Sight Reading Lesson for Classical Guitar

Sight Reading Lesson for Classical Guitar

This sight reading lesson for classical guitar in 5th position comes from our book Progressive Sight Reading for Classical Guitar. This is just one of 62 such lessons available to members of CGC Academy.

Familiarize yourself

To start out, we’ll play a simple one-octave C Major scale in fifth position. So we’ll place our first finger on C on the 5th fret of the 3rd string. After you’ve familiarized yourself with the C Major scale let’s move on to the exercises.

C Major Exercises

The exercises are much simpler here in 5th position because this is new territory for many of us. Before you play the exercises remember to use some of the concepts we’ve discussed like scanning the score, read forward, and chunk patterns, and so on. When you hit exercises that look like they’ll give an increased challenge, take a slower starting tempo to compensate.

Musical Exercises

When we reach exercise 11 we’ll start to add some musical elements, here dynamics. Before you start, map out your dynamics from beginning to the end. This will help you navigate your way through each dynamic change. Again, scan the score, read forward, and chunk patterns so that you can focus on the dynamics.

Exercise 12 offers you a melody, and this is a familiar one! Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Because this is such a familiar melody, challenge yourself by increasing the tempo.

Harmony Exercises

Finally we will look at harmony. Remember: when in doubt, drop out. If you get to a place where you don’t have time to find both notes in the pairs of notes from exercise 13, just play one of them or drop out entirely. Furthermore, use the whole notes to look ahead and prepare yourself for the notes that are coming up.

For exercise 14, we have sustained notes in one voice while another voice moves. Take a slow tempo and if you need to latch on to the upper line if you’re having difficulty reading both together.

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