How's reading music going for you?

[Rich.B]

That’s brilliant.

@joergkutter

Maybe what is confusing is that we say the time signature is “three quarters”, but really we mean “three pulses of a certain duration (that we call quarters)” - quarters are just the unit here!

I think that’s what gets me. So the subdivisions always stay the same (e.g. a whole note will always be the length of four quarter notes) regardless of time signature, but these just might not fit in a bar. So in 2/4 a whole note would take up two full bars?

@joergkutter

And, there should be ledgers also in music for bass and guitar. Perhaps, you were looking at tabs (tabular notation)?? Tabs don’t use ledgers.

I think I was looking at simplified pieces.

So is the bassist’s bass clef the same as the pianist’s bass clef - i.e. looking at the Fretboard Toolkit diagram would the G on the bottom line of the stave (G2 on piano) be specifically played either the 10th fret of the A string or 5th fret of the D string?

Because what’s confused me is in the Ed Friedland Bass Method it shows this particular note as being played the 3rd fret of the E string - or is this right and has the bassist’s bass clef been dropped or shifted in some way?

@joergkutter

As for fast sight-reading - in my own experience: many bass players learn what they play by heart, and rarely come into a situation where you’d have to sight-read a new piece.

How critical would you say sight reading is for bass outside of say jazz and professional recording where you are faced with new music/no recording. The thing that gets me is repeating rhythms by ear is almost human nature, but trying to translate rhythms off a page feels a impossible task for me.