I can't read ... music. Help me!

[ceciltguitar]

There are thousands of Celtic tunes on http://the session.org

One of the nice things about Irish dance music is that a lot of tunes consist of 2 sections that are 8 measures each. Easy “bite size” for learning to read music. Easy to spend 5 - 60 minutes at a time reading through tunes, play them in different positions and in different octaves. Do this for 10 - 30 minutes 2 or 3 times a day most days and you will be amazed at how much progress you can make in just a few months - and learn a lot of fun tunes to play while at it.

Best wishes. Be sure to enjoy the ride, that’s what it’s all about.

[mc1]

There's some overhead to learning, but musescore (https://musescore.org/en) is free notation software. It can be helpful to enter passages and hear how they sound, especially more difficult rhythm parts. Plus you can speed up or slow down parts, easily transpose to other keys, cut and paste, hear a metronome, etc.

It won't scan your sheet music or import pdf's. You have to manually enter the notes, but it's not too hard. It of course sounds rather mechanical, but let's you hear the music. It also can handle guitar tab and different tunings, like DADGAD.

It's come a long way and is really quite decent.

Back to learning to read music, repeats and codas are pretty easy. More complex rhythms or sight reading up to speed are much harder. Odd keys beyond C, G, and F can be slower. For simple rhythms that are still tricky, I count them out very slowly (1 and 2 and 3 and 4) until I can internalize it, then speed it up. It takes a lot of practice to read music well.

Pick your easiest pieces first and learn them one at a time. Recordings can help hear the rhythms as well.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by Ralph124C41

I'd like to read music so I can play some songs which are not often found as guitar pieces or can be found as guitar tabs ... songs such as some fiddle tunes and Celtic pieces.

That's a great reason to read. I don't mean to discourage it - I've been reading so long, I can't imagine not reading music. One good news is that for that purpose, reading is even simpler. Fiddle tunes and celtic tunes don't usually have complex structures. You generally have AABB, and music is typically 8 bars with repeats, then 8 more with repeats. Rhythms are generally eighth notes, occasional quarters and dotted quarters. If you know that, and Every Good Boy Does Fine, and FACE, that about covers the reading aspect, just leaving the task of knowing the notes on the guitar.

There is a shortcut - NOT to discourage learning to read, again, excellent goal. But you can blast music into most tab programs and it will convert to tab. You can enter it manually - a great exercise for getting comfortable with the music, or if you can find a midi file, you can import it. session.org has practically every fiddle and celtic tune there is as midi files.

I actually taught an arranging class online a few weeks ago where I demonstrated exactly this. I'll PM it to you, don't know if you'll find it useful, but possibly. This approach can even be an aid to learning to read, since the notation and tab serve as a map between music and fingering. You can even play the music with most tab programs which should help with understanding the rhythms.

[The Bard Rocks]

Originally Posted by Ralph124C41

Thanks, folks. I ve just now printed out some note cards to test my knowledge. Or lack of it.

But I also need to know how to read the road map that is a piece of sheet music. You know "Play this passage once, then on the second time you skip to this section and play it twice, then you go to this passage, then you go to the coda."

Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

It's all very intimidating frankly. The notes. The tempo. The playing route, etc.

Get simple stuff to work on and you will be far less intimidated. "Down in the Valley" kind of thing. When you are comfortable with them, get something more complex. You can go a long way without having to know what repeats are.

You need to know how fast and how high or low in the scale a note is, the time signature to get the rhythm right, and where the flats and sharps are. Know those 4 things and you can do most simple music.

[Mbroady]

Paul, George, John, Ringo
Elvis
Michael Jackson
Eric Clapton
Bob Weir
Eddie Van Halen
Bob Dylan
Jimi Hendrix
Slash
Stevie Wonder

None of them studied or played from notation. In today’s world learning how to play a song is just a Click away. But if you want to learn how to play from written music (which is not a bad goal) The Mel bay books are a time honored classic, and a good place to start.

FWIW, in 3 rd grade I started playing saxophone and went on through high school as well as city wide orchestras. I was/am good at reading. I started playing guitar when I turned 13 and never once picked up sheet music for my guitar learning. This is not to discourage but to suggest also focusing on ear training, theory and visual aids such as vids (almost anything can be found these days)