To Read or Not to Read (part one)

  The classic, time honored musicians' joke asks the question, "How do you get a Guitar Player to stop playing?". Answer: Put sheet music in front of him! Ah yes.......it's funny because it's true. Yes, if there's an Achilles Heel for the majority of us guitar players out there, it's the ability to read and write music notation. In fact I can remember a few embarrassing moments early on at Berklee where, the trumpet player could play his part, the pianist was on point, but we were all waiting for me to figure out where I was in the score.

  These days, I'm pretty good at reading music. Actually, I rather enjoy it! There's an art to reading and writing standard music notation and it can be fun once you get the hang of it. "But wait a minute!",  you might ask, great players like Jimi Hendrix and Wes Montgomery couldn't read and look where they ended up! True, being able to read music is no guarantee that you'll be the next revolutionary guitar player. Then what's the point ? Can't I just get away with using tabs?  Over the next few weeks, I'd like to look at several important reasons why I think learning to read music is time well spent.
  
Reason No. 1 - reading music is the gateway to a lot of higher level music and theory. When I became interested in jazz, I quickly realized that to enter the jazz world, I really needed to read music. All of the theory that I wanted to learn was written out on the staff. Not to mention the jazz tunes, the standards that I wanted to play, were in the Real Book - sorry no tabs! The problem only worsens when we deal with instrumental music other than guitar music ; saxophone studies (good for learning jazz) are just never tabbed out for guitar! So, if you have a Guitar Teacher, ask them to teach you to how to read - they'll be more than happy to show you.

  So there you have it, reason # 1. Tune in next week for Have Guitar Will Travel's  next installment of To Read or Not to Read.