this video we are answering the question, do I need to learn to read sheet music for guitar?
Let’s talk about if you need to learn sheet music in order to play guitar!
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Transcription
Do I need to learn to read sheet music to play guitar? Short answer, no. You don’t. Does it help? It can. It depends on the type of guitar playing you're doing, but most guitar players I find typically just read TAB and some can read sheet music if they played another instrument. But most guitar players don't necessarily seek out to read sheet music. Again, it can be helpful. So like if we take a look at a couple of examples here like on you know, Ultimate Guitar, a super popular set TAB website. And here on Ultimate Guitar if I look up, Hotel California. If you don't have the professional version, you go to just a regular old TAB. You get a generic strumming pattern, no sheet reading, but there is some rhythm written underneath. And you're kind of left to fend for yourself a lot of times using your ears to figure out when do I change this chord? I mean, they're written above the lyrics, but a lot of times that's not super helpful when it comes to timing. Or if I go to an actual TAB written out like this, which is pretty common, there's no rhythm notation written underneath. So you're kind of left to read this while listening to the song. Okay, this is playing here, here, here, here… And trying it again and again and again until you get it. Which is really frustrating, but that's kind of how a lot of guitar players play. It's how they learn to play a lot of songs. But the best TABs are going to have the rhythm written underneath. Where like under here, you see this eighth note followed by a couple of sixteenths, another sixteenth and another eighth note and so on. This tells me what pace I should play this and where I should play these notes at while mixing them with the numbers up here and the time signature giving me, okay, this is how you count this measure and any other measures that follow. So this is the portion with the time signature and the rhythm, that's what's beneficial when it comes to sheet reading. So you're not reading notes on the staff, but because we're using numbers, it's just a lot faster. I mean, it can be useful for other reasons, but usually this is the fastest way to learn a song and to write one down. So I would recommend learning how to read rhythm. Not necessarily sheet reading, but understanding how rhythm works with music to understand how this all works with playing and work with TABs that have that written in. You’ll end up learning a song way faster than, you know, listening to the song a million times, trying to figure out, how do I play this note and when? Just like here, if you don't find a TAB that has it written underneath, sometimes you'll see the sheet reading portion written above. Like I switch this here, you know, have both, and you'll see, okay, it's not written below, but these represent the same thing. You don't have to know what these notes are, like you don't need to know that that's a B or that's a G or that's an E. But you can see, okay, this 14 here is a sixteenth followed by another sixteenth to this 12 and a sixteenth and an eighth note and how to read those. That'll be the really beneficial part, and that's what I recommend spending your time on is figure out how the rhythm works. If you have any other questions that you'd like to see answered, leave a comment! I'd love to get to them, now Happy Practicing!