Reading in the Studio

Below is a fairly simple melody. The tempo was 85 bpm. I was asked to play it on acoustic guitar and lap steel, but with not too much sliding. There was no other music just click. The other elements would be dropped in and around it later. So the challenge is to make it musical or "play it with feeling", while playing alone.

When writing for guitar one should transpose up an octave to get the desired pitch. In other words if you want the guitarist to play middle C write the C on the second space from the top as in the first note of the second line in the chart below. But often composers forget to do that so I ask. In this case the writer indeed did want it up an octave.

Also the first note in fourth bar, second line, is a D. I kept thinking Db because normally one would write C# for the note before it.

It was simple but concentration was a must as it was easy to drop into some presupposed timing. Don't predict, just read. Again it was helpful to memorize the melody for the slide part so I could look at my slide for pitches. Enjoy!