How to Read Sheet Music
Most sheet music you buy in a music store will be arranged for piano. Piano music is written using two or three staves, with the chord symbols above the top staff. It may also contain unfamiliar symbols and terms. In some cases chord diagrams may be included. Most cases guitarists will only need to use the top staff, which contains the melody line, lyrics and chords. Sheet music is usually arranged by keyboard players; guitar chord shapes given are often incorrect, unnecessary or impractical, and many piano arrangements of guitar based songs do not sound anything like the recorded version. Guitar tablature versions of sheet music are gradually becoming more popular and are more likely to be accurate arrangements. If you want to learn more about reading music and tablature see Progressive Complete Learn to Play Guitar Manual.
Many piano arrangements are in difficult keys for a beginning guitarist and often use unnecessary chords. Piano sheet music also gives no indication of how to strum the chords. So piano sheet music should only be used as a guide for guitarists.
If a song contains chords that you are not familiar with you can:
- Learn how to play the new chords as shown in this book.
- Change the key of the song (see transposing on the following page).
- Substitute an easier chord.
The table below lists the chord types you may see in sheet music, along with simpler chord you can use as a substitute- If you know how to transpose and substitute chords you can play almost every song ever written using only a few basic chord shapes. As your knowledge of chords increases, you can gradually add in all the other chord types.
Easy Chord Table
Chord Substitution is covered in detail on pages 187 to 196.
