It's January (again) and time to renew your resolution to start sightreading (again). Our first sightreading lesson (Jan2024) stressed the importance of learning each note in two positions (to enforce context awareness) and listening to the blue note to find seventh position without looking at the fretboard (to keep your eyes on the music at all times).
This month's sightreading handout* is the next step. You'll learn just two new notes (in yellow), but don't try learning them by looking at the ordinary fretboard diagram above. Instead, the back of the handout extends our "musical fretboard diagram" so that you can imprint on how the notes actually appear on the staff while learning how to finger them. Your brain will direct your fingers while your eyes are busy recognizing notes in the music. You never need to watch your fingers or the fretboard in these lessons.
Adding those two new notes completes the full octave scale above middle C, and each of the three exercises in this lesson includes every note of that scale. So this is a good memory workout for what you learned before as well as the new notes. Like last year, each exercise has a clue that you'll appreciate once you play and recognize the tune. Get with the program and enjoy reading some music (again).