Guitar lesson: Learn to play sheet music notes on your guitar

Usually when you are playing your first guitar sheet music melodies you will have to learn the notes in the first position on the guitar. To have a good grasp of these notes on the guitar I suggest that you learn them slowly and with concentration.

I usually begin by teaching the notes on the first string like E on open string, F on fret 1 and G on fret 3. On string two you'll find B on open string, C on fret 1 and D on fret 3. With these notes you can play the song Mary Had A Little Lamb.

Using the previous notes the melody can be played as follows:

E D C D E E E - D D D - E G G - E D C D E E E - E D D E D C

I hope you recognized the melody. This kind of music notation doesn't give any hints as to how the rhythm is to be played but presupposes that you already know the melody. Traditional classical guitar sheet music notation shows both the notes and the way they are supposed to be played.

My dad was the only guitar tutor in the town where I lived and he taught mostly classical guitar playing. His young students, I was one of them, learned those first guitar pieces very fast because he used a system similar to tablature showing the frets and strings to play, along with the sheet music. Tablature wasn't common back then when playing classical guitar sheet music.

I remember somebody remarking that his system prevented the children from learning to sight read sheet music. His reply was that if somebody really wants to learn the notes they will anyway. I agree with that and I have found that if a pupil is not motivated learning guitar sheet music they will not advance in this area whether they play with or without tablature.