Quote:
Talan Va'lash - 5/10/2006 8:59 PM
If you are looking to play guitar for a living, learn to read music as fluently as a concert violinist.
I can't stress enough how getting and keeping many gigs is dependant on this.
Playing in bands is all well and good but chances are, if you want to make a living as a musician, at some point you will need to do studio work or gig as a hired instrumentalist.
At least 4/5 session gigs will require you to play some pre-written music, either alone in a sound booth or with a live group. It may even be 9/10. Even the ones that are in essence "just comp over these changes, drums are in your monitor, we're doing the other parts later" they'll still give you some weird music (you can usually tell if the arranger is a pianist if he writes out every chord of the guitar part, sometimes, in voicings so close they're physically impossible to play on a guitar heh.) Though in this case you can usually bs your way through it and just read the changes.
Heh, though a couple times I've done sessions where the instructions were "Just play a solo over this track." Then you listen to the cut once, and cue up the solo section and give em a solo in whatever style they want.
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I do a fair amount of studio work (the real deal, not recording in a friends basement lol), and I agree completely. My band runs much like a bunch of session players getting together...the songs are written before hand, then we sit with the producer (who drums) who tells us what he wants to hear---then we do it! lol. most of the musicians in our band have extensive experience (international tours, music degrees, you name it)--minus myself--so it tends to turn out well.
I've learned to read music through my classical studies, and my own sight reading practice, which includes going through trumpet, violin, voice (non polyphonic stuff) and just reading start to finish without stopping. A local professor told me to try it once, seems to work well for me.
Every guitarist should learn to read, IMO, to at least help them understand phrasing and RHYTHM. All too often I walk into a guitar store and see some kirk hammet wannabee slop out 23048230 notes with no direction or purpose...or even rhythm...
I'm going to university for music in september, actually. I went to your site and noticed you go to berklee. very cool! i was thinking of applying because Canada only recently had one of it's universities start a music program where you can play electric guitar......so I'm going to do that for now, and see what the future holds.
And yes...piano voicings can be a b*tch! Unfortunatly, the only way guitarists can make piano players suffer is by not knowing the names of the chords they are playing...lol.