Reading

The note drill

One note at a time. Say its letter, by key or by button, or find it on the neck. Ten notes make a round, passed when every one is right inside two seconds; the clock on each note runs from the moment it appears, so nothing appears until you press Start. Begin on the lines and widen the range when a step gets boring.

Read a phrase

A phrase nobody has seen before, in the key and rhythm you choose, kept to first position. Play gives you a bar of count-in and a click; play along with the cursor. Then say whether you read it clean, first time, in time. Every answer draws a new one.

Tempo

The cheat sheet

Standard notation, from zero. Tab tells you where to press. Notation tells you what it sounds like and how long it lasts, and leaves the neck to you. This is the whole of what there is to know before the drill above; keep it in reach while you play.

The staff and the clef

Music is written on a staff: five lines, and the four spaces between them. A note is drawn as a head sitting on a line or in a space, and each line and space has one letter name. Higher on the staff is higher in pitch, and the letters climb the way the alphabet does, A to G and then A again.

The curly sign at the start is the treble clef. Its curl wraps the second line from the bottom and names it G. From there every other line and space follows.

The lines, bottom to top: E G B D F. Every Good Boy Does Fine.

The spaces, bottom to top: F A C E. They spell face.

Learn the two rhymes and you can name any note on the staff by counting from the nearest one you know. The drills exist to make the counting unnecessary.

Below the staff

The guitar's lowest notes run off the bottom. A note that leaves the staff gets short extra lines of its own, ledger lines, and it keeps climbing down through them the same way: line, space, line, space. The open low E sits under three of them.

Down from the bottom line: D C B A G F E. The low E is the lowest note you can play without a drop tuning.

Where every note lives: first position

First position is the fretting hand parked with the first finger over fret 1, one finger per fret up to fret 4, plus the open strings. Every natural note from the low E to the G on the first string is under the hand there without moving it, which is why every reading method starts here and stays for months. Seventeen notes, and they are the same seventeen on both figures below.

Every natural note in first position, low to high. Under each note: its name, then its place. Circled numbers are strings, the way scores mark them (⑥ is the low E), and the number after is the fret, 0 for the open string.

The same seventeen notes on the neck. Frets 1 to 4 are the hand; the open strings are free.

Two habits make this stick. Read one string at a time: E F G on the low string until it is boring, then A B C on the fifth, and so on up. And say the letter out loud before you play it, every time, until the saying happens on its own.

The octave nobody mentions

Guitar is written one octave higher than it sounds. The written middle C, one ledger line under the staff, is played at the third fret of the fifth string, and a piano playing the same written note is an octave above you. This only matters when you compare with another instrument, and it is why guitar parts sometimes show a small 8 hanging under the clef. Read the staff as the map above and forget the rest.

How long a note lasts

The shape of a note is its note value, and it is measured in beats, the pulse you tap your foot to. In 4/4, the time signature of almost everything you will read, the top number says four beats fill a bar and the bottom says a quarter note gets one of them. Counting starts again at one in every bar.

Note	Rest	Name	Beats	Count
		whole	4	1 2 3 4
		half	2	1 2
		quarter	1	1
		eighth	½	1 &
		sixteenth	¼	1 e & a

A rest is silence of the same length, counted exactly like the note it stands in for. A dot after a note adds half its length again: a dotted half note lasts three beats. Two eighth notes side by side share a beam instead of carrying two flags, and read as one beat.

A sharp () in front of a note raises it one fret, a flat () lowers it one, and a natural () cancels either, for the rest of the bar. The same signs written once after the clef are the key signature and hold for the whole piece. None of them appear in the first position map, which is all naturals on purpose.

How to practise it

Names before fingers. Point at notes on this page and say the letter. When that is instant, add the string and fret.
One string at a time. Three notes on the low E until they are boring. Then the next string. The whole map takes weeks, not a day.
Count out loud. Rhythm is read with the mouth first. Clap a line saying the counts before you pick it.
Never stop for a mistake. Reading is done in time. Play the wrong note at the right moment and keep going; go back only when the line is over.