By John Hart

This skill is essential for music students who want to learn to play music genres such as blues, country, folk, hip, jazz, pop, soul, and gospel music.  Instruments such as piano and guitar are commonly used as the musical backbone of these styles because they can sound more than one note at a time. Though sight-reading written notation is an important skill to acquire for any instrument, it is not required for reading chord charts.  This skill doesn’t usually take long to learn and gives the budding musician the satisfaction of producing music that is pleasing to the ear within weeks versus the years that it takes to learn to sight-read proficiently.