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[medieval]

I've been playing and composing music for about 5 years now. I've been blessed with an absolute ear and am able to learn a lot of pieces by hearing, and can tell you exactly what notes are being played at a given time; but my ability to read sheet music is very limited. When trying to learn more complex pieces, I find it impractical to have to rewind a youtube video repeatedly and listen to the exact notes being played until I memorize them well enough to play them on my guitar. The last piece that I learned with this method is

. Especially when I try to learn some piano pieces, this process is very slow. I can never hope to learn Chopin preludes or

if I don't become efficient at sheet reading. Understanding notes, chords, intervals etc. is all good and well and it works when I'm composing, but for learning to play complicated pieces I just have to be able to play from reading.

Now, my question is: What is a good way to go at it? I've found this website that has some clef reading exercises, but I'd prefer having sheet music of a bunch of simple pieces (in different keys!!!!) that an illiterate like me can learn from.

Please help!

[MoritzPGKatz]

Hey,

Your best bet is a good teacher who'll offer specific exercises, answer technical questions (e.g about fingering) and help selecting literature that fits your learning progress.

The choice of musical pieces is crucial and should also depend on your personal taste.

A good starting point for classical note-reading exercises is Nannerl's Music Book which old Leopold Mozart wrote for his daughter.
Should that prove too unadventurous for you, try Béla Bartók's piano school Mikrokozmosz, which exercises both fingers and ears (in many pieces, left and right hand play different keys!) and was my personal favorite during study prep.

Two other easy-to-play-hard-to-master pieces that come to mind are a J.S. Bach prelude in C minor, BMV 999 or a Chopin prelude in E minor, Op.28 No.4.

Don't shy away from playing classical accompaniments as well; there are a lot of pieces especially in the German Kunstlied genre that are fairly easy to play and suggest a lot of typical piano phrases, harmonizations and chord structures which you will see reappearing even in modern pop/rock/soul/jazz piano arrangements.
First stuff that comes to mind is "Ich Liebe Dich" - a quite schmaltzy piece by Beethoven, an equally corny piece called "Ich sah ein Röschen am Wege stehen" by Carl Maria von Weber or the hauntingly sentimental pieces "Lieblingsplätzchen" and "Auf Flügeln des Gesanges" by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

Cheers,
Moritz

[Kyle Preston]

Depending on how interested you are in the theory aspect, I've been using Dave Conservatoire's music site and have picked up some good knowledge there. I also try and practice everyday using this cheap sight reading phone app.  You're probably a bit beyond some of the lessons on the conservatoire site, it's mostly aimed at beginners, but there's a lot of excellent material in there.

[Pete301]

I used this site http://www.musictheory.net

It has a couple of good exercises to get to know the notes and the key signatures. You will soon notice patterns that will help to identify notes on the stave and what key signature music could be in after doing the exercises.

Though being taught by a teacher will probably help a lot more.

[Kyle Preston]

Also wanted to point out this free classical music course that starts in January. Might be of interest to the fine people of this thread; we could form a nice moral support group to help any other masochists that are interested in sweating though this material.

[Daniel Pellicer]

Also wanted to point out this free classical music course that starts in January. Might be of interest to the fine people of this thread; we could form a nice moral support group to help any other masochists that are interested in sweating though this material.

Thanks for sharing!

It actually looks really interesting. However, I wanted to point out that, probably, this would be too much for people without basic knowledge in reading and writing sheet musics

[dawid w. mika]

This classical music course looks interesting. Thanks Kyle!

[Jon Sysyn]

A book that I'm using in a theory class is Hindemith's "Elementary Training for Musicians"

I'd recommend buying the book used on amazon or somewhere, but it can also be found for free (if you live in Canada because of copyright) here:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Elementary_Training_for_Musicians_(Hindemith,_Paul)

I started at Ch 3 but I'd imagine the earlier chapters are just as useful.
It focuses on singing and tapping rhythms, later while simultaneously conducting. And contains parts for sight singing and sight reading at an instrument.
It's not written for guitar prominantly in mind, they refer to pianos, but usually it is a countermelody that you're playing so I'd imagine it would translate easily to guitar.

Hope this helps you out. The book has 'kicked my butt' at times, but only to make me a better musician. It gives you obnoxious subdivisions of the beat to prepare you for when you come across it in common practice.