Third Position Sight Reading Study

In sight reading a piece of music, there are four steps you can go through to put yourself "into
position to nail a piece the very first time you see it.
1. Determine the key. Work the scale for that key up and down the bass a bit until your fingers
know which notes should be sharped or flatted.
2. Find the lowest note in the piece and the highest note in the piece.
3. Now work the proper scale for the key between the low and high notes.
4. Scan the piece for notes outside the key and sections which will require shifts up and down the
fretboard.
Let's apply this step-by-step process to the piece of music on the following page, shall we?
Step 1: In the following 3rd Position Etude (etude is just a fancy French word for "study) we see
three flats on the key signature. If a piece is placed on the music stand in front of you and you're given
just a couple minutes to look it over before you're expected to read it, the quicker you can identify the key
signature, the more time you have to work through the other three steps.
If you've memorized your key signatures then, three flats tells us we're either in the key of E-flat
Major or C minor. Either way, it comes down to the same notes. Work your E-flat Major scale around
your bass a bit until the flatted notes in that scale come naturally.
Step 2: Scanning quickly through every note, the lowest note in the entire piece is the low G at
the 3rd fret E-string. The highest note is the 2nd octave C, which we can fret conveniently close to that
low G note up at the 5th fret G-string.
Step 3: At this point, we know the key, we know the low note, and we know the high note. We
won't have to worry about step 4 because all the notes stay in the key and the range is small enough to
keep in a single position. All that remains then is to work the notes of the proper scale between the low
note and the high note.
In this piece, our low note is G. In the key of E-flat, G translates to the third note of the scale - so
we'll be working in the mode of G Phrygian. The concept of modes will be very important for your sight
reading. For more on the modes, search "musical mode at Wikipedia. (God bless the Internet!)
So here's every single note you'll need to know for the piece on the following page:
The entire piece can be played in "3rd position, meaning a finger per fret starting at the third fret.
When you set down to read a piece for the first time, instead of going straight into the reading,
reading each note individually, trying to remember which notes get flatted, deciding where to fret each
note as you encounter them, there is just no comparison to how much easier you'll be making it on
yourself when you've limited the choices you have to make down to the proper scale. Get that scale
under your fingers before you begin reading and you'll be amazed at how much easier the reading comes.