Sight-reading and the Modern Guitar - Three Continents One Dream

Since 1974, over 60% of the songs included in the Billboard Hot 100 have come from genres where the guitar has a prominent role. This is equivalent to more than 16,000 songs resonating for decades on radio stations, through sound systems, and in cinemas, shaping the U.S. music market and influencing popular culture around the globe. After an initial 25-year period of academic dismissal, many institutions adapted to the growing influence of popular music by introducing various tertiary-level courses for guitarists. Despite this, early observations suggest that the widespread use of staff notation in essential courses—such as those covering harmony, improvisation, theory, composition, and instrumental training—has created several challenges for many guitarists who struggle with sight-reading.

Previous studies have noted that sight-reading is especially difficult for guitarists and that they have been labelled as poor sight-readers within academia. However, these studies have largely focused on classical guitar without differentiating it from the popular electric guitar. Surprisingly, neither the variations in the skills required to play each of these instruments nor the differences in the strategies applied to their tuition have been closely examined.

This qualitative study aims to gain a pedagogical insight into the formal tuition of staff sight-reading for guitarists playing the electric guitar in genres different from classical music, who are denoted here as popular or modern guitarists. Through interviews and discussions with nine tertiary music tutors working in Australia, Canada, Colombia, England, New Zealand and the USA, this research offers a detailed examination of the role of sight-reading in the academic and professional development of modern guitarists. It also describes common issues encountered in their sight-reading instruction, presents a comprehensive set of strategies and resources used to overcome these challenges, and explores the differences between electric and classical guitar.