Silver City, New Mexico, USA
Reading 2 Part Guitar Music
Sometimes it can be confusing to read guitar music since it can have up to four different lines of music. Usually when the stems go up they indicate the melody line, when they go down the bass line. Each line has to have as many beats as are indicated in the time signature.
The first note played would be the bass since the melody has a rest on the first beat.
While the low A keeps sounding you would play the second and third beat of the melody.
It is possible to have more than 2 lines of music, but the same rules as above would still be valid.
Once you have counted the beats of each melody line as in the above example, you can simplify it to the following version.
Remember: Notes that are written in a vertical line are supposed to be played at the same time.
