For today, spend 15 minutes to practice reading notes out loud and develop your recall.
Go to: Exercises - Reading - Clef Reading.
https://www.teoria.com/en/exercises/
There are only 3 ways that one note can move to another:
By step: conjunct motion (C)
By leap: disjunct motion (D)
No movement: static (S)
Melodies usually move mostly by step, so identifying that kind of motion is very useful.
When you see scale motion, you no longer need to 'read' every note. Instead, you can just think "is the next note going up or down?"
Task Simplified
Let's make your task for today very simple:
Identify scale motion and label it in your score (C for conjunct)!
• Put arrows in to show the direction.
This is an extremely powerful task that you can apply right away to any piece or passage you're reading.
The faster you can see scale motion, the easier reading will be and the less thinking you'll need to do!
Now that you've had a general look at the motion of music, it's time to dive a bit deeper.
Music is made up of intervals, which is the distance from one note to another.
Becoming fluent with intervals will help develop your reading, but even more it will give you a deeper understanding of the relationship between notes.
Eventually, you can reach a point where you can predict specifically what note is likely to come next and why.
For today, spend 15 minutes counting the intervals in the music you're reading.
An interval is the distance or space between one note to another.
It's comprised of two components:
1) A number (2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.) that's found by counting the notes.
2) A quality (major, minor, etc.) that's determined by the type of distance used.
For simplicity's sake, you'll only look at the interval's number - don't worry about its quality (major, minor, etc.).
By seeing intervals, you start to understand a much deeper relationship between notes.
Task:
15 minutes: Study the vertical and horizontal intervals and label them into the score with numbers.
You can also practice identifying intervals using Teoria:
Go to Intervals - Identification
https://www.teoria.com/en/exercises/
It's time to supercharge your reading on guitar by using this simple process.
Write in the position and fingerings for every note in your score.
This is how you want to think when reading any score. If you don't know what position you're in and what position you're going to, you'll be lost!
The fretboard can feel like a vast ocean that's very difficult to navigate.
But you can navigate the fretboard by knowing these two things at all times:
1) What position you're in (defined by what fret your first finger in on).
2) The fingerings you're using in that position.
While this might sound obvious, many guitarists don't actually do it! That means they're reading is left to chance and any position changes will completely throw you.
Never leave your reading to chance:
By practicing the skill of knowing your positions and fingerings at all times, you'll start to form the habit of always thinking this way.
Example Task by Kevin
Streamline both your reading and technical efficiency using this one method:
Look for notes that are either close or held down.
While it sounds simple, doing this in a meticulous way can save you lots of time and brainpower!
It's also something you can always do when sight reading- a mode of seeing music that you want to try and inhabit at all times when reading.
Repeating notes are like landmarks that we can keep track of.
Landmarks are super important - it's how we navigate when we're walking or driving. Birds do it too, using the position of the sun and landmarks like buildings to navigate.
On the guitar, reference notes will help make your reading and technique efficient.
There are two types to think about:
1) Pivot notes (green) are notes you can hold down for an extended period.
2) Close notes (red) are notes that are in close range to each other.
Task:
Take 15 minutes to think about reference notes and mark them in your score.
Task: Use one color for pivot notes and another color for close notes.
Is reading rhythm something that's held you back from playing a piece you love?
I've got a great story about reading rhythm - maybe you can relate to it.
My nightmare story about reading rhythm:
When I was about 16, I met a flautist who wanted to play a duet. They gave me the guitar part, I took it home and tried to learn it. I think it was a duet by Carulli.
After days of struggling to read the music, we had our first rehearsal.
Little did I know that this flute player's dad would be watching us and guess what - he was a violinist in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra!
We started playing together for about a bar when suddenly I realized that I had no idea how my part fitted together with the flute. "You have to COUNT!", yelled the flute player's dad right into my ear.
So I tried counting, but it didn't help at all - it probably made things worse!
That was our rehearsal... and we never played together again...
But fast forward many years later and I started playing all sorts of crazy rhythms in many ensembles. Listen to the video below where my wife and I play 'From the Dreaming' by Australian composer Phillip Houghton.
How did I manage to start reading and learning rhythms?
By using the method outlined here.
Rhythms can be formed into groups - this is the secret to reading them quickly and effectively!
Once you start to group rhythms, you learn that there aren't that many groups used in music.
In fact, within one piece you'll often find just a handful (or less) of rhythms being used.
How much easier will reading rhythms be when you start to see the groups?!
More than you can imagine.
Here is a demonstration of the rhythm groups. Feel free to play along!
The metronome I use is called Soundbrenner and is a free download on the app store.
