How to read guitar sheet music for beginners

Knowing how to read guitar sheet music is not all that common among modern guitarists. Many rely on guitar TAB and chord diagrams. While these are perfectly valid ways to learn and communicate with other guitar players, it isn’t the best way to communicate with other musicians who may not play guitar. 

If you learn how to read sheet music, “the classic way” on a notation staff, you can express ideas and music with any musicians who know how to read music. This is also a key skill to learn if you’re looking to play guitar in any kind of orchestral setting, like in the pit playing in the band for a Broadway play for example.

Furthermore, developing a basic understanding of how to read sheet music allows you to visualize music differently which in turn can help you with the orchestration aspect of music and performing. 

In this article, you will learn how to:

• identify notes on a notation staff
• read rhythm with four exercises to help you practice‍

If you’re interested in how to read guitar TAB, check out this blog post. Let’s dig in.

The difference between guitar TAB and sheet music

Guitar TAB is a guitar-specific system of music notation that’s much more straightforward than standard notation.

In the image below, we know exactly which fret to play on which string. TAB’s limitation comes in that it often provides little to no context about how notes should be played rhythmically.

Sheet music, on the other hand, is created for all instruments (including voice). Below is the same musical phrase as above. 

• These few bars tell us a lot more about the musical piece itself. We know which notes to play (not just fret number), the rhythm, and the time signature. 
• Even the harmony could’ve been written on the staff below. 

Sheet music can be read and understood by the guitarist, pianist, trumpet, bass player, etc. By knowing the notes and the key of the song, the rest of the band can work with this sheet music.

Learning how to read sheet music for guitar

There are two components to reading and understanding sheet music:

• Identifying each note on the staff
• Understanding the rhythm of these notes

The first thing we will take a look at here is how to identify the notes on the staff. Learning the notes is a matter of memorization. Further down we give you tips on how to make it easier to remember all the notes. 

What are we looking at in this picture?

There is a lot of information in this image, and some information is not literally disclosed to us. Here is what we are seeing:

• Two bars (measures)
• The notes on the staff
• 8th notes
• Time signature
• Treble clef
• Rest notes

Let’s dissect this a little bit.

You might’ve noticed three aspects regarding the notes on the staff.

• There are notes on the lines, in between the lines, and even outside of the staff itself. 
• The notes themselves are 8th notes, which we will discuss in greater detail below.
• The notes that extend beyond the staff are written on ledger lines. 
• The note is written either above, underneath, or through the ledger lines (such as C and A pictured above). 
• As you can see we are told the time signature - 4/4, which is also known as common time.
• There are different kinds of clefs used for different instruments, depending on their range. The guitar is notated on the treble clef 𝄞
• Lastly, we also see two rest notes. They indicate the length of silence.

How to memorize the notes on the staff

There are two common acronyms used to help you memorize the notes on the staff. The notes in between the lines spell the word FACE if you start at the bottom.

The notes on the lines we can memorize by saying Every Good Boy Does Fine.

The next step is to understand the notes in the context of actual music. A prerequisite to reading sheet music is knowing scales and knowing the difference between natural notes, and sharp or flat notes.

Key signature 

The key of a piece of music is written on the staff in terms of how many flats or sharps are in a given key. 

In the first example, there is no mention of any flats or sharps, which would suggest we are in the key of C Major (or its relative minor key of A minor) because these two keys have no flats or sharps. This was a piece of information not literally disclosed to us, but it was still useful.

If we add one sharp, like this, we are in the key of G Major.

We are in the key of A major if there are three sharps written on the staff, and so on. 

How to read rhythm

This next section will cover the second aspect of learning how to read sheet music for beginners: rhythm. 

Only knowing which notes to play isn’t all that helpful unless you also know how to read the duration of the note.

Note duration

A musical phrase is made up of bars, also called measures.

• One measure is made up of beats. 
• How many beats you fit within one measure is indicated by the time signature. 
• In 4/4 you can fit 4 beats in one bar. 
• In 3/4 time one bar contains 3 beats, and so on.

Vertical lines indicate where a measure begins and ends.

Let’s start with the whole note. It has a value of four beats, meaning one whole note will last the entire duration of one measure.

Half notes have a value of two beats – half the length of the measure. In other words, you can fit two half notes inside one measure of four beats.

The process of dividing up the beats is called subdivision. The more we divide a beat, the more notes we can fit in one measure.

If we continue to subdivide we get quarter notes:

Quarter notes = one note per beat. This is normally how you count when you’re starting a song and want everyone to start at the same time. 

Dividing quarter notes in half will result in 8th notes:

… and then 16th notes.

Any beat smaller than a quarter note is often grouped with other smaller notes, as you can see. A single 8th and 16th note has a flag on its side. When grouped together the flags turn into connecting beams.