I'm going to try to learn to sight read. Unfortunately some of the only sheet music I have is the FZ Guitar Book, so it's going to be a steep learning curve! I've had the book for years and used to transcribe parts into TAB so that I could learn them, which took a lot of time (something I now don't have much of), so I thought it was time I do this properly and learn to read.
Some of the exercises suggested on line include scrawling down random notes and then trying to play them and also just reading any music you can get your hands on everyday with or without your guitar. Given the number of notes in the FZ guitar book, just opening at any page and reading one or two lines would be a good place to start - even if it is just the pitches, not the rhythms...
Yes, rhythmically, the FZ guitar book is a whole other planet although there is a Guitar Player article on Steve Vai's web page, (http://vai.com/LittleBlackDots/tempomental.html) that explained how he worked them out quite well - you need a calculator and some graph paper though....
The one thing to remember is sight reading is like learning a foreign language: Brush up on it everyday in order to get it right. I can sight read in C major notation ( it's the easiest material to read since the c major scale notes are in a few positions on the neck as opposed to other scales ). But in order to get there, I had to learn how to read from the Berkeley Music book series, which is designed to have you sight read in different keys along the neck and in different positions.
One of the BIG things that helped BIG TIME when it came to reading was transcribing solos. The easiest ones to transcribe come from Horace Silver, a jazz pianist out of the Hard Bop era. His piano parts were sparse but mostly played as eighth note runs which helped me to learn the fretboad. I have transcribed some of Frank's music ( namely some stuff from " Guitar " or " The Grand Wazoo." ). Start easy then over a period of months increase the intensity. Trying to read " Shut Up. . . " is a great idea. But it helped me first to start gradually. Good luck!!
Thanks for the hints guys. I'll let you know how I get on....
I would suggest first learning to sight read snare drum parts. Look up snare drum goes to the zoo http://www.brianjharris.com/ (Don't laugh it works)!
Well, we'll see, Resolutions are made to be broken..... but reading something everyday has got to help. The trickiest part seems to be deciding on what fingering to use 'on-the-fly'...
I've looked at a few OCR to MIDI apps - does anyone recomend a good one?
I also tried a couple of audio-to-midi apps, but they are fairly limited - I might just get a GK2 midi pickup for recording midi parts etc... and then trying to understand the resulting score....
I don't know what your sight reading ability is at, but if you want to learn to sight-read, I'd suggest going through Bela Bartok's Mikrokosmos series. I know that it's technically for piano but think about how happy you'll be to go back to single notes after that. ;)