Start with just the bass and melody

I’ve been practicing my classical guitar playing recently and I’ve been challenging myself by sight reading songs that aren’t arranged for classical guitar. Recently it’s been Christmas songs or other songs I have arranged for piano.

Start with just the bass and melody is what I’ve been doing. If I can play the bass note and the melody on top and find a way to make that fit on the guitar then I know I’ll be able to add to it later. But that’s where you need to start.

Start with just the bass and melody.

Focus on only two lines first. Then you can fill out the chords later. It’s good sight reading practice for me and helps me practice letting two different lines ring out on the guitar.

This same thing can be said about songs on piano too. If it’s a song that looks difficult start by learning just the bass and the melody first. Make sure that you can play those two pieces together. Then once that’s comfortable add in the other stuff in the middle to fill out the arrangement.

It could even be generalized to composing music in some cases. If you have a melody, figure out a bass line for that melody. Then once that’s together figure out what chords you want on top of that bass line.

This can help simplify the process of learning a song or creating a song because it gives you a few steps to take, rather than just playing the song as written from the very beginning. It breaks it down into smaller, more easily learnable, pieces.

ISJ