Dude, of all the UA-cam guitar teachers, you're among the few who can talk at leisure and we are all hanging on every word, because you don't just ramble, every thing you say has a life lesson attached and that's more valuable then the "put your little finger on the 3rd fret of the thickest string..." No shit. Attaching a back story to why or why not you should learn something gives it a real life translation to all of us.
I learned to read music years ago. I have never regretted it. Yes it is difficult, it takes lots time and energy, but the worthwhile things in life are always that way. Justin makes some compelling arguments. You just need to be sure that you are not allowing your inertia to influence you. You may never need the skill, but who really knows what’s in store for you as you go through life. I like the idea of mastering difficult things, and if some day reading music opens a door for you, you too will never regret the time and energy you spent to learn how to do it.
I totally agree, I learned to read notes on piano when I was 6, thereafter on drums and guitar. I’m picking it up again now and I have the feeling that it makes me a more complete player. And it’s very rewarding. It makes you play more precise as well, when you really focus on it. Nowadays I only practice it for 10-15 minutes a day. For the rest only band stuff etc.. I agree with Justin that it might be better not to learn notes when you starting to play.
I totally agree. Lifelong drummer working on guitar now. From my drumming background, I can read crazy rhythms, etc. It would be such a same to not be able to have that skill on guitar (and piano!). I'm just doing a tiny bit every day. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. That's what I'm doing with guitar and piano... (Justin is the best, by the way!!!)
There are many many excuses trotted out as to why people assume they shouldn't / don't need to; but IMO they are only trying to justify their own lack of effort. I've never met ANYONE who regretted learning to speak another language or learning to read music. Imagine if someone new arrives at your poetry circle / book club / am- dram group... you pass them a paper script with a friendly smile so they can join in and they just shrug & say "I never bothered to learn to read words" ... yet people go to music groups expecting everyone else to put in the work for them.
as a 68 year old self taught piano player i think the same thing applies. after many years of trying to learn arrangements from sheet music and books i have now changed to playing chords along with songs. its much easier and far more satisfying. as i am improving at this i am experimenting with rhythms, passing chords, and sometimes with learning the melody over the top.
Just wanna say, I wasnt that into guitars until i looked at a music shop and realized how affordable some of them are. Then i discovered your content, and boy did i get way more excited and I cannot wait to get one. In fact i'm watching your videos/Andertons interviews and stuff as a daily routine now because It's ignited a passion in me how well you know your stuff about guitars, your teaching methods, your guitar stories..etc, hell I'm literally trying to sell an old PC screen to save up for a guitar faster!! Thank you so much for all you do and thank you for igniting a hidden passion in me that i almost forgot about. Being from a religious family in north africa, my parents used to pull me away from music stores as a kid because they didnt want me to get into that stuff, I absolutely cant wait to get one and starting to put your lessons to work!! Greetings from North Africa!!
I started at 40 and I learned from Justin and Marty. It’s all about practicing and playing every day. It’s not easy at first, just try to set small goals and you won’t get frustrated. Well, you will get frustrated. Good luck
I've played the guitar on and off for several years but really started playing well a couple of years ago. My most important lesson: play at least 5 minutes everyday! Some days you'll end up playing for hours and other days 5-10 minutes. Your fingers will get used to the fretboard much faster than if you play a couple of hours on the week-end! And I must say that most of my lessons come from Justin! By the way I'm in my late 50's and I got my first guitar from my girlfriend when I turned 30.
Great story and advice! I didn’t start learning to read music and find the specific notes on the guitar until two years ago. It was out of necessity. I should say I knew my treble clef well for years, but it took me a long time to find the notes on the guitar. Fitting it within a major scale pattern really helped me get intervals in my head. I was an ear player for so long, but playing songs for my church group required sight reading. I could identify note, time value, etc., but it didn’t connect in my head. As a writer and arranger, I hear what I want for a part and then go to the piano to find the notes, then score it out. Starting sight reading and learning the notes on the guitar opened a new world for me and trained my ear to recognize the notes on the paper. Learning theory now compliments this. I played for 8 years before I took my first lesson. I did a few and quit, because it was all about learning notes. Bored me to no end. In short, the need came up, so it was time, and it is making me better. Thanks for a great video and great advice!!
Talking or playing, Justin, you're aces in my book. I always appreciate your perspective and can never shake the feeling that you're someone I'd quite like if we met in person. Your experience parallels my own in some ways. I had classical piano lessons for 6 years and picked up a guitar when I was in college. I could read music OK but found the guitar frustrating and confusing because of its 2D nature and the multiple locations of notes. The typical initial difficulties in fretting notes didn't help. I found other uses for my time and gave up trying to figure it out for about 25 years until a few UA-cam channels re-awakened my interest in learning while also clearing up some of the mystery.With my very limited experience, I agree wholeheartedly that the ability to read music isn't necessarily an advantage in learning guitar. Music theory, on the other hand, was more valuable to me although I know that's not a universally held opinion.
I agree with you, Justin. I played piano before the guitar, so naturally I learned standard notation. Now to hear and see a melody written in SN, I have to strain my brain to translate the notes into tab. And from there to know the string/fret/note name that the tab is indicating. That's asking a lot for the brain to maneuver for a waltz let alone a lively polka. I'm just about read to begin Grade 3 of your guitar course, so your lecture helped me decide to concentrate on Tabs, Chords and Note Names on the fretboard.
Absolutely the BEST story about learning guitar. Justin ...Your reasoning and explanations are superb and I get what you are saying THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!
I have mixed views on this. I learned chords via your first book & vids and think your style of teaching is awesome. But learning to read standard notation via Mel Bay, etc. while I was verrry slowly but surely getting the hang of chords with you, was hugely satisfying to me. The progress comes more rapidly. It crosses over to other instruments. It means you can grab any old songbook you ever come across and just try a piece. I found it a lot of fun, and I really hate seeing it dissed, as there could be sooo many others who would also enjoy it but may never try due to these kinds of remarks which always seem to suggest it's "boring". Yes, some parts of books are boring, because not everyone learns at the same rate. But you can just cruise through those exercises once and focus on the more interesting bits. Justin, you carry a lot of influence... please don't be like sooo many other teachers out there, please just let people explore their options with an open mind.
I agree -- love this channel, but learning to read musical notation really opens a whole world of possibilities in my opinion -- I am speaking more from my experience playing violin and some piano, and I am not a professional nor in any way as accomplished as Justin, still I believe that learning to read notation can't help but round out one's guitar journey.
u have litterally saved my from pure head aches and frustrations. Im inside panicking thinking how the hell am i going to learn all this theory work. I cant get me head around it. this is after my first paid lesson . The tutor offered me tab or notation. I said notation as i thought its much better but mindfully its not. U have nailed everything i was thinking and so im going on board with your thoughts. tab it is. i cant tell u how much of a lift this video has given me. soooo much weight of me shoulders. Thank u. A true rock star
As an amateur I think it never harms to try everything, as long as you can make progress and it gives you joy (and therefore motivation) when you do it. I had 20 years of fun learning classical guitar and reading simple tunes, but in the end I plateau - d out on the sight reading side and memorised the more complex classical pieces. It didn't exclude me learning rock and folk guitar and training my ears at the same time, no harm there. Now I'm learning to sight read on the piano I couldn't agree more that reading music on the guitar is much harder, I'm not sure if I would ever have got really fast enough at it on the guitar. The catch comes if (like me) life leads you away from your instrument, so that now I have lost memory of the complex pieces I memorised I can't read well enough on the guitar to get any of them back without the same immense effort.. Memorisation has another catch too, if like me you get sick of playing the same tunes. After three years learning keyboard, the number of pieces I can sight read (largely pop using an app) is growing exponentially, and it is awesome to be developing a transferable skill. I would just like to say I had the same dream of fast fluent reading new pieces on the guitar, but never made it, and now it's fine on the piano. Might just be my awesome piano app with a repertoire of so many of my favorite pop tunes, but yes the guitar sight reading is definitely harder too.
Great video! I never learned to read sheet music, but my early formal training as a wannabe rock drummer definitely allowed me to sight-read rhythm from traditional notation. That has been a HUGE help learning other instruments (like guitar). Learning to read tab, knowing the fretboard, and knowing how to read rhythm seems like a pretty good approach for most folks.
Exactly! so very true and as said "its very important to read music" it can help to being in very unexpected moments in life to make a living and otherwise also. thanks for the advice JustinGuitar.
I like reading notation and believe it to be beneficial ! A lot of guitar notations has the tabs displayed beneath so one gets the best of both. It’s great 👍
So I started as a trumpet player and had to learn to read music. It wasn’t that hard - but the main difference is what Justin mentioned - there are so many places to play the same note on guitar that it really doesn’t help you to know how to read music. Even if you did know how to read you STILL need to know the notes on the fretboard to know where the possible notes to play are. So another great video with great insight. Thank you.
I learned to read music when I was in third grade, playing piano. Fifth grade, violin, then Alto Clarinet, Trombone, Baritone, Sax, Flute, and Sousaphone. I've played in jazz bands, marching bands, orchestras and concert bands. What I love about guitar, is the ability to use tabs instead of notation. For me, it's easier if I have both, but that is a personal preference on my part as it is easier for me to read the rhythm from notation than from tab. Still a beginner and hopefully getting better daily at tab reading. Oh, and ear training is important regardless of what instrument you are playing....maybe more so on guitar. Thanks Justin, you always give us such great information in each video.
For me, learning to read music notation is like travel with a map. You can get to the destinations without a map but it’s far more easier with a map, because you don’t need to memorize everything.
Me too. For me, it looked like gibberish. I couldn't read or write notation. I'm glad I learnt and I understand it more now. It's helped me be a better musician😊
One thing I've found is learning to read music helps learn the notes on the fretboard easier than tab. Numbers on the fret board help with finger positions but not identifying notes, whereas you know what the notes are when you see them on staff.
Merci Justin ! I'm still trying to train my ears at nearly 80 years old ( wish me Happy birthday beginning of March) my ears are getting bad (so is most other things except for basic music theory ) I learnt a lot from you
Fifty years ago, I also discovered that a guitar is not really well fitted to standard music notation. Same goes for any string instrument with frets where there are multiple ways to play each note, interval or chord. Tabs are better and maybe the best so far, but I learned by ear and chord books. So for me, sight reading a song if I haven’t heard it before is nearly impossible. To learn a new song, first I almost memorize the tune and lyrics, then work on arranging the chords to my liking. This gives me the timing also. I like your UA-cam lessons.
I've made a couple of forays in learning to read standard notation for guitar. One thing I tried was taking the hymns we sing at church and try to play them on the guitar. My thinking is that these would be extremely familiar songs. In our hymnbook, usually there are two notes in the treble clef, the high note being the melody. The hardest thing I found was that as a guitar player I tend to think in root notes, with the lowest note being the root, but the lowest note in this case is harmony. It's almost like starting from scratch mentally, and that's just playing two notes at a time.
I played Keyboard well before I played guitar and I agree with Justin it’s easy to find E on a keyboard but more difficult to find it on a guitar because there are more E notes. I can read music ok but with persistence and lots of patience I’m getting better at finding melody notes on guitar. I think also (on guitar anyway) it depends on which key the song is in and which scale is used major or minor.
i had to learn braille music along with normal braille it's not easy the repeat symbols OMG the in-accord symbols counting the beats adding them up just to make one chord i'd think sight reading would be pretty easy to learn do it because PPL will be amazed i've sat in on students playing classical guitar and they sight read
I went to piano lessons for maybe a couple of years or so & learned to read music but I was never any good at sight reading...learnt next to nothing about playing by ear but managed to more or less pick up Bonnie & Clyde, partly from a friend of my older brother ( he could play absolutely anything by ear after 1 or 2 listen throughs!) A few years ago I got myself a ukulele..never had any formal lessons; just what I could find on UA-cam, made quite good progress & learned a few songs ( discovered I have a crap memory for lyrics! :|). Trying to learn guitar the same way but I'm also fighting a neuropathy which makes it hard to keep my hands working ( pushing my wheelchair or hanging onto a pair of walking sticks saps some of the remaining strength in my hands..) but still have a bit of drive to learn something!! We all learn differently I think, so its important to go with what works!
I originally learned to play piano/keyboard first, so I learned ''Every Good Boy Deserves Favour'' and ''Face'' and all the crotches and timings that go along with the theory,,,,, Then I picked up the guitar, and it made no sense (to me anyway) to use the Stave,,,, Guitar Tab was obviously the easier route. But I do have to say,, massive respect to any guitarist who can play from the musical stave and not the tab....
I did it by starting along 1 string at a time. Starting Low E .6 string then A string as they are most important for barre chords etc. Use fret markets as plot points. Then picking 1 note at a time eg. "A' and finding every place it occurs on fret board. It shows patterns of octaves etc.really helpful. Then 2 or 3 notes .eg a b c etc. it takes time so small chunks, couple mins every time you practice, or minutes per day
Great video, echo some of my own experience. Going to have to spend sometime learning the fretboard. What method / examples do you recommend when learning the fretboard ?
Thank You very much for this. I agree with you, I always thought that whoever invented the guitar, and its tuning must have been on drugs because the instrument makes no sense. Like you said the same notes in the same octave can be found all over the place on the fretboard. Also, the music notation is written an octave higher than where it actually sounds. CRAZY !!!
I know the treble clef and where the notes are BUT I cannot really read music…more like decipher it! Certainly not sight read….it seems to me that conventional sheet music is almost incompatible with standard guitar playing…particularly something like blues or country but I certainly admire anyone who can do it. Now if your playing a reed or a horn it is damn near essential…
thanks for the story i am learning classical by myself, started by using tabs, but knowing that those exam use standard notation only, i do what exactly you did, play by tabs, memorize it, in the mean time, i start learning to read, its a very slow process compare with strumming chords/ play by tabs, but i am doing this 10 - 20 mins a day. and is making progress i am not confident that i can play as fluent as tab, but this is my long term goal. i do think its a bit unfair to guitar, as in piano, all d are between two black key, but guitar is a bit arbitrary(not really but you know what i mean) so how was the ending of your story? can you sight read and play standard notation?
I'm reluctant to try but only becuase I seem to be a sponge for theory and my actual playing abiity is not keeping pace with that and that is oddly frustrating for me.
I'm really enjoying the Justinguitar theory course and it just taught me about all I want to know to remove some of the mystery of standard notation. Now I feel I can go on to concentrate more on the aspects of theory that I find more relevant to my guitar interest. Thanks much for a good straightforward course.
I play finger style.. Don't read music.. My why is pick out the melody.. Fit the cords around it works for very good I've ran my own golf club.. Play in open. Mic nights.. Enjoy sitting just noodling.
Justin you're a sweetheart you're charming. I bet the ladies are all over you. Hahaha they very well may be this is a great video very informative and great perspective from your life I love it
I want to see and all of your videos moving forward you include that little dollar inside of the heart icon things so people can say are my good man here is $20 or here is $5 for you
My eyes are bad and I lose my place when reading music , tab is not much better …I need to write out the lyrics and then write a picture over the words …it’s a drag
one advantage of notation is that it opens up a world of music that may be new to you-like reading a new book. I had no idea that some lute stuff , old folk sings, Irish harp or Spanish and Italian music was so punk like at times. I love pop music too of course. So reading notation and playing a nylon guitar AND strumming/tab stuff I know, on steel string. Great way to justify more than instrument too!
12:10 As someone who doesn't read music beyond a simple melody or bass line, and is much happier with TAB, I find it fascinating that musicians in previous eras, a 100 odd years before audio recording was invented, would visit a music shop and sift through racks of sheet music, "listening" to the music they were reading in their heads. I don't mean just humming a written melody line. I mean being able to pick up pretty much any piece of music, be it a duet, quartet or a full blown orchestral score, and have the written music "playback" in their heads. I guess you either learned the skill or you ended up spending a lot of money on music you only realised you didn't like, when you got it home :) Of course I'm sure most professional classical musicians retain such skills today, but apparently it was a very normal skill amongst even pretty average amateurs (like me) and something I kinda regret I don't have.
Don't give up. I'm not a good player whatsoever or a great reader but....knowing a little theory I can see it layed out in the sheet music. I'm beginning to get the basic patterns and fingerings for scales, intervals and chords. This makes memorizing and understanding pieces easier and I'm confident that patient effort over time will ve well rewarded. Good luck! Music is a language. We didn't learn to spontaneously hear, speak and understand it overnight. Learning to read and write, knowing grammar abd structure of different forms and reading widely helped us communicate better orally. I think it's very much the same with music.
Playing from a tab is one thing, but the rhythm information is missing. So standard notation on a line above the tab is a help, but I still find the standard "dots" get in the way for me.
I have a question I have a guitar teacher but he’s very much by the book I pay 200$ per week for lessons but I’ve learned far far far more from your free videos then him I’m too Awkward to ask my own teacher why I feel I’m not improving it’s been a month there and it’s just copy a song on a sheet over the week and rinse repeat I’m highly considering paying for your course should I or perhaps I should continue with my lesson and tell him my concern in all honesty I go to my lesson kinda expecting to get bored and I hate that I wanna get good….
For fifteen years I had a nice guitar I’d pick up and learn on. Never made much progress tbh, until I found your videos on rhythm and it unlocked everything else on guitar for me. Your success is no accident, you have an uncanny ability to teach the fundamentals whilst explaining a song. Thank you a million times over.
Read music notation is like "Read by ear", and you know what you are playing. If it's important to use your ear, there is no reason to read on something that doesn't make much musical sense. As you said notations can be placed in different positions on guitar, but at same time it gives you various choices to choose from, and most importantly, you will understand guitar as an instrument better than ever before through the process. If your goal is purely for art and have no intention to show off, and you are willing to put a lot of time and effort, music notation is definitely the way to go.
The main reason i tried to learn to read music while playing guitar for me was because, If you learn to read music you can literally play anything without ever hearing the song. The problem I find with tab is time signatures and just making melody there is no way to play a song without hearing it first with tab. reading for me still hardest thing to do while playing at the same time specially now with youtube and internet it is soo much easier just to google or youtube a tune you want to learn.
I got a hold of old books which only has sheet music. As you said, it took you about a couple of weeks to de-transcribe some really hardcore sheet music. 1. It's not hard to learn sheet reading 2. Key signature gives a lot 3. Many exercises comes in the form of sheet If you play after tabs for a couple of minutes now and then, don't learn sheet reading... If you gonna unlock every note, mode, arpeggio etc of the fretboard -> you can just as well learn sheet reading, because if you are on this course you will just have to challenge yourself day in and day out. You will also, as a accidental bonus, unlock every instrument with the western 12 key tuning. A final note: do scales reading sheet, skip the easy boring songs. Second final note: if you don't love scales yet, just do some acting, play a role of someone who do love scales.
I learned to play chords and songs physically before learning to read music. I do enjoy reading music, it helps me understand what I’m playing better. I agree it may get a lot of people stuck in the mud as a starting but part of me thinks it can be helpful to implement in the early learning process. Tab is great but traditional reading helped me read rhythm better. I say if you have the time, why not?
Hey, love the lesson’s, the “leaf” lesson changed my outlook so much, one thing you didn’t mention about learning to read music, for a left hander tab always confuses me, but reading music makes no difference which hand you’re using, thank you Justin
I am an old lefty newbie and I’m trying to look at it like learning tab is my version of learning music theory. Reading tab backwards or upside down or whatever happens is just what hast to happen for me to keep going. So right or wrong, that’s the direction I’m headed.🤓
wish we classical guitarists had this option of not learning standard notation but sadly our music is so superior and advanced that we just wish we could be musically illiterate like you guys , cuz sometimes it gets unbearably hard
The really basic theory you should know, which is the true 'magic key' to navigating the guitar neck is the 'Chromatic Scale'-this can be learned in a few days and goes like this: E-F-F#-G-Ab-A-Bb-B-C-C#-D-Eb-E. One octave. We know that each fret is one semitone, so we can determine every note from this. This takes a while to assimilate, but it is worth your time.
i learned some stuff from youtube then decided to get a highly rated and good selling beginner book and it felt so useless to have it shove down sheet music down my throat after like 10 pages.
Learning to play by ear have more cons mentioned in this video. For example, developing a good ear takes time the same way reading does because of note accuracy, figuring out chords, and committing to memory. And learning without reading means playing tons of chords to pop song and that gets boring after a while. And if you want to play chord melody, then you have to rely on tab and ear, and that can also take time. If you can read music you don’t ever have to rely on figuring out anything and it lessens the time it takes to learn a song. Even if it’s from a UA-cam video. Which in my opinion is frustrating. If you can read you can play the song instantly. Chord melody and playing becomes more fun because you can play anything, anytime. Pop up a jam track to a real book full of thousands of music…I think is more interesting than playing 4 chords of 100s of pop songs that sounds the same in the long term.
As a young bloke living in regional Australia I too left my home town to study music at uni. I could not read a note but I played guitar by use of tab. At Uni I managed to get into the course I aspired on the back of my degree in education but not with guitar but piano. My entire course was based on learning classical piano. 43 years later would I learn piano to be a better guitar player? The answer is, I have no doubt that I am a better guitar player because I studied piano. I still play guitar every day & I play piano every day. I am an infinitely more capable as a a better musician than I would otherwise be. I am so eternally grateful for being given that chance.
Should change the title to 'I spent two weeks learning a piece so I could pretend I could read music in 2 weeks'. For the record, I never leant to read music either...
HI, I have bought two off your books (rock songbook) (Christmas Songbook )I would guess I have about 15 books , a lot that came with my second hand Seagull Guitar:), there is a Book Mel Bay which is helping me read music :) I am not the best at it however can play up too grade two :) I also have Alfred,s method and i am on book three:) I do feel the best advise which i heard was from you have 5 songs you can play and this what i am focus on :) This has helped me :) I do find it interesting to be able to read music a little, but playing a song is a better feeling PS i have upgraded to a fender strat:)
I am returning to college to learn more about music theory. I am 67, retired and disabled. My goal is to volunteer my time to Guitars for Veterans. 🇺🇸
That is awesome! Kudos to you man!
I'm donating to their cause. Glad you mentioned it in your post.
Good on you. Good luck
Thank you for making a difference...people like you help to restore my faith in humanity. I still like dogs the best though..😀
@@wesbresee This is wise.
Dude, of all the UA-cam guitar teachers, you're among the few who can talk at leisure and we are all hanging on every word, because you don't just ramble, every thing you say has a life lesson attached and that's more valuable then the "put your little finger on the 3rd fret of the thickest string..." No shit. Attaching a back story to why or why not you should learn something gives it a real life translation to all of us.
Agreed..
Yes 100% agreed. 👍
'because you don't JUST ramble' Nice.
100%!!! I need this sort of context to a lesson to be able to make it make sense lol
Yes Justin is great! I've learned more from him over the last couple of months than any other teacher online and personally. So good Justin!
I learned to read music years ago. I have never regretted it. Yes it is difficult, it takes lots time and energy, but the worthwhile things in life are always that way. Justin makes some compelling arguments. You just need to be sure that you are not allowing your inertia to influence you. You may never need the skill, but who really knows what’s in store for you as you go through life. I like the idea of mastering difficult things, and if some day reading music opens a door for you, you too will never regret the time and energy you spent to learn how to do it.
I totally agree, I learned to read notes on piano when I was 6, thereafter on drums and guitar. I’m picking it up again now and I have the feeling that it makes me a more complete player. And it’s very rewarding. It makes you play more precise as well, when you really focus on it. Nowadays I only practice it for 10-15 minutes a day. For the rest only band stuff etc.. I agree with Justin that it might be better not to learn notes when you starting to play.
I totally agree. Lifelong drummer working on guitar now. From my drumming background, I can read crazy rhythms, etc. It would be such a same to not be able to have that skill on guitar (and piano!). I'm just doing a tiny bit every day.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. That's what I'm doing with guitar and piano...
(Justin is the best, by the way!!!)
There are many many excuses trotted out as to why people assume they shouldn't / don't need to; but IMO they are only trying to justify their own lack of effort. I've never met ANYONE who regretted learning to speak another language or learning to read music.
Imagine if someone new arrives at your poetry circle / book club / am- dram group... you pass them a paper script with a friendly smile so they can join in and they just shrug & say "I never bothered to learn to read words" ... yet people go to music groups expecting everyone else to put in the work for them.
as a 68 year old self taught
piano player i think the same thing applies. after many years of trying to learn arrangements from sheet music and books i have now changed to playing chords along with songs. its much easier and far more satisfying. as i am improving at this i am experimenting with rhythms, passing chords, and sometimes with learning the melody over the top.
Text is a scam!!!!
Just wanna say, I wasnt that into guitars until i looked at a music shop and realized how affordable some of them are. Then i discovered your content, and boy did i get way more excited and I cannot wait to get one. In fact i'm watching your videos/Andertons interviews and stuff as a daily routine now because It's ignited a passion in me how well you know your stuff about guitars, your teaching methods, your guitar stories..etc, hell I'm literally trying to sell an old PC screen to save up for a guitar faster!!
Thank you so much for all you do and thank you for igniting a hidden passion in me that i almost forgot about. Being from a religious family in north africa, my parents used to pull me away from music stores as a kid because they didnt want me to get into that stuff, I absolutely cant wait to get one and starting to put your lessons to work!! Greetings from North Africa!!
I started at 40 and I learned from Justin and Marty. It’s all about practicing and playing every day. It’s not easy at first, just try to set small goals and you won’t get frustrated. Well, you will get frustrated. Good luck
I've played the guitar on and off for several years but really started playing well a couple of years ago. My most important lesson: play at least 5 minutes everyday! Some days you'll end up playing for hours and other days 5-10 minutes. Your fingers will get used to the fretboard much faster than if you play a couple of hours on the week-end! And I must say that most of my lessons come from Justin! By the way I'm in my late 50's and I got my first guitar from my girlfriend when I turned 30.
Great story and advice! I didn’t start learning to read music and find the specific notes on the guitar until two years ago.
It was out of necessity. I should say I knew my treble clef well for years, but it took me a long time to find the notes on the guitar.
Fitting it within a major scale pattern really helped me get intervals in my head.
I was an ear player for so long, but playing songs for my church group required sight reading.
I could identify note, time value, etc., but it didn’t connect in my head. As a writer and arranger, I hear what I want for a part and then go to the piano to find the notes, then score it out.
Starting sight reading and learning the notes on the guitar opened a new world for me and trained my ear to recognize the notes on the paper. Learning theory now compliments this.
I played for 8 years before I took my first lesson. I did a few and quit, because it was all about learning notes. Bored me to no end.
In short, the need came up, so it was time, and it is making me better.
Thanks for a great video and great advice!!
Text is a scam!!!!!
@@sweetnsourchick1761 I took it that way. Thanks. Appreciate it.
Talking or playing, Justin, you're aces in my book. I always appreciate your perspective and can never shake the feeling that you're someone I'd quite like if we met in person. Your experience parallels my own in some ways. I had classical piano lessons for 6 years and picked up a guitar when I was in college. I could read music OK but found the guitar frustrating and confusing because of its 2D nature and the multiple locations of notes. The typical initial difficulties in fretting notes didn't help. I found other uses for my time and gave up trying to figure it out for about 25 years until a few UA-cam channels re-awakened my interest in learning while also clearing up some of the mystery.With my very limited experience, I agree wholeheartedly that the ability to read music isn't necessarily an advantage in learning guitar. Music theory, on the other hand, was more valuable to me although I know that's not a universally held opinion.
TEXT is a scam!!!!!!
@@sweetnsourchick1761
Yes, it does not come from the official acct. Don't text or give any info.
I agree with you, Justin. I played piano before the guitar, so naturally I learned standard notation. Now to hear and see a melody written in SN, I have to strain my brain to translate the notes into tab. And from there to know the string/fret/note name that the tab is indicating. That's asking a lot for the brain to maneuver for a waltz let alone a lively polka. I'm just about read to begin Grade 3 of your guitar course, so your lecture helped me decide to concentrate on Tabs, Chords and Note Names on the fretboard.
Text is a scam!!!!!
Absolutely the BEST story about learning guitar.
Justin ...Your reasoning and explanations are superb and I get what you are saying
THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!
I have mixed views on this. I learned chords via your first book & vids and think your style of teaching is awesome. But learning to read standard notation via Mel Bay, etc. while I was verrry slowly but surely getting the hang of chords with you, was hugely satisfying to me. The progress comes more rapidly. It crosses over to other instruments. It means you can grab any old songbook you ever come across and just try a piece. I found it a lot of fun, and I really hate seeing it dissed, as there could be sooo many others who would also enjoy it but may never try due to these kinds of remarks which always seem to suggest it's "boring". Yes, some parts of books are boring, because not everyone learns at the same rate. But you can just cruise through those exercises once and focus on the more interesting bits. Justin, you carry a lot of influence... please don't be like sooo many other teachers out there, please just let people explore their options with an open mind.
ps. This is not Tim Cooper. It's his wife.
I agree -- love this channel, but learning to read musical notation really opens a whole world of possibilities in my opinion -- I am speaking more from my experience playing violin and some piano, and I am not a professional nor in any way as accomplished as Justin, still I believe that learning to read notation can't help but round out one's guitar journey.
u have litterally saved my from pure head aches and frustrations. Im inside panicking thinking how the hell am i going to learn all this theory work. I cant get me head around it. this is after my first paid lesson . The tutor offered me tab or notation. I said notation as i thought its much better but mindfully its not. U have nailed everything i was thinking and so im going on board with your thoughts. tab it is. i cant tell u how much of a lift this video has given me. soooo much weight of me shoulders. Thank u. A true rock star
Do more of these story or talk videos. Helps me get inspired.
You are spot on Justin. I love to hear your approach and perspective about the musical journey.
As an amateur I think it never harms to try everything, as long as you can make progress and it gives you joy (and therefore motivation) when you do it. I had 20 years of fun learning classical guitar and reading simple tunes, but in the end I plateau - d out on the sight reading side and memorised the more complex classical pieces. It didn't exclude me learning rock and folk guitar and training my ears at the same time, no harm there. Now I'm learning to sight read on the piano I couldn't agree more that reading music on the guitar is much harder, I'm not sure if I would ever have got really fast enough at it on the guitar. The catch comes if (like me) life leads you away from your instrument, so that now I have lost memory of the complex pieces I memorised I can't read well enough on the guitar to get any of them back without the same immense effort.. Memorisation has another catch too, if like me you get sick of playing the same tunes. After three years learning keyboard, the number of pieces I can sight read (largely pop using an app) is growing exponentially, and it is awesome to be developing a transferable skill. I would just like to say I had the same dream of fast fluent reading new pieces on the guitar, but never made it, and now it's fine on the piano. Might just be my awesome piano app with a repertoire of so many of my favorite pop tunes, but yes the guitar sight reading is definitely harder too.
Great video! I never learned to read sheet music, but my early formal training as a wannabe rock drummer definitely allowed me to sight-read rhythm from traditional notation. That has been a HUGE help learning other instruments (like guitar). Learning to read tab, knowing the fretboard, and knowing how to read rhythm seems like a pretty good approach for most folks.
I think I'm going to order your Rhythm Reading book to add to my "Justin shelf". Many thanks Justin.
Exactly! so very true and as said "its very important to read music" it can help to being in very unexpected moments in life to make a living and otherwise also. thanks for the advice JustinGuitar.
I like reading notation and believe it to be beneficial ! A lot of guitar notations has the tabs displayed beneath so one gets the best of both. It’s great 👍
So I started as a trumpet player and had to learn to read music. It wasn’t that hard - but the main difference is what Justin mentioned - there are so many places to play the same note on guitar that it really doesn’t help you to know how to read music. Even if you did know how to read you STILL need to know the notes on the fretboard to know where the possible notes to play are. So another great video with great insight. Thank you.
I learned to read music when I was in third grade, playing piano. Fifth grade, violin, then Alto Clarinet, Trombone, Baritone, Sax, Flute, and Sousaphone. I've played in jazz bands, marching bands, orchestras and concert bands. What I love about guitar, is the ability to use tabs instead of notation. For me, it's easier if I have both, but that is a personal preference on my part as it is easier for me to read the rhythm from notation than from tab. Still a beginner and hopefully getting better daily at tab reading. Oh, and ear training is important regardless of what instrument you are playing....maybe more so on guitar. Thanks Justin, you always give us such great information in each video.
For me, learning to read music notation is like travel with a map. You can get to the destinations without a map but it’s far more easier with a map, because you don’t need to memorize everything.
Me too. For me, it looked like gibberish. I couldn't read or write notation. I'm glad I learnt and I understand it more now. It's helped me be a better musician😊
One thing I've found is learning to read music helps learn the notes on the fretboard easier than tab. Numbers on the fret board help with finger positions but not identifying notes, whereas you know what the notes are when you see them on staff.
I agree with you 100%. Thank you from TExas!
You know, I did just have a thought, though. Without audio recordings, the only way to learn a song was to be able to sight read.
Yes! Justin! Love hearing your stories! ❤️
Great video. I am debating this with learning for Irish Tenor Guitar where I would primarily be playing the melody as opposed to chords.
Merci Justin ! I'm still trying to train my ears at nearly 80 years old ( wish me Happy birthday beginning of March) my ears are getting bad (so is most other things except for basic music theory ) I learnt a lot from you
You're a good music teacher
Fifty years ago, I also discovered that a guitar is not really well fitted to standard music notation. Same goes for any string instrument with frets where there are multiple ways to play each note, interval or chord. Tabs are better and maybe the best so far, but I learned by ear and chord books. So for me, sight reading a song if I haven’t heard it before is nearly impossible. To learn a new song, first I almost memorize the tune and lyrics, then work on arranging the chords to my liking. This gives me the timing also. I like your UA-cam lessons.
I've made a couple of forays in learning to read standard notation for guitar. One thing I tried was taking the hymns we sing at church and try to play them on the guitar. My thinking is that these would be extremely familiar songs. In our hymnbook, usually there are two notes in the treble clef, the high note being the melody. The hardest thing I found was that as a guitar player I tend to think in root notes, with the lowest note being the root, but the lowest note in this case is harmony. It's almost like starting from scratch mentally, and that's just playing two notes at a time.
I played Keyboard well before I played guitar and I agree with Justin it’s easy to find E on a keyboard but more difficult to find it on a guitar because there are more E notes.
I can read music ok but with persistence and lots of patience I’m getting better at finding melody notes on guitar.
I think also (on guitar anyway) it depends on which key the song is in and which scale is used major or minor.
i had to learn braille music along with normal braille
it's not easy
the repeat symbols OMG
the in-accord symbols
counting the beats adding them up just to make one chord
i'd think sight reading would be pretty easy to learn
do it because PPL will be amazed
i've sat in on students playing classical guitar and they sight read
I went to piano lessons for maybe a couple of years or so & learned to read music but I was never any good at sight reading...learnt next to nothing about playing by ear but managed to more or less pick up Bonnie & Clyde, partly from a friend of my older brother ( he could play absolutely anything by ear after 1 or 2 listen throughs!) A few years ago I got myself a ukulele..never had any formal lessons; just what I could find on UA-cam, made quite good progress & learned a few songs ( discovered I have a crap memory for lyrics! :|). Trying to learn guitar the same way but I'm also fighting a neuropathy which makes it hard to keep my hands working ( pushing my wheelchair or hanging onto a pair of walking sticks saps some of the remaining strength in my hands..) but still have a bit of drive to learn something!!
We all learn differently I think, so its important to go with what works!
Very informative, and good guide. Thanks for the help and direction.
Segovia's book just shot up in value 10000 % ! Thanks a bunch Justin. 🤣🤣🤣
I originally learned to play piano/keyboard first, so I learned ''Every Good Boy Deserves Favour'' and ''Face'' and all the crotches and timings that go along with the theory,,,,, Then I picked up the guitar, and it made no sense (to me anyway) to use the Stave,,,, Guitar Tab was obviously the easier route. But I do have to say,, massive respect to any guitarist who can play from the musical stave and not the tab....
very informative! Thanks again for your efforts!
This is very good advice. I remember my dad coming home from his first guitar lesson having to learn twinkle twinkle little star and it was awful?!😂
do you have a video on learning rhythm and what exactly it entails?
www.justinguitar.com/store/strumming-sos
Cheers 😊
| Richard_close2u | JustinGuitar Official Guide & Approved Teacher www.justinguitar.com
So, Any hints on how to learn the notes other than just by rote? Very nice lesson.
I did it by starting
along 1 string at a time. Starting Low E .6 string then A string as they are most important for barre chords etc. Use fret markets as plot points. Then picking 1 note at a time eg. "A' and finding every place it occurs on fret board. It shows patterns of octaves etc.really helpful. Then 2 or 3 notes .eg a b c etc.
it takes time so small chunks, couple mins every time you practice, or minutes per day
The psin of falling into one if those thing. Ill just go practice ughh 😭
Mr Justin good morning you should do the acoustic version of Colin Hay who can it be now I would like to hear you sing the whole song of be cool
You're a good story teller
Great video, echo some of my own experience. Going to have to spend sometime learning the fretboard. What method / examples do you recommend when learning the fretboard ?
Justin, how about learning to read music so you can read the melody? I’m so bad at using my ear… thanks
I can read music (play piano) and I find trying to play guitar from sheet music to be incredibly, well, impossible.
To me it’s not about “needing” to read music on the guitar. I simply enjoy doing it.
Thank You very much for this. I agree with you, I always thought that whoever invented the guitar, and its tuning must have been on drugs because the instrument makes no sense. Like you said the same notes in the same octave can be found all over the place on the fretboard. Also, the music notation is written an octave higher than where it actually sounds. CRAZY !!!
One of the best jokes on the whole chanel by you is here 11:55 on-wards.
Great👍 teacher!
Hi can I ask If i already finished all your modules in your app does that mean I'm done with it and ready to write my own song
I know the treble clef and where the notes are BUT I cannot really read music…more like decipher it! Certainly not sight read….it seems to me that conventional sheet music is almost incompatible with standard guitar playing…particularly something like blues or country but I certainly admire anyone who can do it. Now if your playing a reed or a horn it is damn near essential…
come together lol, such a joyous pun
thanks for the story
i am learning classical by myself, started by using tabs, but knowing that those exam use standard notation only, i do what exactly you did, play by tabs, memorize it, in the mean time, i start learning to read, its a very slow process compare with strumming chords/ play by tabs, but i am doing this 10 - 20 mins a day. and is making progress
i am not confident that i can play as fluent as tab, but this is my long term goal.
i do think its a bit unfair to guitar, as in piano, all d are between two black key, but guitar is a bit arbitrary(not really but you know what i mean)
so how was the ending of your story? can you sight read and play standard notation?
Text is a scam!!!!
Great story
I'm reluctant to try but only becuase I seem to be a sponge for theory and my actual playing abiity is not keeping pace with that and that is oddly frustrating for me.
I'm really enjoying the Justinguitar theory course and it just taught me about all I want to know to remove some of the mystery of standard notation. Now I feel I can go on to concentrate more on the aspects of theory that I find more relevant to my guitar interest. Thanks much for a good straightforward course.
I play finger style.. Don't read music.. My why is pick out the melody.. Fit the cords around it works for very good I've ran my own golf club.. Play in open. Mic nights.. Enjoy sitting just noodling.
That Neil Young Shirt is a statement I really like.
I was a fan of Neil Young all my life till he got outspoken in the United States politics. I'm over him
bruh that guy is a clown, literally got himself deleted trying to silence another person bahaha
@@gwendolynkaren5933 he's ALWAYS been outspoken about politics and social issues... You just clearly weren't listening
Very good
Hey justin can u make sight reading lessons?
Is that shirt a shot a Spotify? 👀👀
8 hour a day practice rutine ?
Justin you're a sweetheart you're charming. I bet the ladies are all over you. Hahaha they very well may be this is a great video very informative and great perspective from your life I love it
I want to see and all of your videos moving forward you include that little dollar inside of the heart icon things so people can say are my good man here is $20 or here is $5 for you
loved the 'T' 😊
Like now, watch tomorrow 😬
Interesting choice of shirt today! 😄
Are you from Ausralia Justin?
Hello sir are you reading my mind?
learning to read complicated notation and complex rhythms takes a long long time
All good except for the tee shirt ....
thumbs up for the shirt :-)
My eyes are bad and I lose my place when reading music , tab is not much better …I need to write out the lyrics and then write a picture over the words …it’s a drag
Love the Neil Young shirt ;)
Thanks Justin, I enjoy these “talkie sessions” with you.
Thanks! Appreciate ur feedback. :)
Hi can I ask If i already finished all your modules in your app does that mean I'm done with it and ready to write my own song
one advantage of notation is that it opens up a world of music that may be new to you-like reading a new book. I had no idea that some lute stuff , old folk sings, Irish harp or Spanish and Italian music was so punk like at times. I love pop music too of course. So reading notation and playing a nylon guitar AND strumming/tab stuff I know, on steel string. Great way to justify more than instrument too!
I have to say that I totally agree with what you've outlined in this video Justin...based on my own experiences.
12:10 As someone who doesn't read music beyond a simple melody or bass line, and is much happier with TAB, I find it fascinating that musicians in previous eras, a 100 odd years before audio recording was invented, would visit a music shop and sift through racks of sheet music, "listening" to the music they were reading in their heads.
I don't mean just humming a written melody line. I mean being able to pick up pretty much any piece of music, be it a duet, quartet or a full blown orchestral score, and have the written music "playback" in their heads. I guess you either learned the skill or you ended up spending a lot of money on music you only realised you didn't like, when you got it home :)
Of course I'm sure most professional classical musicians retain such skills today, but apparently it was a very normal skill amongst even pretty average amateurs (like me) and something I kinda regret I don't have.
yeah sight reading is an important skill
Don't give up. I'm not a good player whatsoever or a great reader but....knowing a little theory I can see it layed out in the sheet music. I'm beginning to get the basic patterns and fingerings for scales, intervals and chords. This makes memorizing and understanding pieces easier and I'm confident that patient effort over time will ve well rewarded. Good luck! Music is a language. We didn't learn to spontaneously hear, speak and understand it overnight. Learning to read and write, knowing grammar abd structure of different forms and reading widely helped us communicate better orally. I think it's very much the same with music.
Playing from a tab is one thing, but the rhythm information is missing. So standard notation on a line above the tab is a help, but I still find the standard "dots" get in the way for me.
I have a question I have a guitar teacher but he’s very much by the book I pay 200$ per week for lessons but I’ve learned far far far more from your free videos then him I’m too Awkward to ask my own teacher why I feel I’m not improving it’s been a month there and it’s just copy a song on a sheet over the week and rinse repeat I’m highly considering paying for your course should I or perhaps I should continue with my lesson and tell him my concern in all honesty I go to my lesson kinda expecting to get bored and I hate that I wanna get good….
For fifteen years I had a nice guitar I’d pick up and learn on. Never made much progress tbh, until I found your videos on rhythm and it unlocked everything else on guitar for me. Your success is no accident, you have an uncanny ability to teach the fundamentals whilst explaining a song. Thank you a million times over.
Read music notation is like "Read by ear", and you know what you are playing.
If it's important to use your ear, there is no reason to read on something that doesn't make much musical sense.
As you said notations can be placed in different positions on guitar, but at same time it gives you various choices to choose from,
and most importantly, you will understand guitar as an instrument better than ever before through the process.
If your goal is purely for art and have no intention to show off, and you are willing to put a lot of time and effort, music notation is definitely the way to go.
The main reason i tried to learn to read music while playing guitar for me was because, If you learn to read music you can literally play anything without ever hearing the song. The problem I find with tab is time signatures and just making melody there is no way to play a song without hearing it first with tab. reading for me still hardest thing to do while playing at the same time specially now with youtube and internet it is soo much easier just to google or youtube a tune you want to learn.
I got a hold of old books which only has sheet music. As you said, it took you about a couple of weeks to de-transcribe some really hardcore sheet music.
1. It's not hard to learn sheet reading
2. Key signature gives a lot
3. Many exercises comes in the form of sheet
If you play after tabs for a couple of minutes now and then, don't learn sheet reading...
If you gonna unlock every note, mode, arpeggio etc of the fretboard -> you can just as well learn sheet reading, because if you are on this course you will just have to challenge yourself day in and day out. You will also, as a accidental bonus, unlock every instrument with the western 12 key tuning.
A final note: do scales reading sheet, skip the easy boring songs. Second final note: if you don't love scales yet, just do some acting, play a role of someone who do love scales.
I learned to play chords and songs physically before learning to read music. I do enjoy reading music, it helps me understand what I’m playing better. I agree it may get a lot of people stuck in the mud as a starting but part of me thinks it can be helpful to implement in the early learning process. Tab is great but traditional reading helped me read rhythm better. I say if you have the time, why not?
I struggle with learning by ear
Hey, love the lesson’s, the “leaf” lesson changed my outlook so much, one thing you didn’t mention about learning to read music, for a left hander tab always confuses me, but reading music makes no difference which hand you’re using, thank you Justin
I am an old lefty newbie and I’m trying to look at it like learning tab is my version of learning music theory. Reading tab backwards or upside down or whatever happens is just what hast to happen for me to keep going. So right or wrong, that’s the direction I’m headed.🤓
wish we classical guitarists had this option of not learning standard notation but sadly our music is so superior and advanced that we just wish we could be musically illiterate like you guys , cuz sometimes it gets unbearably hard
*Learn Notation:* www.justinguitar.com/products/rhythm-reading
Silly question. People that can read music will have greater access to tunes because, big shock, not everything is written in guitar tabs.
The really basic theory you should know, which is the true 'magic key' to navigating the guitar neck is the 'Chromatic Scale'-this can be learned in a few days and goes like this: E-F-F#-G-Ab-A-Bb-B-C-C#-D-Eb-E. One octave. We know that each fret is one semitone, so we can determine every note from this. This takes a while to assimilate, but it is worth your time.
i learned some stuff from youtube then decided to get a highly rated and good selling beginner book and it felt so useless to have it shove down sheet music down my throat after like 10 pages.
Learning to play by ear have more cons mentioned in this video. For example, developing a good ear takes time the same way reading does because of note accuracy, figuring out chords, and committing to memory. And learning without reading means playing tons of chords to pop song and that gets boring after a while. And if you want to play chord melody, then you have to rely on tab and ear, and that can also take time. If you can read music you don’t ever have to rely on figuring out anything and it lessens the time it takes to learn a song. Even if it’s from a UA-cam video. Which in my opinion is frustrating. If you can read you can play the song instantly. Chord melody and playing becomes more fun because you can play anything, anytime. Pop up a jam track to a real book full of thousands of music…I think is more interesting than playing 4 chords of 100s of pop songs that sounds the same in the long term.
Superb in every aspect. And full of sympathy through all Octaves. Thankyou from Munich. 🌻
As a young bloke living in regional Australia I too left my home town to study music at uni. I could not read a note but I played guitar by use of tab. At Uni I managed to get into the course I aspired on the back of my degree in education but not with guitar but piano. My entire course was based on learning classical piano. 43 years later would I learn piano to be a better guitar player? The answer is, I have no doubt that I am a better guitar player because I studied piano. I still play guitar every day & I play piano every day. I am an infinitely more capable as a a better musician than I would otherwise be. I am so eternally grateful for being given that chance.
Should change the title to 'I spent two weeks learning a piece so I could pretend I could read music in 2 weeks'. For the record, I never leant to read music either...
Justin Guitar is a blessed saint. This is an arduous journey and it’s a wonderful thing to have such a wonderful guide.
:) Happy to help!
@@Codzilla71 can it not be both?
HI, I have bought two off your books (rock songbook) (Christmas Songbook )I would guess I have about 15 books , a lot that came with my second hand Seagull Guitar:), there is a Book Mel Bay which is helping me read music :) I am not the best at it however can play up too grade two :) I also have Alfred,s method and i am on book three:) I do feel the best advise which i heard was from you have 5 songs you can play and this what i am focus on :) This has helped me :) I do find it interesting to be able to read music a little, but playing a song is a better feeling PS i have upgraded to a fender strat:)