Guitarists are a unique breed. Chances are, if you play guitar, you are either self-taught, or have taken a small number of lessons via a friend or guitar teacher. If you were a pianist, you would have learned the instrument through years of private study, which would include both music theory lessons, and heavy focus on “sight reading”.
There is nothing wrong with taking a more informal approach to learning music, but one of the basic skills that gets invariably ignored is learning to read music. Learning to sight read takes a reasonable amount of work, without immediate benefit, and it is these sort of skills that self-taught musicians tend to avoid.
If you want to get serious about a career in the music industry, learning to read music really is essential. For the casual guitarist, however, there is a guitar-centric method of music notation called guitar tablature, which while flawed, provides a simple and easy to read way of sharing music with other guitarists. Read on to learn more about how to decipher guitar tablature.