Sight Reading Tips

[Alun]

Hi all. Just thought I'd share a blog I've written on sight reading tips. It doesn't cover reading music notation as such, more how to deal with situations where you turn up for a gig and a small tree's worth of charts is placed in front of you. Hope it's of use

[url="http://bassbook.blogspot.com/2009/09/secret-guide-to-sight-reading-bits-they.html"]Sight Reading Blog[/url]

Cheers
Alun

[birdy]

I just read that and thought it was very useful so thanks Alun!

[stevie]

I like this:

"If you are given a line of 16th notes that are not playable at sight, play the first one, use muted notes for the middle ones, and play any accented notes and the last one. Yes, it's cheating and ideally you should play them all, but this really works on gigs if something terrifying is put in front of you :-)"

Any tips on sightreading up the neck? I'm really struggling with this. Are there any shortcuts I'm missing?

[XB26354]

Excellent advice!
With regard to reading up the neck, do you mean changing position or just playing a piece higher up the neck?
if you mean changing position then there is an old double bass exercise I used to use:
Fret the A string at the first fret with the index finger. Without looking at the fingerboard, shift and fret at the second fret. Go back to the first fret. Repeat slowly over and over. Then go 1st-3rd fret, again without looking. Continue up until you are shifting a whole octave on one string. It can be done and if practiced regularly you'll never have trouble with position shifts.
Other alternative - buy a 6-string
As for playing higher up the neck, I recommend taking and bass lines or stuff you work on that mostly covers the A, D and G strings and shift it to cover the E, A and D. Also try learning scales with 4 notes per string, as per the example using C major below:

8th fret E-string:
C-D-E-F
10th fret A-string:
G-A-B-C
12th fret D-string:
D-E-F-G
14th fret G-string:
A-B-C-D
And back down.

This is what I call the "crab-walk" as your hand is almost constantly shifting. It is surprisingly challenging as it forces you to look at information horizontally rather than vertically.

This is all of course practice - on an actual gig stay in position where possible - if there is a high passage and you have 30 seconds before starting to play, jump to it and quickly work it out.
Cheers
Mat

[velvetkevorkian]

[quote name='XB26354' post='605574' date='Sep 22 2009, 01:50 PM']if you mean changing position then there is an old double bass exercise I used to use:
Fret the A string at the first fret with the index finger. Without looking at the fingerboard, shift and fret at the second fret. Go back to the first fret. Repeat slowly over and over. Then go 1st-3rd fret, again without looking. Continue up until you are shifting a whole octave on one string. It can be done and if practiced regularly you'll never have trouble with position shifts.[/quote]
Also good for building fretting hand callouses. And it's called a [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=151490"]"vomit exercise"[/url]

[V4lve]

Great tips and very timely. Thanks.

BTW does anyone else find reading white on black a little nauseous or do I need my eyes checking?

[stevie]

[quote name='XB26354' post='605574' date='Sep 22 2009, 01:50 PM']With regard to reading up the neck, do you mean changing position or just playing a piece higher up the neck?
if you mean changing position then there is an old double bass exercise I used to use:
Fret the A string at the first fret with the index finger. Without looking at the fingerboard, shift and fret at the second fret. Go back to the first fret. Repeat slowly over and over. Then go 1st-3rd fret, again without looking. Continue up until you are shifting a whole octave on one string. It can be done and if practiced regularly you'll never have trouble with position shifts.[/quote]

I don't really have a problem shifting without looking at the fingerboard, although I like your exercise and will definitely use it. I'm finding it quite difficult to achieve the kind of reading speed in the 5th and 7th positions that I've developed in the first position - accidentals in particular slow me right down. I'm much more comfortable playing lower down and just jumping up to reach the higher notes on the G string, which is clearly not the way to do it.

[quote name='XB26354' post='605574' date='Sep 22 2009, 01:50 PM']As for playing higher up the neck, I recommend taking and bass lines or stuff you work on that mostly covers the A, D and G strings and shift it to cover the E, A and D. Also try learning scales with 4 notes per string, as per the example using C major below:

8th fret E-string:
C-D-E-F
10th fret A-string:
G-A-B-C
12th fret D-string:
D-E-F-G
14th fret G-string:
A-B-C-D
And back down.

This is what I call the "crab-walk" as your hand is almost constantly shifting. It is surprisingly challenging as it forces you to look at information horizontally rather than vertically.[/quote]
I'll give that a go, too. Thanks, Mat.

[Alun]

Thanks folks!

Stevie - sorry for the delay in responding. Getting used to reading in positions is really no different to learning to play around the first few frets - just a matter of having good knowledge of the neck. The easist way I know is to make sure you know where all the C major notes and then shift them up or down by a fret if you need a sharp or flat.

The advice already given on position shifting is perfect The other bit of advice I'd give is to use a bass that you've played a lot as your muscle memory will have a good idea of where the notes and positions are on that neck. Also, practice shifting without looking at the neck - I'll sometimes do it while reading or watching TV to get my hands used to doing it without my eyes helping out

Cheers
Alun