Hello??? Everybody??? He's 12 and yeah, learning to read music will help a lot. But in the now...
It's so obvious...
The kid's gotta learn how to read and write TABS! Those handy-dandy little charts that kinda look like sheet music but with numbers instead of half-notes, quarter-notes, whole-notes, etc. Don't play dumb with me. You know what they are.
Here's what I'm gonna do. Gonna give ya some links. Nothing out of this world, nothing pricey. In fact everything I'm sharing is 100% free. Site number one(and this is key, because this specific page names all the strings from thinnest to thickest which is exactly how we read and write TABS)
http://justinguitar.com/html/general_html/StringNames.html Very important. Let him use that site and it's resources. It will get him on the right track in the now(while still searching for a good private teacher or software). It also has lessons on music technique, and transcription. It's pretty darned cool, and not just saying that because it's my main site for lessons
. BTW I'm still a beginner, but this stuff well, it's out there, just gotta look for it ya know?
Now for the second link.
http://power-tab.net Here's a screenshot of this freeware application
http://www.power-tab.net/images/ptev17_800x600.gif See there? If he can write TABS for his songs, then he can use the app to translate the TAB to well, for lack of a better word, musical notation(though TAB's a form of that and I'll get teased for this bit). You know, the music notes we're all used to seeing. Every Good Boy Does Fine Eventually -- those notes. Yeah?
So now he's got everything to help him immediately. Doesn't have to learn everything all at once, just a couple of simple things yeah? Then he uses the music notes software linked to on Justin's site to practice sight reading music
. He'll get the hang in his own time, no worries
.