Sight-reading is one of the most effective yet neglected modes of guitar practice. Few guitarists read new music on a regular basis, and many musicians don't consider the guitar a "reading" instrument due to its complex fretboard layout. 

However, motivated guitar players can become excellent sight-readers. The benefits of this skill are many, including fretboard mastery, faster learning of new pieces, and experience playing a huge variety of music.

As someone who does a lot of reading on the guitar, I want to share 5 essential tips with you that will help you become a confident sight-reader in no time! 

If you’re going to get the most value out of sight-reading as a guitarist, you’ll want to build a habit of reading. Habitual reading is essentially reading as a hobby, as part of your leisure time.

This sight-reading hobby of yours will ideally become separate, in a way, from your normal guitar practice. You’ll do it passionately more than rationally—on impulses and off schedule. That is, when you start to sight-read for fun, and you’re really not counting it as practice, you know you’ve become a proper sight-reader. 

We reach this “sight-reading as fun” stage by reading all the time. Multiple times a day is a good place to start, and always in short sessions. Note that you won’t be having fun right away. Instead, you have to work for it, building up your ability and trusting that it will be fun before long. 

By “short sessions” we’re talking 2-5 minutes. Remember that sight-reading is a “dense” type of guitar practice: it’s difficult but extremely time-efficient. (You can read in longer sessions if you get in the zone, of course, but given how painful reading is at first, I think you’ll find short sessions more doable.)

You’ll notice that I’m not asking for a big time commitment here. Multiple 2-5 minute sessions could easily be less than 10 minutes of work per day. Thus, if you find yourself slacking off on your reading, it’s probably a mental issue more than a practical one. 

Unfortunately, mental issues are often more insidious than practical ones. We have so much untapped potential that it’s hard to imagine what we could accomplish if we could optimize our mindsets. Sight-reading (like any other forbidding and taxing activity) requires a careful nurturing of our mental habits. Some argue that learning guitar, and progressing rapidly, is almost entirely mental!

The surest way to make sight-reading fun is to use it to explore music you love. You probably enjoy countless songs that you haven’t tried to play on guitar. Sight-reading is a great way to dive into any piece of music currently on your mind. 

And I do essentially mean any piece of music. Guitar is one of the most popular instruments in the world, which means if you like a song, there’s a high chance that some kind of guitar arrangement (tabs, chords, or standard notation) is available online, often free of charge. 

This mass availability of guitar music could well make our time the golden age of sight reading! I suggest you dive right in, even if you feel out of your element at first. Again, the key is to find a song you’re excited about. You should be so excited that even if your reading goes badly—say you only manage the first chord or two, or stop after a couple measures of tabs—you still get a kick out of “playing” such a great tune.

Besides finding music online, you can also check out some guitar music at your local library. I’ve found that most libraries have fairly good collections, especially if you like popular guitar styles. However, even if you’re more of a jazz or classical guitarist, don’t hesitate to read broadly. That is, if your library only has the Beatles, James Taylor, and Taylor Swift, I still recommend you read through that music for practice. 

Finally, one of the best things you can do in the long run is to build up your own collection of music. To get the most bang for your buck, look for printed anthologies in your preferred style (but don’t be afraid to go out of your comfort zone as well). My personal favorite website is Strings By Mail, where you can find an amazing selection of diverse guitar music.

When you’re just starting out with guitar sight-reading, you’re likely to feel overwhelmed at the prospect of playing through unfamiliar music, even if it’s relatively easy. Fortunately, we can simplify our approach. 

The secret is to divide music into its two core elements, pitch and time, and tackle them separately. 

For reading pitches, simply move slowly through a piece and find the notes at your leisure. Don’t worry about time or rhythm here, just read as an exercise in learning the fretboard. 

For reading time, work on clapping through a piece away from the guitar, making sure you understand how its rhythm works. If you can’t make sense of a notated rhythm, you can always play the song and try to follow along on the page. 

Once you can find all the notes of a piece plus clap through its rhythms, then you’re well prepared to play through it musically. But as always, go as slowly as you need to. 

 

We’ve discussed mental practice a good deal on the site already, but I want to explore the idea of mental sight reading a bit further. The main idea is that you don’t need your guitar on hand for a productive session. 

Rather, you can rely on the power of your mind. In a way this makes perfect sense, given how physical practice is essentially mental as well—our mind is more responsible for what happens than our fingers. But to devote yourself to mental practice, you really need to believe in its effectiveness. 

I can attest from personal experience that the hardest part of mental practice is believing that it actually works. Until you do, you’re not going to incorporate it into your routine. But I can promise you that if you just take the leap of faith, mental guitar practice will reward you tenfold.

As with every other imposing sort of guitar work, be sure to begin slowly. Grab the piece you’re working on, sit on the couch, and scan through it with your eyes alone. You can often gain valuable insights this way. After all, we tend to miss a lot of details on printed music when we have the guitar in hand, and are thus partly distracted. 

In terms of sight-reading, one easy way to use mental practice is to literally read through the music once or twice before doing anything else. Then, grab your guitar and take a crack at it. Trust me, even though that may be your first time playing the piece, the preparatory mental work will make you feel familiar with the music to some extent, making the first playthrough much easier. 

Finally, here's even more content on mental practice for those who are interested! 

This probably isn’t the first time you’ve heard that you should practice slowly. It certainly isn’t if you’re a regular on the site. But in my view, you just can’t hear this advice enough, especially if you don’t normally practice slowly. 

Put simply, slow practice is the golden standard of guitar improvement, the best way you can spend your precious practice time. It allows you to play more accurately, thoughtfully, and musically than normal. Given that practice is all about building the right techniques and sounds, you just can’t do better than to work slowly and super controlled. 

However, the idea that you should practice slowly is probably old news. More than being ignorant of that fact, your problem is likely that you have not built a habit of slowing down. You know you should play slowly, but you don’t do it—much like someone who knows they should eat their greens but instead goes for a slice of pizza. 

So how do we turn this around? The first step, perhaps, is to recognize the difference between knowledge and wisdom. In this case, you may know that slow playing is wholesome because you’ve been exposed to that information, but the wise guitarist applies that knowledge, committing themselves to the best mode of practice. 

Next, we want to build that habit in reality. Gradually incorporate slow practice into your routine. Maybe you play ultra-slow scales during a warm up, or you strive to play through your favorite piece in slow motion once a day. Over time, slow practice will increasingly feel natural, and you’ll be more convinced of its efficacy, having reaped the benefits. 

Considering this is a post all about guitar sight-reading, you may well guess the note we’ll end on: the idea of sight-reading slowly.

I honestly think the best all-around reading guitarist would be someone who spends a great deal of time in slow sight-reading. They would develop the ability to play a huge variety of pieces accurately and musically, and with very little to no practice beforehand.

Be sure to include slow sight-reading in your guitar routine! 

I hope by now you understand why sight-reading is valuable for guitarists, and that the idea of starting a reading routine feels more manageable to you. 

Let's conclude with a final piece of advice: don't be turned off sight-reading because it's difficult at first. With this type of guitar work, every inch counts for a mile. If you can put in two minutes at a time, that's a victory.

Avoid pushing yourself too hard. The last thing you want is to associate sight-reading with trial and misery. Rather, it should be fun and engaging. Trust that if you put in the time, it won't be long until all you want to do is explore new music on the instrument we love!