6 Jazz Guitar Sight Reading Exercises

Jazz guitar sight reading exercises are an important part of learning how to play
jazz guitar. Not every jazz guitarist chooses to read dots, but reading music is an
essential skill that anyone can learn.

As a jazz guitar student myself I found sight reading difficult and quite frustrating
to begin with. Mainly because I did not know how to structure or break down jazz
guitar sight reading exercises.

Other musicians used to suggest sight reading anything I could get my hands on.
While this was potentially good advice, unfortunately for me the first book that I
“started” with was the Charlie Parker Omnibook.

This book is great for intermediate to advanced readers, but it can certainly be
overwhelming if you are new to jazz guitar sight reading exercises.

The jazz guitar sight reading exercises in this article present the varied and
different jazz guitar reading styles. When learning to sight read I recommend
focusing on the different elements of reading such as pitch, rhythm, and chords
up as separate studies.

Because this is a jazz guitar sight reading exercise article there is no audio or
tab. But if there is enough interest I will make a YouTube video demonstrating
how each of the exercises should be played to use as a reference.

Jazz Guitar Sight Reading Exercises 1 — Melodies

The easiest and usually most enjoyable style of sight reading for most guitar
players is reading melodies.

Though it may not considered to true sight reading because you may already
know the piece, sight reading melodies is still an important part of sight reading
practice.

The melodies can be anything of your choice. Be it a standard from the jazz real
book, a television theme, video game tune, a film title track, or even a traditional
folk song.
Due to copyright reasons I can’t include specific notation for different themes in
this article, but here are some fun suggestions that have worked well in my own
teaching practice.

 Jingle Bells — Nice and easy melody that can be played in open position
 Happy Birthday To You — Recommended for learning 3/4 time
 Star Wars Theme — Effective study of triplets
 Simpsons Theme — Introduces reading one accidental

Jazz Guitar Sight Reading Exercises 2 – Eighth Notes in Bb

One of the best ways to sight read in all keys is to Isolate one key at a time while
keeping the same rhythmic value.

By doing this you are able to fully concentrate on recognizing pitches and not
worry about rhythms.

The following sight reading exercise is in the jazz friendly key of Bb and uses
continuous eighth notes.

This jazz guitar sight reading exercise was composed around the 6th position of
the guitar neck. In terms of range the etude spans a two octave Bb major scale.

Pay special attention to the tricky interval patterns in bar 4 and try to notice the
tetra chords and diatonic triads. Once you can play this jazz guitar sight reading
exercise fluently at a reasonable tempo, have a go at either transposing this into
a different key or writing your own study in 1 key with 1 rhythm.
 Jazz Guitar Sight Reading Exercises 3 — Jazz Waltz

Playing in different time signatures and learning to read the low open string notes
on guitar is important part of jazz guitar sight reading exercises.

Both of these challenges are presented in the following jazz waltz etude which
features harmony based off “All The Things You Are” transposed into E minor to
accommodate the open strings.

Keep the first two notes of every bar ringing while you play the other notes.
 Jazz Guitar Sight Reading Exercises 4 — Blues

Alongside bebop material, chords are difficult to read on guitar because there are
several notes within one voicing to find.

This next jazz guitar sight reading exercise is a cyclic chord study that starts on a
C13 chord which eventually resolves to a quartal C major voicing.

Once the repetitive chordal pattern of this study has been figured out, it shouldn’t
be as fearsome as it looks on the dots.

Jazz Guitar Sight Reading Exercises 5 — Cyclic Chords

Alongside bebop material, chords are difficult to read on guitar because there are
several notes within one voicing to find.

This next jazz guitar sight reading exercise is a cyclic chord study that starts on a
C13 chord and eventually works it way to a quartal Cmajor voicing.
Once the chordal pattern of this study is stopped, it shouldn’t be as fearsome as
it looks on the dots.