Scott Paul Johnson
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Intro to Reading Music
🕑 Added 2025-06-23 17:00:07 +0000 UTCWhere to Start • Lesson Archive • Recommended Lesson Plan • Book a Private Lesson
Hi Everyone,
This is a casual walk-through of a handful of pages of Mel Bay's Modern Guitar Method Grade 1. It's the book that taught me how to read music. It's also the book I started with when I first learned guitar back in 1997.
This lesson is an overview of the basic concepts of reading music. We go through a few pages, showing the overall flow of the book, working through music notation vocabulary and demonstrations of a few songs. I also show how some music theory concepts look in music notation to help you see the benefit of learning to read music.
Realistically, I don't think it makes sense for me to do a whole course on reading music - there are so many great books and resources out there for learning! But I did want to pique your interest and inspire some curiosity about music notation and how it works. If you're interested in becoming a professional gigging musician who gets hired for musicals and one-off situations with a variety of instruments, learning to read music is very useful.
If this overview lesson got you interested in reading music, buy the book!
Comments
Owl Willows
This video is so helpful to me. I've always struggled with reading music, and as a result have had difficulty playing the piano. Thank you for recommending this book, I will definitely check it out 📚
Dakota M
LLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEETTTTTTTSSSS GGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Ben Poe
I learned music in band playing the trumpet. Recently I’ve been learning guitar but really focused on chords and strumming. When I finally started using reading music for guitar, I had to start over…..it was reverse logic….. putting notes on the guitar.
Scott Paul Johnson
reading music?
Lauren Wise
I never even heard of this!
