sightreading help

[marine18]

can somebody give me some tips or lessons on sightreading. any websites that help

[waleross]

Sounds like Jazz to me. The Jamie Abersold site features a lot of bass books and music minus one charts, books and now DVD's. the Real Book Fake book was what I learned on. Solo stuff is not what I'm talking about. To be able to read a chart first or 2nd take is an art in itself. For Bass Guitar look up some of the Carol Kaye books....helpful for me. By the way look up the names above and you'll find their websites.

[MalcolmAmos]

IMO sight reading should be learned in steps or stages. I have no idea what step you need help with so I'll start at number one.

• Get a deck of flash cards. Cost less than $5. Comes with treble and bass clef notes plus ledger notes, all on separate individual cards. Suggest you learn these in segments. Treble first unless you are only interested in bass clef if that is the case leave treble for last. Next would be bass clef followed with the ledger notes (those above or below the staff.
  
• When you can recognize a note and call it's name in the same amount of time it would take you to say your name you have completed step one.
  
• Now and only now start reading sheet music and sounding the notes on your instrument.
  
• Learn how to identify the notes first and then learn how to find them on your instrument.

To keep sharp you will have to read a lot of sheet music. You can do this with or with out your instrument. To sight read well you have to read music every chance you get. If you slack off you will get rusty and speed will suffer. Suggest you keep some sheet music in your brief case or by your easy chair and when ever you find some free time spend it reading your sheet music.

Good luck.

[Icewolf98]

Thanks Malcom, that was awesome advice. I never thought of reading music like I read a book. Great advice.

[Lichtaffen]

It's also helped me to tap out the notes without my bass first just to get the rhythms internalized. I find the rhythmic subdivisions to be more difficult to memorize than the actual pitches.

[capnsandwich]

here's an awesome online tool that helped me to learn the bass clef.

http://www.studybass.com/tools/bass-clef-notes/

[Rudreax]

Just for clarification, do you mean learning to actually read sheet music, or "sight-reading", which is taking a piece of sheet music and playing it the very first time you see it?

If you mean the first option, you're talking about just reading. I won't go into links or anything because the people before already have things posted. I'd suggest you just get some simple pieces of music and just work your way through it.

If you mean the second option, which would be actual sight reading, I'd say the same thing; find some sheet music, either online or at a store. However, instead of working your way through it, just look through the whole piece and then just play it without stopping. It's VERY important that you don't stop, since the whole point of sight reading is being able to play the piece without stopping for anything.