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This is such a basic question but an answer to this would solve a lot of mysteries for me. Basically, how the heck do guitarists sight read?

I have experience in woodwind instruments where there is only one way to play a given note; I'm learning guitar and this is a little mysterious to me.

Example:

enter image description here

For the first two notes: you could play it on the first and second strings OR as the tab indicates on the open 3rd and 4th strings open. Obviously the better choice is the second because the following notes will be easier and the entire progression is easier in general this way.

The question: how the HECK would a sight reader know this in advance? How would they make the decision on the fly to use one method over the other? Any sage wisdom would be helpful for me.

jsinglet
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    It's really hard to read something so badly notated. All of those sharps should be notated (enharmonically) as flats. – PiedPiper Apr 29 '21 at 08:16
  • @PiedPiper - You're right; this is a pretty poorly notated version of the "Smoke on the Water" riff. – Dekkadeci Apr 29 '21 at 12:25
  • But yup, depite the example, sight reading on guitar can be a really finickety art. So tricky that even in some quite high profile situations flawless sight reading of fully arranged parts is not expected. It can be helped a lot by position markings, however. The position marking shows the group of frets you will be working with and as such narrows down the notes to a specific fingering or voicing. That said, they aren't always present (the markings) and with or without them it just takes a lot of practice and familiarisation with the fingerboard. – OwenM Apr 29 '21 at 18:51
  • @OwenM that sounds like an answer. I've voted to reopen this question because the supposed duplicate isn't. The other question is effectively "is music notation for guitar ambiguous," while this question goes farther: "how do guitarists resolve notational ambiguities on sight?" – phoog Apr 30 '21 at 18:19
  • Yes @phoog this is exactly my question. Coming from a single noted instrument the answer is essentially black magic. I've been reading a bit and it looks like there are various positioning systems, but that doesn't resolve how a user of such a system would be able to resolve those problems on the fly in relation to the bars that are coming up (or had previously been played.) – jsinglet May 01 '21 at 14:28
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    I am kind of happy to flesh out an answer if it does get re-opened, but ggcg's post on the alleged duplicate question (the one BELOW the accepted answer) does a better job than me explaining I think. I guess I could embelish by giving examples. Essentially practice, positions and pattern recognition! – OwenM May 01 '21 at 21:15

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