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In order to play the guitar, you need to learn how to read guitar music. Learning and understanding it may sound complicated but once you get used to it, it is actually quite simple and can be done in a breeze.

To play guitar music, first you must understand the basic chord patterns and what they are. A guitar chord is a sound composed of different notes being played on the guitar. Once you know the chord formation then you can start building the chord progression patterns to play a whole decent song.

In order to read the guitar music you must first understand the common terms, and the first on this example are the major chords. Major chords are the major notes. It’s the most basic chords used in guitar playing. The major chords are composed of series of notes from the chromatic scale (the major scale C, D, E, F…) without alteration.

Then there are the Minor chords. Minor chords are also chords based on the major scale but instead of the normal notes used on a chord, the 2nd note should be a half step lower, so if the C chord is made up of C,E, and G notes, the Cm chord will have a C D# and G note. Major and Minor chords are the common chords used in a chord progression.



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Ear training is learning to differentiate between different sounds. This is a great skill to acquire as a budding musician. It will make reading piano sheet music easier as you will be able to tell by ear whether your playing is right or wrong. Even if you are not a great singer, this is a skill that can be developed. Music notes can do one of 3 things. They can stay the same, go up or go down. If the notes stay the same, their pitch will be the same.

Tip 1 – Play a note on the piano, around Middle C. Sing it back. Now play the note above it and sing it back. Now play both notes one after the other and sing them back. Vary this exercise with 2 notes and then 3 notes. Play them and then sing them back. Look at your first bar of piano sheet music. Look at the direction that the notes move in. Do they go up, down or stay the same?

Tip 2 – Before playing the notes on the piano try singing this pattern, even if it is very approximate. This gets you used to looking at the direction the notes move in and what sound they will produce. Now look at the rhythm of the piece. How many beats are there in a bar? If there are 4 beats in a bar, use this to count yourself in “1, 2, 3, 4″ in the following exercise.

Tip 3 – Clap through the rhythm of the 1st bar of music at a steady speed. This is training your musical ear to listen to the rhythm only. Clap at a steady speed and always count yourself in.



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