Playing Piano

5 Steps To Reading Octaves With Guitar Sheet Music articles

Though many would like to learn to become guitarists, it is not an easy instrument for many people.  Simply looking at the guitar sheet music can give you an idea of the complexity involved.  There are many instruments that require the musician to read a single note at a time, guitarists sometimes have to read six at once.

For obvious reasons, it would be very difficult to dive in and begin learning to read six notes at once.  Such a move would only cause frustration.  Rather, it’s important to take your time and then go forward bit by bit, only taking 1-2 notes at any given time.  An easy method to learn to play two notes at once is to play the octaves.  What follows here are some steps that you should follow to read octaves on guitar sheet music.

When you begin, try looking over the entire song and then find a pair of notes stacked on top of one another in the sheet music.  This phenomenon is called an octave.  That will be a starting point from where you can use your pointer finger on the opposite hand that you write with, and put it onto the lower note you find on that octave.  Then put your ring finger onto the higher note in the octave.

Once you have gone that far, you will want to strum the notes using your fingers on your stronger hand.  Do not let the strings all resound when you strum your octaves.  What you want to do instead is to keep your middle finger on your weaker hand pressing down on the strings you don’t want to sound.

What you will do after that is to play two octaves back to back that are on the same set of strings, this helps you to read and play better using guitar sheet music.  Keep your non-dominant hand and fingers in place as you continue to slide between octaves.  This will take you some time to practice, and will result in being able to read the octaves.

Take everything you do with the guitar in steps.  You want to start out with choosing the octaves from your guitar sheet music.  After that you will learn to put your fingers on the first octave.  Next you will play two octaves using the same set of strings, back to back.  Finally you will play two more octaves one right after the other, using a different set of strings for each.  Keep your non-dominant hand’s fingers extremely close to the strings, as you move to an octave on another set of strings.  This takes practice, but will teach you to become really adept at guitar.

About the Author

To get all your questions answered about Learning To Guitar Sheet Music, visit Reading Guitar Sheets and claim your free Special Report.  See more articles by Jeff Yuan at Guitar Training Online.

How To Read Guitar Sheet Music – Guitar Lessons

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