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Thanks to guitar tablature, reading classical notation is not nearly as essential for a guitarist as most other instruments.
But, as you advance into higher levels of understanding, it will still serve you well to have at least a basic understanding of it.
We will cover just the absolute essentials here. Let's get into it!
The first thing to note when reading classical notation, is that the 5 lines of the staff has nothing to do with the strings. This isn't tablature, this form of notation is meant to work with every instrument.
Now, you should already be very familiar with time signatures, note lengths, etc. from our previous lessons. So here we are focusing on learning how to read exactly what note is being played.
Let's firstly look at notes that land directly on the lines of the staff. That's E-G-B-D-F.
You can remember this with the classic mnemonic:
"Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge."
The notes between each line of the staff are: F-A-C-E.
That should be easy enough to remember!
Now, not every D note (for example) falls in the same spot on the staff.
As we move into higher ranges, as you can see, we move off the staff and into an extended range.
These extra lines are known as "ledger lines".
So it's not enough to simply memorize "EGBDF" and "FACE" in one spot, we need to understand how the notes moves along the staff.
It's pretty simple. Every time a note moves one step up or down the staff, you move up or down one natural note.
Take a moment to understand how the staff notation moves along with the notes in the images here.
As you can see from the second image, the full range of the guitar can require quite a lot of ledger lines to write out in classical notation.
Now, so far we've only played natural notes. Sharp and flat notes need to be specially marked in classical notation!
To the right, we have the E Major scale being played. If you know your Circle of Fifths, you should know that the Key of E contains 4 sharps, and you can see each sharp note marked in the classical notation.
Typically however, the sharps are written at the start of the notation, and the player must remember to apply the sharps or flats to the correct notes at the appropriate time.
This cluster of sharps or flats at the start of the bar is known as the Key Signature.
This will be enough for you to get started, but the world of classical notation is filled to the brim with special notations.
Fortunately, you can Click here for Wikipedia's list of musical symbols.
I highly recommend you take at least a quick look through that article! It's a really fantastic quick look at everything you can do with notation (and how utterly convoluted it can be).
On this website, at least, we'll always keep it as clear as possible. I can't promise the same for elsewhere!
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