I studied music in college and university which I believe is your goal based on some of your posts.
The post above this one is excellent advice. What I would add is some tools to practice and apply your knowledge.
My college bass instructor was one of the best session players in the city. He was a "First Call" player....the guy that gets most of the best paying sessions. He stressed reading above all else in preparing students to be working musicians ( at the time late 1980's there was still lots of studio work).
He used two tools to fast track the process. First was the book of Bach Cello Suites. Essentially endless 16th note phrases so you get to know your fretboard intimately. But rhythmically not too difficult as you don't have to deal with complex syncopation as you would in funk or other genres. It did force you to understand basic 16th note patterns. Now the magic of his approach was the "application" of how we used the tool.
We didn't learn the pieces. Actually, quite the opposite. Remember the goal is sight reading not reading something you know. So each class started with sight reading. He would just turn to any page and point to a single bar of music and we had to read it. At first we could read it at any tempo that was comfortable for us and only 1 bar of music. Then he would flip to another page, etc. Then when we got got good at 1 bar he moved it to 2 bars, 3 bars, 4 bars, etc. again at a tempo of our choice. Once we got good at that he opened the page put down a metronome and set a very slow tempo at 40 bpm. Then gradually the tempo went up as well as the number of bars we had to read. You made tons of mistakes at first. I mean TONS. It was really frustrating but you knew where you stood with your reading. But he wouldn't let you stop or get mad OR start over ! He didn't want us to learn the piece. Once we were doing much better at this and was gaining confidence he added the next tool.
Carol Kaye Electric Basslines Series. I think there were 6 books in the series. We all wrinkled our noses at the books thinking they were dated with "old bass lines" that were easy to play. Boy....we're we wrong! The books progress in difficulty and what we discovered was even though we could read the notes easily the rhythmic syncopation of the lines were really difficult at first. These are not easy lines to sight read. Even today. So...same process as above. He took Book 1 opened a page and we did the same process. 1 bar our own tempo, 2 bar etc. then the metronome. Nice thing about the Carol Kaye books is the lines are only 4 to 16 bar pieces. Also, you got to " graduate " to the next book once the teacher felt comfortable you had the syncopations down. Then Book 2 and the process.
The last piece he taught was strategy. He would bring in charts from sessions he was doing for producers and artists. These were actual charts the studio would put down in front of him. So we pretended we were doing the session. We had 2 minutes to look at the piece. He would put a piece down and ask " What do you see? How are you going to approach this?" What we learned that was invaluable was how to use our classroom music theory and apply it to real world situation. So he would talk us through it. What key is the piece in? Does it modulate? What is the form/structure? Tempo? What is the genre? Any trouble areas? (I.e. lots of notes or complex rhythm, lots of accidentals, etc.). He taught us to tackle those sections first. We developed a " mental checklist" to go through each time we attempted a new piece. You can replicate this yourself by taking any bass book that has transcribed songs you like. Open it up give yourself a few minutes to review and then give it a whirl. Come up with your own checklist.
There were two of us that studied with him. When we got to University we were pretty intimidated as everyone had monster chops. Then it came time for ensemble auditions. You audition in front of the entire faculty and all the bass players. They put down charts and you play with a big band. To our surprise we were the strongest readers...by far! Other students asked us how we learned it. By then, we could read anything.
Was it difficult? Oh yeah! Frustrating? You bet! Worth it......more than you know.
Hope this helps. Enjoy.
Great detail in this post for sure! The part that I made in bold is pretty much the EXACT process I use with my own students, and that I did with myself. the key is that in a sight read, you are reading it once, and only get one rep to do it right. Anything after the first read is PRACTICE. Definitely follow the steps listed in the same progression.
I have my students sight read at the end of a lesson, and encourage them to read at least one excerpt a day on their own. Since I am in the band world, I have my bass students use baritone or trombone books since there are many short passages with good varying combinations of rhythms. There are tons of books or on line sources to get the actual music you use.
The key at first though, is to not jump right to the most technical songs. Start with simpler pieces. Also, as you get more comfortable with music theory, try reading charts with just chord changes as well. I all of the session/ensemble work I have done, i have never had to sight read a chart that was to "technical". 98% of the things I read are either jazz-style chord based charts, or more traditional style note based charts (like in pit orchestras or church gigs). Both types of reading demand very different skill sets in approach. My ability to read chord charts definitely helps me read classical charts better, and vice-versa.
As a young'n, one of the first things that threw me was finding out hat in the jazz/pop world, sometimes there were no actual notes on the chart. Just chords. Many times not even rhythms. It would just say: "Bossa-style" at the top, and then be a string of chords. I had to know wha ta "Bossa-style" pattern consisted of rhythmically, and then apply that to the chord changes.
Knowing different styles is also crucial, and the only way to learn that is to just listen and catalog similarities of styles. This is almost overwhelming since within many of the main genres, there are a billion sub-genres that all demand a different stylistic interp. And styles evolve and change on a daily basis.
