Lesson 41 / 41 8 min
Putting it all together
Read a complete Guitar Pro-style score, plus a routine for reading any new piece.
You now know every symbol you'll meet in guitar music. This last lesson shows how they come together in a real score — the kind you'll find in Guitar Pro, Songsterr, guitar magazines and transcription books — and gives you a routine for reading anything new.
How a guitar score is laid out
Professional guitar scores put standard notation on top and tab right underneath, lined up note for note, with the same bar lines through both. Read each staff for what it does best:
- From the notation: rhythm, rests, ties, tuplets, the key, dynamics and articulations, and the shape of the melody.
- From the tab: the string and fret for every note, and the techniques (bends, slides, harmonics…).
Above the first line you'll usually find:
- Title, composer and the instrument/track name (e.g. "Lead guitar").
- Tuning — "Standard", "Drop D", "½ step down: E♭ A♭ D♭ G♭ B♭ E♭", or circled string numbers like ⑥ = D.
- Capo position, if any.
- Tempo — a metronome mark (♩ = 120) and maybe a style ("Moderate rock").
- Feel — "Swing", "Shuffle" or the triplet equation (two eighths = a triplet quarter–eighth).
- Chord diagrams for the chords used in the song.
Guitar Pro and Songsterr can also hide the notation and show tab with rhythm — stems and beams under the tab — exactly like the Tab view of the examples here.
A complete piece
Here is a short original piece that uses most of what you've learned: sections, repeats with first and second endings, chord names, palm muting, accents, dynamics, a fermata, then a lead part with a triplet, a bend, vibrato, a slide, a pull-off and a tie, and a big final chord with a crescendo. Before pressing Play, try to read it and trace the route through the repeats.
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The route: A (bars 1–3), back to the start, A again with the second ending, then B and C.
A blues lick, Guitar Pro style
This lick in A is played with a swing feel. It uses a triplet, a full bend, vibrato, a slide, a pull-off and a tie into the last bar:
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A sight-reading study
This melody in G uses only the first position. Read it from the notation first — name the notes, count the rhythm — and use the tab only to check yourself. Then switch the view to Tab and notice how much harder the rhythm is without the notation.
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How to read any new piece
Before you play a note, spend a minute scanning:
- Header — tuning, capo, tempo, feel (swing or straight).
- Clef, key signature and time signature — what key, how many beats, simple or compound.
- Road map — repeats, endings, D.C./D.S., segno, coda, multi-bar rests.
- Hard spots — fast rhythms, tuplets, accidentals, position shifts, unusual techniques. Check the score's legend for anything new.
- Dynamics and articulation — where it gets loud or soft, short or smooth.
Then play:
- Start slowly enough that you never stop. Keeping time matters more than playing every note.
- Count out loud or keep the metronome on.
- Look ahead — read the next beat while playing the current one.
- Practice the hard bars on their own with Loop, then put them back in context.
A checklist of everything you can now read
- Pitch: staff, treble/bass/C clefs, guitar's octave treble clef, ledger lines, 8va/8vb/15ma.
- Rhythm: note values from whole notes to 64ths, rests, dots and double dots, ties, beams, syncopation.
- Meter: simple, compound and odd time signatures, C and ¢, time changes, pickups, tuplets, swing.
- Keys: sharps, flats, naturals, double sharps and flats, courtesy accidentals, key signatures and key changes.
- Road maps: bar lines, repeats, endings, D.C., D.S., Fine, Coda, bar repeats, multi-bar rests, rehearsal marks.
- Expression: dynamics, hairpins, tempo words and changes, fermatas, articulations, slurs, ornaments.
- Guitar: fingerings, string numbers, positions and barres, two voices, chord symbols and diagrams, slash and rhythm notation, pick and strum directions, rolled chords, capo and tunings.
- Techniques: hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, bends, vibrato, whammy bar, all four kinds of harmonics, tapping, palm muting, dead and ghost notes, let ring, tremolo picking, trills.
- Text tab: every common symbol from internet tabs.
Keep reading
Fluency comes from volume: read a little every day. Pick easy pieces — simple melodies, classical studies, method books, transcriptions of songs you know — and play them slowly with the notation and tab side by side. Over time, switch to Notation only.