This bonus material is available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLL1BMZ5
with the purchase of the Kindle ebook.

Hey! Before You Start!

Get a timer right now! Set it to 5, 10, or 15 minutes. When it goes off, stop reading and/or stop doing the exercises. Write down where you left off. Come back tomorrow.

Carry on…

Because the same note occurs in different positions on the guitar, many guitarists mistakenly think that reading sheet music (“standard notation”) is impossible. Beginning string players (violinists, violists, etc) have all used the same method to learn how to read music. They begin with first position. And therefore we can utilize the same strategy as guitarists.

When you play in a single position, there is only one possible location for any given note (except for the unison note between the 3rd and 2nd strings). The natural notes in first position (sometimes called open position) looks like this on the fretboard:

All notes, scales, modes, and chords are available to you in first position. You’re only limited by the upper range of notes.

The top space of the treble clef is the note E. As you can see below, you can play this note in 6 different positions on a 24 fret guitar.

However, in first/open position, your only option is to play the open E string. The 5th fret of the 2nd string is outside first position. The exercises in this book will limit your playing to just the first 4 frets of the guitar so that you won’t need to worry about trying to decipher which “E” to play.

Here is an overview of all the natural notes (ie. notes in the key of C) in first position in tab and standard notation.

The second strategy utilized in this book is that you’ll learn to read string-by-string. Start with the notes on the high E string then the notes on the B string then the notes on the G string and so on.

Please head over to Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLL1BMZ5
to purchase the bonus exercises.