Firstly, I'd like to say that I learned to read standard music notation many years age. When I was 12 or 13 years old I played in the school band. At the time I was playing the clarinet, not my ideal choice of instruments, but the guitar wasn't an available option at school. Although the clarinet wasn't the instrument I

ultimately chose to pursue throughout my music career, it did get me active in learning music, and most importantly I learned to read music early on.

More than a few of the posts that I read in the forum I previously mentioned were by guys that stated there was really no reason to learn to read music when you can get the same information via guitar tab. I'm here to say, don't believe that!! I will be the first to say that I do believe that knowing how to 'read' tablature is a great convenience, but it shouldn't be assumed that it can be used 'in place of' learning to read music.

If you don't plan on making music a professional endeavor, then by all means learn tablature, copy the songs that you're interested in from CDs and go from there. However, if you truly want to be a professional musician, learning to read standard music notation is a must.

If you're going to put yourself 'out there' as a profesional guitarist, there will be times when you'll have to collaberate on musical projects and exchanging the music to such projects will be part of it. If you ever try to hand another instrumentatlists a TAB sheet, you'll actually depict yourself as a rank amateur. No professional musician or producer would ever work with you...they couldn't. Guitar TABS are just that 'GUITAR' tabs. They are just for the guitarist. A keyboardist isn't going to learn to decipher tablature to make up for the fact that some guitarist didn't put forth the effort necessary to learn what he/she needed to in order to make it in the field.

Also, what are you going to do if/WHEN you've got a potentially great offer to work on a project and a producer hands you the music to the project, but you can't read music ? I'll tell you, you're going to learn to read music immediately, not likely, or you're going to miss that great chance and become known as an amateur and never contacted again.

So, if you really love the guitar and plan on making it a career, do what you need to now...learn to read music. It is somewhat involved, but is very 'doable', it's not a matter of 'can I do it', it's just a matter of 'do I care enough about learing everything I can to become the best guitarist that I can possibly be'.

Just look around on the web, do some searches, there's many, many free sites where you can get everything that you need to become a proficient site reader. It's a little slow going at first, but it's something that you'll be extrememly glad that you achieved throughout your life, I promise you that. Get started today, you'll never regret it...you will regret not doing it however.

it will take to keep it going. There's nothing more that I would like than to have a useful site for aspiring guitarists, so I'm going to do everything I can to make it happen.

In the mean time, I'm going to be posting what I can, anything that may be useful to someone, anyone.

I was just flipping through a book on playing guitar. It's entitled, 'The Infinite Guitar', and is written by a fabulous guitarist, Chris Juergensen. This guy has paid his dues and put in the time and effort necessary to reach the upper limits of what can be accomplished when you set your mind to something. I highly recommend you get a copy of his book. Yoy can get more information at ChrisJuergensen.com.

I entitled this post 'Music Theory' because I caught a glimpse of a section of Chris's book about Music Theory. I'd just like to say that I realize many guitarists either seem to have the mindset that music theory is something that's maybe too hard to learn, or something that they don't need to learn.

Although you can get into some rather complicated aspects of music theory, what you need to learn from theory, is very doable....and very necessary. Obviously there are many musicians, not just guitarists that never bother to learn very much as far as theory goes. This doesn't mean that you can't become an excellent player...obviously. Although my theory knowledge isn't extensive, I know enough to help me tremendously. That being said, there are many, many players that I'm sure now less theory than myself, but are still better players. It just comes down to, if it helps you, why not do it ?

I can tell you, if you take some time to devote to learning some theory, you will never regret it. When you can hear the music, analyze it, and truly understand it, it opens up a whole different world to you as a musician.

If you're like me, and probably most players, you've spent your time listening to the same tracks over and over, trying to learn that blistering lead, or that different chord progression. Well, when you understand some of the theory behind the music, you can analyze what's being played, and then you can understand why it sounds like it does, and what is being played, even before you pick up the guitar. Believe me, that's better than just jumping all over the neck trying to see what fits.

Before I started to learn theory, I saw that the same chords would be used together in certain songs, but I didn't really understand the progressions. It makes it a lot easier to concentrate on your actual guitar playing technique, and not spend most of your time trying to decipher just what is being played.

I have a friend that studied, actually studied music from early on. When most of us where out partying, playing, and running around, he was hard at it. Needless to say, it paid off... very well. When I was trying to figure out the basic chords to a simple (now) classic rock song, he could just listen to music, understand the chord progression, and pick up a guitar (or sit at the piano) and play it.

I guess a good way to put it into words would be....use your ears and brain BEFORE, AND during your playing. It shouldn't just always be about picking up the axe and 'jamming'. It's fun, but there can be so much more.