Sheet music to practice sight reading?
Brandon F asked:
I have been playing guitar for 2 years and I know music theory and how to read sheet music, but I don’t have any sheet music to practice sight reading with. Could you recommend some (very) easy songs to practice sight reading with and possibly where to find sheet music for them?
Sight Reading Music Lessons
I have been playing guitar for 2 years and I know music theory and how to read sheet music, but I don’t have any sheet music to practice sight reading with. Could you recommend some (very) easy songs to practice sight reading with and possibly where to find sheet music for them?
Sight Reading Music Lessons
How to Sight Read Music Video Lesson
The principle is effectively the same for any of us, regardless of instrument. Establish by trial & error what level of repertoire you need to drop back to before you are able, at the full speed required for it, to play on sight straight through a piece without breaking down meaningfully at any time. That then becomes your base level for sight reading. If that means that you find you have to fall back to the very first music you ever learned, don’t fret about it and just start from there.
Having established your level, first play through as many pieces you have never seen before that are of comparable difficulty to that base level. Then all you do is intermittently raise the bar a notch and then explore the repertoire — studies and other simply structured didactic pieces are very good for this — at that new level all over again. And so on, and so forth, upping the difficulty each time you find you are getting too comfortable at the level of the moment that you are at.
As a pianist myself, I obviously can’t offer you repertoire suggestions for your instrument. Once you’ve established at what level of repertoire you will need to be working, you could add a supplementary to this one or re-post your Q later, indicating the required level, for your fellow guitarists to bend their heads over, though…
(Remember: you can literally only ever play any one piece just the once for this purpose!)
All the best,