This lesson gives an introduction to the basics of reading music on bass guitar. Many players notice difficulties in getting started with reading music considering they try reading lines at the level of their overall playing.

The key is to start reading music with the absolute nuts. Reading pitch and rhythm in isolation and reading two or three notes on a single string in 1 position. This helps with getting a foothold and it'southward much easier to build on that foundation.

Click Here For The Simple Steps To Sight Reading Course

Quick Reference Guide To Music Note

You can use this page to quickly find the names and values of unlike symbols you lot may come up across when you read a peice of music.

The Stave

The stave, or staff, is fabricated up of five horizontal lines running across the page. When we have about 10-12 rows of these on the folio, nosotros call it manuscript and use it to write music notation on.

Clefs

Each line and space on the stave corresponds to a specific pitch on the fretboard. A clefis used at the kickoff of a line to signify which notes can be constitute at certain points on the stave. As bass players, almost all of our music volition be in bass clef, simply it wouldn't hurt to learn a little bit well-nigh the others too.

Bass Clef

Treble Clef

Alto Clef

The reason we have different clefs is to keep the music within or as close to the stave every bit possible. Every bit instruments have different ranges, five lines aren't enough to have everyone reading comfortably on the stave all the time. If you wanted to notate a flute role for example, y'all wouldn't want to do it in bass clef otherwise the annotation would be so loftier above the stave information technology would be difficult to tell what the notes were. Instead, you would want to notate it intreble clef.

Applying Bass Clef To The Fretboard

To brainstorm learning to read music, y'all want to limit yourself to a specific surface area on the bass and so you don't go overwhelmed with loads of notes to learn. For now, we are going to stay at the lesser of the fretboard between frets i-five. Below is the notation and TAB for the notes on the stave when played in the outset position.

Ledger Lines

Ledger lines are used for notes that fall to a higher place or below the stave. They piece of work the aforementioned as lines on the stave – think of them as extensions.

Bars And Barlines

Music is by and large heard and composed in cycles of beats and a bar is merely ane complete cycle of those beats. Confined are divided on the stave with barlines.

Fourth dimension Signatures

Consisting of two numbers stacked on top of one another, the fourth dimension signature is found at the outset of a slice of music and tells you how many beats are in a bar.

The top number in a fourth dimension signature tells you lot how many beats are in a bar.

The bottom number tells yous how long the individual beats are.

For now, only concentrate on the top number – this tells you the number of beats in a cycle. Then for example, four/4 would have a pulse of four crotchets.

Rhythms

A note is nothing without a rhythm assigned to information technology so allow's accept a look at some of the most straight forward rhythms…

Whole note/Semibreve – 4 beats

Half note/Semibreve – 2 beats

Quarter note/Crotchet – one crush

Eighth annotation/Quaver – Half a beat

Sixteenth note/Semiquaver – Quarter of a vanquish

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