This lesson is taken from Module 4 of the Bassic Fundamentals course and provides an introduction to the basic principles of sight reading on Bass. You can also take a deep dive into the world or music reading by enrolling on the Simple Steps To Sight Reading Course:

Click Here For The Simple Steps To Sight Reading

How To Start Reading Music

One of the biggest challenges with learning to read music is knowing where to start. When you have no basic knowledge of notation, it is impossible to force yourself into making sense of something you know nothing about – it would be like reading something in a foreign language. The trick is to overcome this barrier so you can practice by reading songs instead.

Bass players often get put off at this stage as your reading ability will be much worse than your playing and so going back a step seems boring and unproductive. But it honestly gets better. Once you have made the connection between seeing a note and playing it with your fingers, you will be well on your way to being able to read anything. The next step from here is to do exactly that and read anything and everything you can find.

Pitch Reading Exercises

The simplest way to start reading music is to break it into two parts – rhythm and pitch. We will concentrate on pitch for now so you can develop and use muscle memory to recognise where to place your fingers.

The exercises below may seem dull, but you only need to do them for as little as ten minutes a day to see massive differences in a matter of weeks. Stay in the first position for now as it would be impossible to learn the entire fretboard at once.

E String Pitch Reading

Practice Track:

A String Pitch Reading

Practice Track:

E and A String Pitch Reading

Practice Track:

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