What's the easiest was for a beginner to learn to read music?

Theory
21

You are welcome.

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There are multi-million millionare musicians/guitarists/basists/you name it that can’t read a lick of music.

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I truly had no idea! I’m in good company then. :rofl:

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I haven’t invested in any specific material on the subject, but everytime I do a b2b lesson, I instantly cover up the bottom of screen to block out the tab so that the first time I read the music I have to identify all the notes on my own, once I do that I still use tab afterwards for the workouts but its a nice little exercise and I have noticed myself getting quicker at identifying the notes.

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Josh reco’s (I think) going back and doing the course only with notes vs. tabs a second time.

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Not quite sure what you mean?

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@T_dub others got it. You said you had a a-ha moment…that’s a lyric from their hit take on me

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28

Yeah, I don’t know that one.

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29

Don’t feel bad, I know the song and I didn’t get it either :slight_smile:

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@T_dub don’t worry sentimental pop is not for everyone LOL

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most definitely not me :wink:

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Hal Leonard Bass Method may fit the bill. There’s a 68 page thread about it on TalkBass. I’m too new to link to it but a search will find it.

The book is teaches how to play bass from scratch but uses sight reading for everything. Tab is introduced a bit later. So it’s a good resource to learn sight reading since the assumption is you know nothing. Also the play along tracks are fun IMO.

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33

I’ve started Mark Smith’s sight reading class.
It, as all his other methods, is brilliant.

It’s not just about reading music notes on the staff.

It’s about knowing the fretboard fret by fret too.

It’s also about (and I didn’t know this) how to move your fingers around without having to look! Getting used to distances etc. and also the converse, learning how to look from sheet to fretboard and back without losing your place.

And it’s about truly reading rhythms. For a bass player. That seems a whisker important to me.

I’m changing my view of sight reading for beginners, if you get all those other things out of the method. This means I can start looking at the camera on covers like @PamPurrs wather than staring at the fretboard. How freeing!

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Wow @John_E , standing while playing and not looking at the fretboard, all in one lifetime? You are on a mission for sure! :smiley_cat:

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A boy can dream, can’t he?

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Yeah, this is one of the best features, and is really eye opening.