Appendix B: Reading music for guitar
Why read music?
It is possible to go a long way in our guitar studies without knowing how to read music. Many guitarists never learn at all.
But most of the best guitar books express their ideas in music staff notation. If we want to read those advanced materials, we need to acquire a minimal ability to read music for guitar.
Fortunately, in most cases this just means being able to decipher the notes on the staff and locate them on the fretboard. Reading rhythms is a bit harder, but it’s not strictly necessary in order to extract the basic melodic ideas, so it won’t be covered here.
The staff and clef
The music staff consists of five lines and four spaces, each of which represents a natural note, in ascending order from bottom to top. The staff is broken into “measures” by “bar lines”.
A “clef” sign indicates where notes fall on the staff. Guitar music is written in the “treble clef”, also known as the “G clef” because it identifies the location of the G note on the staff. Notice how the clef is a stylized letter G that curls around the G line on the staff.
Octave displacement
The range of the guitar is from E2 to around E5, in scientific pitch notation.
Staff notation for guitar is written an octave higher than it sounds, so that the full range of the instrument can fit easily on a single treble staff.
This octave displacement can be indicated with a little “8” below the clef. Guitar sheet music often leaves out this annotation, but it is always implied.
Notes on the staff
The lines on the treble staff represent the notes E-G-B-D-F.
A mnemonic to help remember them is “Every Good Boy Does Fine”.
Notice how the lines represent every other note
(every “third” note),
just like stacked thirds in triad chords.
E-G-B is E minor,
G-B-D is G major,
G-B-D-F is G7,
etc.
The spaces on the treble staff represent the notes F-A-C-E.
The spaces are also separated by thirds,
like triad chords.
F-A-C is F major,
A-C-E is A minor,
etc.
See Chapter 6. Introduction to Western harmony for more about stacking thirds to make triad chords.
Notes can continue above and below the staff, with additional lines added as needed.
Key signatures
When a sharp or flat appears in the “key signature”, immediately after the clef sign, it is used throughout the entire piece.
The number of sharps or flats in the key signature identifies the key. See Chapter 14. Keys and their notes for details.
Accidentals
When a sharp or flat that is not in the key signature is added to a note, it is called an “accidental” and continues for the remainder of the measure. The next bar line cancels it out.
The natural sign (♮) is used to cancel out accidentals within the same measure, and sometimes as a reminder that a bar line has canceled an accidental.
Notes on the fretboard
See Appendix A: Notes on the fretboard for a detailed mapping of notes on the staff to their location on the fretboard.