Sight Reader
What it’s for
The Sight Reader is where every piece in the Guitar Library is read, heard and practised. Each score is engraved in your browser from the music file, so you see clean, properly spaced notation at any size, not a scan of an old page. Press play and you hear the piece while a cursor moves through the score with the music, note by note, so your eye learns to keep pace with the sound. Slow it down, add a click, start from any bar, and it scrolls for you. Switch on TAB and guitar TAB appears under the notation, in whichever position on the neck you choose.
It’s built for sight-reading, too. Pick a grade and it hands you a piece at that level that you didn’t choose: the only honest way to practise reading is to read something you haven’t seen.
On Pro, you can record yourself playing along. The Sight Reader lays your take under the reference, bar by bar, and shows you where your time held, where you pushed ahead and where you fell behind, with the two lined up so you can hear it as well as see it. Loop the bars that moved, and keep the recording if you want it. Your audio never leaves your computer.
Who it’s for
Anyone learning to read music on the guitar, from Grade 1 up, and any player who wants to keep their reading sharp. Teachers can use it to hear a piece before setting it, and to give students something to read every day at the right level.
Free and Pro
Free Open to everyone, including visitors who aren’t signed in:
- Every piece at Grades 1–3, and the whole Guitar Loot collection at every grade
- Playback, tempo, cursor, metronome, count-in, zoom, Page and Scroll views
- TAB under the notation, with the position slider
- Picking a piece at random by grade, for Grades 1–3
Free With a free account:
- Rate This Piece: your own star rating on every piece
- Continue reading follows you from device to device
Pro Pro:
- Every piece in the library, Grades 1 to 8, and picking at random from Grades 4–8
- Record a take: record yourself against any piece and review your timing bar by bar
Finding something to read
Open the Sight Reader on its own and it starts on Pick a grade to start reading.
- Quick pick by grade — press a grade and the Sight Reader opens a piece at that grade, chosen at random. Read it through once without stopping before you press play. For another, go back to the start screen with your browser’s back button and press the grade again.
- Continue reading — your last piece, with Resume →. Signed in, it follows you to your other devices: read on the laptop, carry on on the iPad.
- Guitar Loot collection and Browse the full library → take you to the music to choose a piece yourself.
Any piece you open from the Guitar Library or the Guitar Loot page comes straight here. ← Library, at the top left, takes you back.
The control bar
Across the top: ← Library, the piece’s title and composer, and its grade. Then the controls, from left to right. On a phone or a tablet held upright, the title sits on the first line and the controls wrap onto the lines below it.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| ▶ / ■ | Plays the piece from the start, or from the bar you chose; press again to stop. The Space bar does the same. |
| ● | Record a take (Pro). See Record a take below. |
| 1× | Tempo: 0.5×, 0.75×, 1× or 1.25× the speed in the tempo mark above the music (see Tempo marks). |
| Ball / Line | The cursor: a ball on the note that’s sounding, or a line through the stave. |
| Piano / Guitar | The sound of the playback. Choose Guitar and pick Electric, Nylon or Steel beside it. See The sound. |
| Metro | A metronome click right through the playback. |
| Count-in | One bar of clicks before the music starts. On to begin with. |
| − 100% + | Zoom. |
| ⚙ | Preferences: the sound of the playback (EQ presets, reverb and compression) and your display settings. They apply across the GMI apps. Each sound keeps its own compression, so Nylon can stay open and natural while Electric has more squeeze. |
| ? | Help, and a link to this guide. |
| Page / Scroll | Page wraps the music line by line, like a printed page. Scroll lays the whole piece out on one long line that moves along as it plays. (On a phone the Sight Reader uses Page.) |
The Sight Reader remembers your choice of sound, metronome and count-in for next time.
The sound
- Piano — a sampled concert grand.
- Guitar — three real guitars, each recorded note by note by Ged Brockie, at three dynamic levels with two takes of each note, so a phrase never sounds like one note copied: Electric (a Telecaster), Nylon (classical guitar, the natural voice for most of the library) and Steel (steel-string acoustic).
Guitar sounds an octave lower than written. Guitar music is written an octave above the notes the guitar actually plays, so it sits on the treble stave. With Guitar chosen, the Sight Reader plays the music at the guitar’s real pitch, exactly as it sounds when you play it. Piano plays the notes at the pitch they’re written. Scores written with the guitar clef (the treble clef with a small 8 under it) already show that octave, so they play as written.
Playing and following the score
Press ▶ and, after the count-in, the piece plays while the cursor moves through the score with the music. The page scrolls itself, so the line being played stays in view.
- Start from any bar — double-click a bar (double-tap on a phone or tablet) and playback starts there, after the count-in if it’s on. It’s the quickest way to work on one passage.
- Reading ahead — in Page view, each new line moves up near the top of the screen, and the line after it comes into view well before you reach it.
- Repeats, D.C. and D.S. — playback follows them. In Page view, about a bar before the music jumps back, the line it jumps to is shown at the top of the score, so you can read ahead to it, just as a page-turner would.
- Slow practice — set 0.75× or 0.5× and switch on Metro. When you can read it cleanly at one speed, go up to the next.
A handful of pieces are marked for silent reading. They change tempo or metre in ways that need a player’s judgement, so the Sight Reader shows the score without playback; read them on your own. If you’d like to record one for GMI members, the note under the title tells you how to send it in.
Tempo marks
Every piece shows its tempo above the first bar, and playback follows it.
- Where the music has its own tempo mark, it’s shown as written.
- Many traditional tunes were printed with no speed at all, just the kind of tune. For those, the Sight Reader suggests one, shown in brackets, for example Jig (♩. = 96). It’s a comfortable reading speed, a little below session pace.
- The tempo control scales whatever the mark says: at 0.75×, a jig marked ♩. = 96 plays at 72.
TAB and positions on the neck
Every piece can be read from the notation alone, or with guitar TAB underneath it. The TAB bar sits on the score, just above the music.
- TAB — switches the TAB on and off. The Sight Reader remembers your choice.
- Position on the neck — takes you up the neck in seven steps. The marks under the slider are real positions, named by where your second finger sits: over the 2nd fret is 1st (open) position, over the 3rd fret is 2nd position, over the 5th is 4th position, and so on. If a piece can be played in open position, the slider starts there.
- Move the slider and the TAB shows the same music played in that position. The line beside the slider gives the frets, which of the seven major scale patterns the position uses, and the key.
- The fingering follows that scale pattern wherever it can, keeping the hand within four frets and a one-fret stretch either side. A note the hand can’t reach from the position is shown in amber, and the line beside the slider says how many there are.
Pieces that come with their own TAB show it exactly as written, and the slider is greyed out. Switch TAB off to read one of those pieces from the notation only.
About the piece
Beside the score (below it on a phone) you’ll find the piece’s Key, Time Signature, Grade and Era, and, where there are some, notes on the piece under About this piece. The arranger’s credit sits under the title, and the bar at the foot of the page gives the number of bars.
- Rate This Piece — signed in, give it one to five stars. The rating is yours and is kept with your account.
- Recording welcome — put your own performance of the piece on your SoundCloud, YouTube or Vimeo and send GMI the link with Send your link →. The best are featured with the piece, credited to you. GMI doesn’t store your audio or video: your performance stays on your own account.
- To help you play this — under the score, GMI books that cover the piece or its style.
Record a take (Pro)
Recording yourself is the most direct way to find out what your time is really doing. Record a take and the Sight Reader puts your playing directly under the reference, bar for bar, with a timing lane between them, so you can see and hear where you held the pulse, where you rushed and where you dragged.
It measures time, not notes: it doesn’t mark wrong notes or judge your tone. That’s your ear’s job, and the side-by-side listening is there to help it.
Before your first take
Press ● in the control bar, or Record a take on the card above the score (Not now hides the card for this piece). The Take review panel opens above the score.
- Allow microphone, and choose your microphone or audio interface from the list. The meter shows your level.
- Put on wired headphones and tick I’m wearing wired headphones. The reference mustn’t reach the microphone, and Bluetooth headphones add too much delay for the two lanes to line up.
- Check my level: play a few bars the way you’ll play the piece, loud notes included. If it says too loud, turn the input down and check again. If you know your setup, Skip, I know my setup.
- If you want longer to settle before the piece starts, set Extra count-in to 1 or 2 bars.
- Choose Timing feedback: Strict tempo measures you against the click; Rubato is for pieces where you’re stretching and pulling the time on purpose, and describes how you shaped it instead.
If Record take is greyed out, the line beside it says why: the microphone isn’t allowed yet, the headphones box isn’t ticked, or the level hasn’t been checked.
Decide before you press Record whether you want TAB on or off: the take is labelled with how you read it, and TAB can’t be switched while a take is recording.
Once everything’s set, the setup folds down to a single line (your microphone, wired headphones, level checked), so more of the music stays on screen. Change setup opens it again.
Recording
Press Record take and follow the cues: Stay quiet for a moment, play one note on each of four clicks (any note, clearly picked: this is how the Sight Reader lines your lane up with the reference), then the count-in, then Play. The reference plays in your headphones while you record. While you’re recording, the panel shrinks to the Stop button and the cues, so the music has the screen. When the piece ends, the review appears.
Reviewing your take
- The lanes — Bars (numbered as in the score), Reference, You, and Timing, which rises towards Ahead where you were early and falls towards Behind where you were late. −, + and Fit zoom the lanes.
- Listen — ▶ plays the take; choose Reference, Both or You, and set the Volume. With effects plays it through your own EQ and reverb from ⚙.
- Loop — drag across the bar numbers to loop those bars; Clear loop lets the whole take play again.
- Line up by ear — if the lanes look a fraction out, nudge yours ‹ Earlier or Later › until the two sound together, then Re-check timing.
- The findings — beside the controls (below them on a smaller screen), in plain words: how many bars were steady, then each place you rushed or dragged and the bar where you settled back. Bars are named by their numbers in the score; second time through a repeat or D.C., they’re numbered 16·2 and so on, and an opening pickup bar is called the pickup (anacrusis). If there’s a lot of give and take, it suggests switching to Rubato. Hide feedback tucks the findings away and Show feedback brings them back; the Sight Reader remembers which you chose.
Keeping a take
GMI does not store your audio. Your take is recorded and analysed in your browser and is never uploaded. To keep it, use Download: Your take on its own, or With the reference. Both are WAV files, dry (no EQ or reverb), ready to edit, and named with the piece, the tempo, how you read it and the date, for example GMI-Premium_YE-BANKS-AND-BRAES-96-bpm-notation-only_2026-10-07.wav. Record another take or leave the page, and any take you haven’t downloaded is gone. If you go to leave with a take you haven’t downloaded, the Sight Reader stops you first and offers to download it.
Hide folds the panel away while you read; Close shuts it. The take recorder works best in Chrome, Edge or Firefox on a computer.
Your takes
Your takes, under the review, lists the takes you’ve recorded, newest first (the latest three, with Show all for the rest): the piece and tempo, the day, date and time, how long it was, and how you read it: Recorded from music notation only, Recorded with TAB visible, 7th position, or Recorded with the piece’s own TAB visible. A take you downloaded shows a tick and the file name to look for in your Downloads folder. One you didn’t download says so plainly: that recording no longer exists. The take still on screen is marked Not downloaded yet as a reminder.
The note at the top of the list says it plainly: GMI never keeps your audio, only a written record of each take (its tempo, the timing findings, and whether you downloaded it). That record is kept in your account, so you’ll see it on any device, and in My Library along with the rest of your saved work, where you can also download the list as a text file. “Downloaded” means you pressed Download: if your browser asked where to save the file and you cancelled, the list can’t know. To remove an entry, press ×.
Report, beside each take, downloads a written report as a text file: the piece, tempo, how you read it, the date and time, the length, whether you kept the audio, and the findings from the review (how many bars were steady, and each place you rushed or dragged). It’s handy for a teacher, or for your own practice notes. The findings are kept with the take, so long after the recording has gone, Report in Your takes still downloads them, and My Library shows the headline (for example Steady bars: 12 of 18) on the take’s line.
A way to use it: read it, record it, review it
- Choose a piece at your grade and play it along with the reference until you know the notes. The review finds slips you didn’t know about; it can’t help with notes you haven’t learned yet.
- Record a take at a speed you can manage, and Download it before you do anything else.
- Read the findings, loop the bars that moved, and practise just those bars slowly until each is clean three times in a row.
- Record again a speed step faster, download it, and compare the two in Your takes: the tempo and the steady bars side by side show you exactly what the practice did.
Player Projects Unit 4, Read it, record it, review it, takes you through this as a project, with a check, a quiz and a place to share your performance by link. See the Player Projects Guide.
Works with
- Guitar Library — every piece opens here, and ← Library takes you back to the composer you came from.
- Guitar Loot — the free collection of Renaissance and Baroque arrangements opens here.
- ⚙ Preferences — the same sound settings as the other GMI apps, including the choice of Piano or Guitar (Electric, Nylon or Steel).
Try it
- On the start screen, press Grade 2. Read the piece through once, in your head or on the guitar, without stopping. Then press ▶ and check yourself against it.
- Set the tempo to 0.75×, switch on Metro, and play along with the reference.
- Double-click the bar you found hardest and play from there, three times.
- Switch on TAB and move the slider from Open to the top position. Watch the same music move up the neck, then pick the position that suits the piece and play it there.
- On Pro, record a take of the same piece. Look at the Timing lane, loop the bar that moved most, and record again.
