Help, guidance and tips
Reading music and playing guitar
This app and these pages were made for the students of Caversham Guitar School but anyone is welcome to use. There are over 1000 problems to solve.
About guitar music reading trainer
This is a companion to a good quality guitar education.
What it will and won't help with
- Be a guitar player that can read music!
- Learn to read all the notes in every key
- Triads and inversions
- Reading rhythms
- Good guitar technique - you still need lessons!
- It will help visualise the structure of triads and inversions but you should also study music theory formally
- Lots of other things but you can just Google them!
A learning plan
Where to start and what to learn next
- The names of the strings. EADGBe
- Play the lowest C on the guitar. 3rd fret on the A string.
- Play D. It is easy because it's one of the open strings.
- Be able to read a guitar fretboard diagram
- Distinguish between C on treble clef (below the 5 staff lines on its own line) and D on the treble clef (immediately below the 5 lines on no line)
- Become ever more ambitious and learn C,D,E then C,D,E and F then C,D,E,F and G...
- Know some of your own tricks to remember some of the notes. The G clef sits on the G. B is the middle line. Etc.
- Learn to read all the natural notes
- Try notes in G major which is the key with 1 #. Any F is substituted for F#. It's a very common key on the guitar and not difficult to read being so similar to C major.
Tips For effective learning
- Try to imagine the answer before looking at the options
- Get really confident at the easiest things first before making things just a little harder and get really confident with that level.
Are mnemonics a good way to learn the notes of the staff? Not really
You may have seen mnemonics like FACE and Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit to learn to read music. Mnemonics are great for a beginner explanation of reading music but they will not get you very far. Reading music effectively is all about visual pattern recognition not counting out mnemonics. To make an analogy, in mathematics you should understand how to add 7 8s together to get 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56 but memorising 7x8=56 is essential for practical purposes which is why we memorise times tables.
How to play the C major on the guitar
- C is 3rd fret on the A string
- D is the open D string
- E is 2nd fret on the D string
- F is 3rd fret on the D string
- G is the open G string
- A is 2nd fret on the G string
- B is the open B string
- C is 1st fret on the B string
What are the most common keys for guitar?
C major/A minor, G major/E minor, D major/B minor, A major/F# minor, E major/C# minor are the most popular keys for guitar music. If you want to read and play some piano music it may be in F major.