Piano Forum
Piano Board => Student's Corner => Topic started by: pianoplayer51 on July 20, 2014, 07:53:24 PM
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I want to do better at sight reading. My sight reading is pretty awful to be honest. I have a six weeks summer break from my music studies whilst my school is closed for the summer break. My teacher has given me some light pieces to play over the holidays. What I want to do is take this 6 weeks and just do sight reading exercises because I want to become a fluent sight reader.
Is it a mistake to spend the 6 weeks doing sight reading only or do some sight reading and some playing of pieces? Sight reading is my downfall so the sooner I master it the better and here is my golden opportunity.
What do you guys think? thanks
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Don't do sight reading exercises, sight read through repertoire, then it's not a waste on two counts - your sight reading improves and your exposure to works by various composers broadens.
If your sight reading is poor, start with pieces about three grades below your current grade.
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Don't do sight reading exercises, sight read through repertoire, then it's not a waste on two counts - your sight reading improves and your exposure to works by various composers broadens.
If your sight reading is poor, start with pieces about three grades below your current grade.
Very well said!
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Agreed with the sightread repertoire suggestion above.
Get any hymn book with 4 part writing, and read through it. Hymns will enforce your understanding of harmonic progressions, voice leading, and intervalic relationships played with your fingers. If you want a further challenge, pick up a book on Bach chorales. Once you are familiar with these things you will be able to more easily pick up these patterns in more pianistic music, and be able to sort out the pianisms from the musical structure.
Play duets with a partner, or do some small ensemble work. Sight read with your ensemble partner. By working with another musician you will learn to prioritize tasks in the sight reading process.
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I have a problem with sight reading for the piano. I often think that there should be some software to help you tackle this problem, something that can present notes and can adjust tempo not type selection, key, etc.
I have never come across anything that I would recommend though...
Z
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Is it a mistake to spend the 6 weeks doing sight reading only or do some sight reading and some playing of pieces?
It could be a mistake. I think it depends a lot on your state of development. And this is all IMO of course.
Sightreading is not a single discrete skill that can be improved in isolation. It is a combination of functions. One of them, sometimes called prima facie sightreading, is probably what you're thinking of, where you see a note on the page and your finger flies to the right spot. That does need to be practiced, but it is a small part of what good sightreaders do. Most of what they do is pattern retrieval from the memory banks, and that requires the memory banks to be loaded first.
Sightreading is harder than preparing a piece, so you can only sightread a couple levels below your prepared piece skill. If you are a beginner, your skill is level 0 or 1. You can't effectively practice sightreading because you don't HAVE two levels to drop.
You need to get a couple levels up first. But then, you don't have enough patterns memorized. If you spent all your time sightreading you would not be loading your memory banks. So you need a balance.
Also, sightreading skill tends to be specific to the style you practice. Playing a lot of hymns will make you a great hymn sightreader. (and if you can play hymns, you are not a beginner anymore) It will not transfer very well to other types of music particularly those with less straighforward rhythms. Conversely, I've seen some fairly skilled players crash and burn trying to play hymns, because they haven't spent the time learning how to play that style at sight.
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There is some very good advice here.
In particular, I like what timothy42b said about sight-reading being not a single, discrete skill, but rather a combination of functions. What he said about the loaded memory banks and the rapid retrieval of information from them is also golden.
What quantum mentioned about hymns/Bach chorals, and sight-reading with a duet partner (whether another pianist, a singer, or other instrumentalist) in order to prioritize tasks, is also excellent advice.
I must add that developing excellence in reading takes quite a bit of time. There was a time in my life, around age 20, when I had already learned Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto in its entirety to a fairly high performance standard. Despite having this level of repertoire under my belt at that time, I still lacked sufficient reading ability to play hymns at sight like any decent church musician.
Two or three years of near-constant work on 4 hands duets with my partner has changed that completely, and I am now quite a literate musician. :)
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I'm a beginner, but I'll throw in my 2 cents worth.
I bought 6 of the 'Really Easy Piano' series, ones which had a lot of songs I know of.
I have been going from song to song, just playing with the right hand mostly. Once I've gotten to the end, I move onto the next song.
Having gone through the books several times in one evening, I feel my ability to find the notes quickly, and playing the notes on (in particular) 2 finger chords have increased dramatically.
My logic is, by not spending too much time on one song, I am not memorising it and have to play as I read. I am picking out songs I'd like to play more fully in the future, but it seems like a good exercise for me at the moment, and best of all - fun!
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My logic is, by not spending too much time on one song, I am not memorising it and have to play as I read. I am picking out songs I'd like to play more fully in the future, but it seems like a good exercise for me at the moment, and best of all - fun!
That's good for learning keyboard geography, which seems to be what you need at this stage in your development.
But by not spending too much time on any one song, you are not storing any patterns for retrieval. At some point you have to start doing that.
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I want to do better at sight reading. My sight reading is pretty awful to be honest. I have a six weeks summer break from my music studies whilst my school is closed for the summer break. My teacher has given me some light pieces to play over the holidays. What I want to do is take this 6 weeks and just do sight reading exercises because I want to become a fluent sight reader.
Is it a mistake to spend the 6 weeks doing sight reading only or do some sight reading and some playing of pieces? Sight reading is my downfall so the sooner I master it the better and here is my golden opportunity.
What do you guys think? thanks
From a prior post of March 14th:
["When I was young, I could memorize any new piece for my next lesson, so I never learned how to properly sight read. When I was in music school, the very best accompanist in the U.S. could not teach me how to read.
So, at the age of 50, I made up my mind that I could do it, and I did. Mind you, I am not a great sight reader, but I improved well enough to read through 44 piano concertos in 5 years.
Therefore, you need to realize that the physical skill of basic sight reading is exactly the same as learning how to type. It is familiarity with the keyboard, so you can get around without looking down.
The first book you get is "You Can Sight Read Vol.I," by Lorina Havill who taught it at Juilliard for years. It has exercises where you play single notes, double notes, triads, and then seventh chords up and down the piano in octave sections. You start out as slow as you can in order to obtain accuracy. Even though it doesn't seem possible at first, if you practice this every day for just a few minutes, you eventually get to where you can feel your way around.
Next, there is a ten book series entitled "Four Star Sight Reading and Ear Tests, Daily Exercises For Piano Students," by Boris Berlin. These are very short paperback books that contain very short pieces at various levels of sight reading. They have a mixture of all genres, including church hymnal scores. Also, they have sight singing drills and rhythmic practice sections, which are essential to sight reading.
I recommend that you get volumes 7-10. They are very inexpensive.
Set the metronome at the lowest possible setting where you can read without stopping, and then read for about 20 minutes a day, and no more. If you do more than that, it will turn into drudgery and you will hate it. A great idea is start every practice session by practicing your sight reading.
(That means: DO NOT PRACTICE SIGHT READING, EXCLUSIVELY, FOR THE NEXT SIX WEEKS!!)
Then, after you have read through to volume 10 at a slow and steady speed, then you go back to volume number seven, slightly increase the tempo, and then read through to volume 10.
This is the text they have used at the Royal College of Music, forever, because it works!
In about a year or two, your sight reading will have improved by about 300%.
A good basic yardstick is being able to sight read through Mozart or Haydn piano sonatas at a moderate tempo. From there, you can decide on whether you want to study accompanying and increase your ability, accordingly."]
The point is, which has never been discussed, is that when you learn any brain-based skill as a child, it is one thing. When you do not, as is your case, it is an entirely different set of circumstances which requires a specific set of remedies.
Good luck to you, and you may contact me by private message if you so desire.
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From a prior post of March 14th:
Rather than rehash the discussion about various aspects of this, I provide a link to the original (https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=1352.msg590087#msg590087).
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Therefore, you need to realize that the physical skill of basic sight reading is exactly the same as learning how to type. It is familiarity with the keyboard, so you can get around without looking down.
No. That's a necessary but not sufficient condition for good sightreading. Beginners do have to work on that, but complete mastery of it does not make one a good sightreader. Good sightreading is maybe 10% that and 90% more complex skills.
The point is, which has never been discussed, is that when you learn any brain-based skill as a child, it is one thing. When you do not, as is your case, it is an entirely different set of circumstances which requires a specific set of remedies.
That, I agree with, and we have not really figured out the best ways to teach some things to adults.
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That, I agree with, and we have not really figured out the best ways to teach some things to adults.
I have, because I had no other alternative.
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Sightreading is harder than preparing a piece, so you can only sightread a couple levels below your prepared piece skill. If you are a beginner, your skill is level 0 or 1. You can't effectively practice sightreading because you don't HAVE two levels to drop.
This is true, but as a novice i can sight read a single hand, and drop a couple of levels that way.
And sight reading the left hand of simple pieces may not be very challenging but does help with confidence and getting the feel of what successful sight reading should be like.
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This is true, but as a novice i can sight read a single hand, and drop a couple of levels that way.
And sight reading the left hand of simple pieces may not be very challenging but does help with confidence and getting the feel of what successful sight reading should be like.
Actually, sightreading the left hand of some common pattern like an Alberti bass is exactly what the feel of successful sightreading should be, IMO.
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My point is that "Sight Reading" is a skill. And, it is not some magical musical talent!
My late father, who could transpose anything at sight (in all twelve keys), could not successfully memorize anything!
For the record, the following pianists, who won the sight reading prizes at their respective Conservatories, were Claude Debussy, Philippe Entremont, and Sviatoslav Richter.
Does that not tell you something in term of their skill set s concert pianists? No, it does not.
It just means that they could learn a whole bunch of notes in a short period of time.
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Some useful comments here :D
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Two or three years of near-constant work on 4 hands duets with my partner has changed that completely, and I am now quite a literate musician. :)
Returning to this idea for a moment
Are you familiar at all with the ideas of Carmine Caruso, famous New York teacher of several instruments? he believed strongly in "timing in."
Some things are learned more efficiently when you are forced to play them in real time. I have some theories on why, and they differ a bit from Caruso's, but regardless it seems to work
Playing duets is an ideal way of playing in "real time"
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Playing duets is an ideal way of playing in "real time"
+100!
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My late father, who could transpose anything at sight (in all twelve keys), could not successfully memorize anything!
You are mistaken.
He may not have been able to play a piece without sheet music. That is one kind of memory. But he played fluently, therefore he had learned and memorized patterns. That is another kind of memory, a more important kind, especially for sightreading.
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You are mistaken.
He may not have been able to play a piece without sheet music. That is one kind of memory. But he played fluently, therefore he had learned and memorized patterns. That is another kind of memory, a more important kind, especially for sightreading.
No doubt he had indeed memorised some patterns. But the importance of memory in sightreading is greatly overstated. It's like suggesting that Shakespeare would be easier to read because you've memorised a lot of orders in which words might come from other reading. With original writing, the expected bits are the tip of the iceberg. Most of it cannot be predicted and will simply be read. In music there are even more combinations that are possible than with letters and words and literally anything that you might come to expect might prove to actually lead somewhere different in a way that memory will not help with. You must simply read what it says and process that. Once processed it may match something you did exactly that way before or it may not. But processing goes first and comparison to memory next.
Good readers are just good at reading detail. Only mediocre fakers and the error prone depend much on memory. Good readers read the exact details and execute them as such without being misled by memory of something vaguely similar which isn't actually quite the same. Those who depend on memory notably are the BAD readers who are regularly fooled by the slightest divergence from what they thought would happen.
Obviously it's easier to PLAY a pattern that is identified as identical to something you've practised, notably a standard scale or arpeggio. But the reading is from speed of processing information accurately and virtually nothing to do with memory. Aside from memory of what symbols actually mean, it's all about how quickly and accurately your brain decodes information. Any expectations from memory must be confirmed by processing each detail, or you go wrong whenever expectation is not met.
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If n were correct, then a good sightreader would handle different styles and genres equally well.
But that is not what we find in real life. The ease of sightreading is very dependent on the familiarity with the style, regardless of difficulty level.
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If n were correct, then a good sightreader would handle different styles and genres equally well.
But that is not what we find in real life. The ease of sightreading is very dependent on the familiarity with the style, regardless of difficulty level.
It's interesting that you present such utter nonsense as if it's a self evident truth, that would just end the debate.
Having learned more than half of the first volume of the wtc, unfamiliar fugues continue to be what I would be least confident at sightreading. It's nothing to do with familiarity. Fugues are just a lot harder both to decode and execute at first glance and also harder to fake in case of emergency. Likewise, pieces with extremely complex rhythms are one of my weaker areas. But it is really nothing to do with style. It's because they are inherently difficult and thus I need more time to think what I'm trying to do. It's not about about memorising a specific shift between 5/4 and 7/4 with a specific type of off beat syncopation going. It's about decoding such individual difficulties, on their own terms, quick enough to realise them. The only issue is that people who widely work with such complexity become sharper at deciphering. The idea that memory is the big issue in reading difficult repertoire is just a load of old guff. I have no problem with any style, but only with levels of difficulty. Memory of other pieces doesn't make works of great difficulty any easier in anything but a slender handful of respects- just as knowing many Shakespeare plays doesn't have you predicting anything but the most minor details, from an unfamiliar one. Becoming more adept at figuring out what the score asks for (and more adept at executing whatever you can visualise at once, no matter how hard) are what makes sightreading easier. You're confusing the ability to get the hands to do what has been accurately deciphered with memory in reading itself. A good sightreader simply decodes scores better and sends intentions to their hands better.
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I think you have failed to appreciate the complexity of the sightreading process.
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I think you have failed to appreciate the complexity of the sightreading process.
Actually, it's an understanding of the complexity of the process that reveals how irrational and implausible the idea that's it's all about memory is. The most basic of issues of reading are down to memory of what note is what and how long they last for. The rest is all about precision of reading and capability of executing what you visualise. The idea that reading a five part fugue means looking for little bits that look familiar is just comical. It's based on accurate decoding of what the score says and a good enough connection between fingers and intentions for that to be done.
Remember that music has MORE permutations than language- which is greatly limited in terms of how many different ways letters can be aligned into a word. Are you seriously thinking that being a good sightreader means memorising what any spelling of every harmony looks like? And then memorising every spelling that has one rogue chromatic note? It's absurd. I can read any such chord instantly for the simple reason I quickly read chords in full detail. I have no need for memory, as I can simply read the notes in an instant. Even if memory is an issue, it can only be referenced against if you actually know what the whole chord is by reading all details. Without processing information first there is no basis for comparing with memory. So it offers no hope unless speed of basic reading starts first.
If you look beneath the surface it's abundantly clear what a big red Herring this memory theory is. The memory illusion starts when you learn to read quickly and accurately and not before. The only result from hoping to use put memory before rapid information processing is a drastically increased chance of getting false positives and making casual errors due to false expectations of similarity where there are actually some differences. In reality, illusions of memory are a case of reading a chord in full detail and THEN comparing to past experience.
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The idea that reading a five part fugue means looking for little bits that look familiar is just comical.
As is typical, n wilfully attributes to me something I've never said, and in the process reveals he's made no attempt to understand my posts. But then, there's no point, nobody but n knows anything anyway.
As is typical, n types 10,000 words to my 1. I can't find the interest to continue this discussion, carry on without me.
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As is typical, n wilfully attributes to me something I've never said, and in the process reveals he's made no attempt to understand my posts. But then, there's no point, nobody but n knows anything anyway.
As is typical, n types 10,000 words to my 1. I can't find the interest to continue this discussion, carry on without me.
No I insist that you man up enough to support your stance- rather than flee from inconvenient counterarguments.
"Most of what they do is pattern retrieval from the memory banks, and that requires the memory banks to be loaded first."
I didn't put words in your mouth. If memory is the big issue, it follows that memory is what is used to sort out the detail of a five part fugue (in spite of minimal association to any memory). If it's doesn't work there (in an ultimate test of a truly accomplished sightreader) the theory that good sightreading operates based on a repertoire of memories is a load of old balls. If you don't feel as the logical continuation of your view would suggest you do, then explain in you own words how memories can be behind accurate reading of a 5 part fugue- rather than the rapid eye for decoding the specific details that I attribute.
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Aside from memory of what symbols actually mean, it's all about how quickly and accurately your brain decodes information. Any expectations from memory must be confirmed by processing each detail, or you go wrong whenever expectation is not met.
I doubt that. I don't think our brains get faster at processing so they cope with more detail faster, they change the way they process so it can cope with more. Part of that is the ability to recognise patterns, but also to process divergences from patterns, not building anything with such a divergence up from scratch again, but recognising both that and how it is different.
For example, a standard scale with an additional chromatic note won't need to go back to processing a new series of notes, it will appear as a scale (pattern) with an additional note (exception) - two items to process, not 9.
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I doubt that. I don't think our brains get faster at processing so they cope with more detail faster, they change the way they process so it can cope with more. Part of that is the ability to recognise patterns, but also to process divergences from patterns, not building anything with such a divergence up from scratch again, but recognising both that and how it is different.
For example, a standard scale with an additional chromatic note won't need to go back to processing a new series of notes, it will appear as a scale (pattern) with an additional note (exception) - two items to process, not 9.
I agree entirely that it's probably easier to spot divergence from a largely expected pattern than something that fits no standard pattern at all. But the brain processed it all. Or it couldn't know that only one note diverged. It is indeed 9 items not 2, because otherwise there was no basis to isolate the surprise as being just that compared to the other notes. There's is no rationally credible possibility that the brain can zone in on subverted expectations with reliability unless it also verifies whenever expectation is met. It's an outright statistical impossibility to reliably process surprises unless you ALSO process enough detail to affirm where expectations are indeed met. Luck won't do it. Only comprehensive processing of information will. You're confusing the subjective experience in the conscious mind. The unconscious mind was using the basic reading skills to process all 9 pieces of information, even if the conscious mind chose to zone in on the two most significant points of interest. If it didn't, the odds of success would have been minimal. Consistently good sight readers are not on some outrageous lucky streak.
Anyway, that's a chromatic scale. If we're trying to explain advanced skills then we must look at what is behind advanced attainments. If we were assuming it's humanly impossible for any pianist to sight read bachs c sharp minor fugue then the above could stand up. However if any pianist in history ever did a half decent job first time, they did so with minimal aid from expectation or memory. The five voices are not predictable enough for anything but advanced rapid processing to allow them to get what is going on. The only way is to actually process the overwhelming majority of the information and to leave educated guesses as exceptions rather than rules. Memory is virtually nowhere except in terms of remembering how to read in general. In a fugue, a good reader doesn't "vamp" an expected arrival to the tonic that contradicts voice leading, in favour of any old tonic chord. They read every voice accurately and play what the score asks for- primarily band on awareness of the unique way in which voice leading creates the chord, rather than as a memory of a blocked chord. Even common distributions of chords must be accurately processed visually, in order to be set against things in memory banks. Little of what is in the fugue even matches likely experience in terms of exact detail, after being processed. The memory thing is just complete balls. Reliable readers process detail quickly and accurately with their eyes and then figure out how to execute it, whether it's new or familiar.
I never suggested that the process wouldn't be ultra efficient. The point is that theories about memory fall at the first hurdle. It's down to seeing and processing information above all.
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There's is no rationally credible possibility that the brain can zone in on subverted expectations with reliability
It seems to me that the brain is expert at doing precisely that.
Consistently good sight readers are not on some outrageous lucky streak.
On that we agree.
If we were assuming it's humanly impossible for any pianist to sight read bachs c sharp minor fugue then the above could stand up.
I would assume that to be the case. I can't really test it as I've played that fugue many times over the years and so can't really see it with fresh eyes, but it doesn't seem any more formidable than any other five parter, and indeed quite a bit easier than some.
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It seems to me that the brain is expert at doing precisely that.
On that we agree.
I would assume that to be the case. I can't really test it as I've played that fugue many times over the years and so can't really see it with fresh eyes, but it doesn't seem any more formidable than any other five parter, and indeed quite a bit easier than some.
You're simply defying the laws of probability. There's one way and only one way to confirm that 8 out of 9 notes fit a familiar pattern and that one and only one doesn't. That is to process them all. Forget your subjective experience and think rationally about the probabilities of success if any less than all 9 pieces of information are internally verified. They are too low to even even be seriously considered.
When I sight read a piece, I'm constantly arriving on distributions of familiar chords that I might never have played in that precise configuration before. I don't accidentally revoice them out of memory of how another perfect cadence worked in that key unless I'm playing like a lazy arse who has no eye for detail. In Beethoven that would be unforgivable. If I'm playing so much as semi competently I read what it actually says and I play that. The chord is formed by eye for detail, not by remembering how another version of the cadence went- that might not be remotely similar in fine details (which I can only verify by reading the score properly) . The idea that simply because I'd never encountered that specific voicing of that chord before, it might be even slightly harder than a very familiar one is just nonsense. Memory banks analyse what the brain already processed via accuracy reading and do little more (except when a pianist is scraping by in a very wild and slipshod fasion). Of they are allowed to replace processing of information, they create at least as many errors as they fill in for. Reading is not limited by memory but by processing skill.
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You're simply defying the laws of probability. There's one way and only one way to confirm that 8 out of 9 notes fit a familiar pattern and that one and only one doesn't. That to process them all.
Probability has nothing to do with it. You know what a c major scale (say) looks like. It forms a pattern template - one chunk of information. You overlay that with what you see (that scale plus a Gb (say). The Gb sticks out like a sore thumb. No lucking it - its there in plain view, unmissable. And no need to check the rest individually - they match the pattern.
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Probability has nothing to do with it. You know what a c major scale (say) looks like. It forms a pattern template - one chunk of information. You overlay that with what you see (that scale plus a Gb (say). The Gb sticks out like a sore thumb. No lucking it - its there in plain view, unmissable. And no need to check the rest individually - they match the pattern.
All subjective. You're not appreciating the difference between experience and reality. You might as well claim not to have a subconscious.
To identify it's a c major scale I must process each note. The score doesn't say "play c major scale". It's deduced by reading every constituent note of those 9 and realising that makes a c major scale plus an added note. Those who assume c major plus g flat from any less than a complete processing of each note cannot know that it actually is c major plus g flat with certainty. They may survive here on a lucky guess but it won't be long before they make an arse of themself due to some outrageously false assumption, unless they really did process the lot and confirm exactly what was written.
I wouldn't miss a D flat scale either, even without a written key signature, with loads of accidentals and with an added A double flat. Like any half decent sightreader, that's because processing detail is simply my basis for how I operate. That's what tell me what pattern to play, not the casual assumption that anything just might fit a memory that has not been verified against all notes is probably fine. You have it in reverse. Processing detail in full triggers memory of what pattern the detail makes up, in good readers (at least, if it is a standard pattern). Memory doesn't trigger knowledge of unverified detail. Bad readers think they are seeing something they remember far too quickly and casually and regularly fall into a trap before they've processed enough detail to realise that they have been fooled. Good readers read first and then assimilate the information into patterns, from a place of certainty. It's how they avoid casual errors.
The reason this is important is that lesser readers cannot access the illusion of seeing just one thing at once until they have learned to process large amounts of detail quickly and unconsciously- which is the reality of how good readers are able to to think that they can see a whole scale as just one thing that is from memory. Nobody can actually do that without a rapid eye for detail.
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All subjective. You're not appreciating the difference between experience and reality. You might as well claim not to have a subconscious.
Not at all subjective. What we are discussing, I presume, is the workings of the subconscious, or unconscious, mind. I'm assuming you don't mean you actually consciously look at each individual note and do a conscious check off that it's part of the scale or not. My speculations about how that works are about the underlying reality just as much as yours are, though as ever your inclination to regard your own experience as both universal and objective is evident.
To identify it's a c major scale I must process each note.
That may be true in your case (though I express surprise).
Good readers read first and then assimilate the information into patterns, from a place of certainty. It's how they avoid casual errors.
Merely repeating it does not make it true. I say that good readers read patterns and assimilate variations on those patterns.
The reason this is important is that lesser readers cannot access the illusion of seeing just one thing at once until they have learned to process large amounts of detail quickly and unconsciously- which is the reality of how good readers are able to to think that they can see a whole scale as just one thing that is from memory. Nobody can actually do that without a rapid eye for detail.
When you read, do you claim to process each letter to verify that's it's really a particular word? Good readers read words, or groups of words and the same is true of good sight readers.
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Not at all subjective. What we are discussing, I presume, is the workings of the subconscious, or unconscious, mind. I'm assuming you don't mean you actually consciously look at each individual note and do a conscious check off that it's part of the scale or not. My speculations about how that works are about the underlying reality just as much as yours are, though as ever your inclination to regard your own experience as both universal and objective is evident.
That may be true in your case (though I express surprise).
Merely repeating it does not make it true. I say that good readers read patterns and assimilate variations on those patterns.
When you read, do you claim to process each letter to verify that's it's really a particular word? Good readers read words, or groups of words and the same is true of good sight readers.
Of course I process each letter. It's why I have never once misread the word dad as bab, in spite of visual similarities. And it's why I would always spot a slight misspelling of a word I know well. To spot the surprises in music, you must have such an eye for detail.
I'm not interested in the subjective conscious process. It's a sea of red herrings. I'm interested in what the brain must be capable of doing for success to be possible. Speaking of the subjective experience offers no useful information about the foundations that enable good sightreading. To think that you can identify any scale plus an extra chromatic note with certainty, yet fail to first process every constituent note, is a rational and statistical impossibility- unless highly prone to casual error. Music is too diverse for even 7/8 notes to verify a complete 8 pattern. And the eye is only drawn to rogue notes if it has verified the normality of all other notes by processing them all for purposes of comparison. It only by knowing the other notes via certainty of reading that a rogue note becomes a singular rogue note in the mind. You're dealing in completely implausible subjective illusions.
It's far more true that excellent reading triggers memories of patterns than that memory contributes to good reading.
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Of course I process each letter. It's why I have never once misread the word dad as bab, in spite of visual similarities. And it's why I would always spot a slight misspelling of a word I know well. To spot the surprises in music, you must have such an eye for detail.
I'm not interested in the subjective conscious process. It's a sea of red herrings. I'm interested in what the brain must be capable of doing for success to be possible.
Try this :
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Or this:
Cocadgnir to schreeharc at mabCreigd iUnervytis, it eodtsn' trtame in awth rreod the tsteerl in a rodw are, the lnyo pirmoettn ihntg is ttah the trisf and stal tterle be at the grhti eclap. The ster can be a olaty sesm and you can litls drae it outtwhi a morbpel. ihsT is cubesea the uamnh ndim esod not daer yerve rltete by fistle, but the drow as a ewloh.
You keep asserting, against my protestations to the contrary, that I am talking about the subjective conscious experience. Please consider for a moment the possibility that I do in fact know the difference and am talking about the underlying unconscious .
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Try this :
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Or this:
Cocadgnir to schreeharc at mabCreigd iUnervytis, it eodtsn' trtame in awth rreod the tsteerl in a rodw are, the lnyo pirmoettn ihntg is ttah the trisf and stal tterle be at the grhti eclap. The ster can be a olaty sesm and you can litls drae it outtwhi a morbpel. ihsT is cubesea the uamnh ndim esod not daer yerve rltete by fistle, but the drow as a ewloh.
You keep asserting, against my protestations to the contrary, that I am talking about the subjective conscious experience. Please consider for a moment the possibility that I do in fact know the difference and am talking about the underlying unconscious .
You are mistaken. As I said earlier music has more valid permutations. Try reordering the order in which melody notes come in a Chopin Nocturne and see if anyone can deduce the "right order" at a glance. They won't. What the above shows is that processing every letter (which is exactly what makes it easily readable) is enough to deduce the word due to the limited number of possibilities for those letters. In musical equivalence each of those words could be spelt in multiple ways and have equal validity to the musical "sentence". The right order will not reveal itself in the simple way. Composers make their own musical "words". They are not limited to the extent that English is. Only in language are possibilities so limited that concrete deduction is possible. far from showing that we don't process letters it shows that reading is so heavily grounded in them that they are enough to deduce the word, even in the wrong order. Try giving the wrong letters and seeing how well we deduce the word, without the necessary raw information that those particular letters carry, once they are processed...
No matter what you claim about supposed objectivity, it is transparently impossible to deduce any 9 note scale without reading every one of those notes or taking a casual guess. If any one is a rogue note, any other can be too. No note is certain unless verified by actual reading and you're not in the realms of reality if you sincerely feel otherwise. If you are talking reality and not subjective experience, you're talking about sloppy procedures that will reliably give mistaken assumptions in anything if moderate complexity and beyond. That's the secret to shoddy sightreading, not ability to play difficult music accurately at once. Your unconscious does far more than you realise, for what you suggest is utterly implausible, based on probabilities alone.
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You are mistaken.
Once again you make the error of thinking that your own view of what you do is objective reality and that anyone who disagrees with you is either (a) a complete idiot or (b) talking about their own subjective experience rather than reality and confusing the two. I probably should be grateful you did not immediately jump to option (a). Nonetheless, the option that someone may not agree with you and yet be talking about the same thing seems something you are incapable of fathoming.
I offered the above example not as a means of demonstrating that music could be read that way, merely to show that the brain works in more complex ways than you allow. It attempts to be efficient, and in doing so adopts strategies more complex than simple brute processing, which is all you allow for it. One of those strategies is to allow it to see groups as a whole. A scale may be such a group. It would not be for a beginner, but should be for any advanced reader. Any deviations from that will be immediately obvious on the "same/different" processing level. Not a matter of chance, not a matter of guesswork, but basically obvious at the level of initial processing. That may seem "transparently impossible" to you, but that is merely your opinion, not objective fact, and is a deduction from your own experience.
If we are to advance this discussion, we will need to point to research supporting our respective positions. Whether that is a more generally interesting pursuit is a matter I doubt, though it may be. In the absence of such, though, it seems pointless to continue.
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Once again you make the error of thinking that your own view of what you do is objective reality and that anyone who disagrees with you is either (a) a complete idiot or (b) talking about their own subjective experience rather than reality and confusing the two. I probably should be grateful you did not immediately jump to option (a). Nonetheless, the option that someone may not agree with you and yet be talking about the same thing seems something you are incapable of fathoming.
I offered the above example not as a means of demonstrating that music could be read that way, merely to show that the brain works in more complex ways than you allow. It attempts to be efficient, and in doing so adopts strategies more complex than simple brute processing, which is all you allow for it. One of those strategies is to allow it to see groups as a whole. A scale may be such a group. It would not be for a beginner, but should be for any advanced reader. Any deviations from that will be immediately obvious on the "same/different" processing level. Not a matter of chance, not a matter of guesswork, but basically obvious at the level of initial processing. That may seem "transparently impossible" to you, but that is merely your opinion, not objective fact, and is a deduction from your own experience.
If we are to advance this discussion, we will need to point to research supporting our respective positions. Whether that is a more generally interesting pursuit is a matter I doubt, though it may be. In the absence of such, though, it seems pointless to continue.
Probability is all it takes. If advanced readers almost never casually mistake an adapted scale for the basic version, you have your proof that they processed all details in order to know specifically what matched expectation and what didn't. If they also reliably read scales that are so far gone fron any traditional pattern that memory issues aren't even on the radar, you have further proof as to what genuinely good readers can do ie read what it says and then do it- regardless of whether it's similar to anything else in experience or not.
I have no idea what makes you think the latter is possible without the brain processing each constituent note. The way you're arguing, you'd think I claimed they stop and say all the letters out loud or something. I didn't. I said that reliability of success conclusively proves to 99.99999 percent certain that details are not guessed based on flimsy expectations of a pattern (that does not even exist in a form that would be subject to worthy comparison with anything in memory). They have necessarily been processed, or all kinds of mistakes would have resulted. Nothing you have theorised can account for any single pianist having the capability to do this without actually processing all the notes. I really don't know where you're trying to go here.
To understand a whole and be certain you haven't mistaken it for another whole while you must observe its details in full. Any one different detail equals a different whole altogether and thus all detail must be observed, no matter how little the conscious should perceive this process. Nothing you can say will override this simple irrefutable truth.
Information is PROCESSED into a whole after being received. It's not received as an instant whole, no matter how quickly the brain might create something bigger from it. All you are offering is subjective experience.
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Information is PROCESSED into a whole after being received. It's not received as an instant whole, no matter how quickly the brain might create something bigger from it. All you are offering is subjective experience.
I repeat:
If we are to advance this discussion, we will need to point to research supporting our respective positions. Whether that is a more generally interesting pursuit is a matter I doubt, though it may be. In the absence of such, though, it seems pointless to continue.
In the absence of such, we are at an end.
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I repeat:
In the absence of such, we are at an end.
You haven't earned a strong enough position to demand research. Your argument hinges on a note perfect performance of a piece featuring non-standard scales being possible without the unconscious mind actually needing to process precisely which notes they are formed from ie guesswork that is not informed by accuracy of reading. If you sincerely don't appreciate how ludicrous that position is, I don't think any scientific papers are going to make you see the transparent fallacy of your logic.
If a forest is a completely different forest when just a single tree is moved a few inches, then it's impossible to accurately perceive that forest without correctly observing every individual tree. In music of any complexity, that's the situation. A whole is merely a composite of detail and by definition it is not a whole anymore without all of its detail. Any unconfirmed detail means an unconfirmed whole. Such absolute logic should really not be a matter for debate.
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Where is the "yawn" smiley when you need it??
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Where is the "yawn" smiley when you need it??
These are important issues in a thread about sightreading. The biggest fallacy in training sightreading is to tell students that they are supposed to be able to just see some big whole at once (be it a harmony or a scale or whatever else), without first learning a flawless and instant eye for any detail. Students who can't read detail at once can't assemble broader pictures until they can deal with detail properly. I can't overstate how much I improved when I started consciously forcing myself to process EVERY detail during sightreading practise, no matter how slow I had to go not to fake anything. Now I also process a massively improved amount of detail when just doing it without much conscious thought and I fake far less when sightreading difficult pieces at speed. Precise execution come from precise perception of detail, not from hoping to accurately see a complex pattern as a whole, at the very first glance. That takes training through attention to detail and is almost certainly a subjective illusion that can only be created by reading details quicker. Thanks to realising this, my sight reading skills are still improving a lot and there's very little that I'd be at all ashamed to have a go at, if a student brought it unannounced to a lesson.
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I agree with you, but I also agree with many other posters in this thread.
I HATE seeing people talk over each other/past each other.
Discussions are NOT duels-to-the-death, where one person is 'right' and the other is 'wrong'.
You don't have to 'win' an argument every time you get into one! Make your points, support them, and retreat gracefully! That way, everyone wins!
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I agree with you, but I also agree with many other posters in this thread.
I HATE seeing people talk over each other/past each other.
Discussions are NOT duels-to-the-death, where one person is 'right' and the other is 'wrong'.
You don't have to 'win' an argument every time you get into one! Make your points, support them, and retreat gracefully! That way, everyone wins!
I'm willing to accept opinion. However the problem here is that denying that it's necessary to process details in order to accurately see a whole leaves no rational explanation as to how anyone actually sightreads accurately. If there were an interesting point to fill in that hole, I'd gladly hear it. All it would take to move on would be for him to appreciate that simply because you don't consciously decode all separate details, it doesn't mean that your brain magically stops being required to process them all from the score, in order for accurate perception of the bigger pattern to be faintly possible.
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You haven't earned a strong enough position to demand research.
Since the only alternative it to put up with an increasingly hysterical repetition of the same thing from you, I did not demand it, merely indicated that further discussion was pointless without it.
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Since the only alternative it to put up with an increasingly hysterical repetition of the same thing from you, I did not demand it, merely indicated that further discussion was pointless without it.
Discussion was already pointless. You are essentially advocating clairvoyance, when you claim it's not necessary for the unconscious to process details in order to accurately create a composite whole from them.
By the way, much of the what is claimed by the popular meme you quoted is plain wrong.
See here:
https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/
Letters are very important in words too. In particular note the incomprehensible bit at the end, where the scrambled words have multiple possibilities and do not readily imply a whole word. Given how many musical possibilities can be used, it's a far better analogy to use that sentence than the meme itself, with its erroneous claims.
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Discussion was already pointless. You are essentially advocating clairvoyance, when you claim it's not necessary for the unconscious to process details in order to accurately create a composite whole from them.
You really don't pay attention, do you?
By the way, much of the what is claimed by the popular meme you quoted is plain wrong.
See here:
https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/
Letters are very important in words too. In particular note the incomprehensible bit at the end, where the scrambled words have multiple possibilities and do not readily imply a whole word. Given how many musical possibilities can be used, it's a far better analogy to use that sentence than the meme itself, with its erroneous claims.
The bit at the end is done differently to show the validity of the idea. I'm sorry for not being as bluntly clear about that as must have been necessary.
It is true that the attribution to Cambridge University is spurious, but are you suggesting that the first paragraph is not quite readable, and the second largely incomprehensible? I would think that was true of everyone, with the possible exception of those who do not have English as a first (or at least well developed) language, and almost certainly the case for those who do not natively use roman characters.
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You really don't pay attention, do you?
The bit at the end is done differently to show the validity of the idea. I'm sorry for not being as bluntly clear about that as must have been necessary.
It is true that the attribution to Cambridge University is spurious, but are you suggesting that the first paragraph is not quite readable, and the second largely incomprehensible? I would think that was true of everyone, with the possible exception of those who do not have English as a first (or at least well developed) language, and almost certainly the case for those who do not natively use roman characters.
Are you sure you read to the very end? I referred to the end of the article, not to your post. It is to the same formula and incomprehensible. Clearly from your second paragraph, you didn't read much of the article-as you're barking up the wrong tree. In the middle, three sentences that followed the formula exactly as portrayed are actually rather hard to read. The meme itself is very readable but if you actually read the article I linked in full, you'll see what about it is a load of cobblers. And the bit at the end reveals that, when there are multiple possibilities the exact order of letters is quite hugely vital to the meaning (just like in music, where multiple permutations of notes could make sense).
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Are you sure you read to the very end? It was done to the same formula and incomprehensible. Clearly from your second paragraph, you didn't read much of the article-as you're barking up the wrong tree. In the middle, three sentences that followed the formula exactly as portrayed are actually rather hard to read. The meme itself is very readable but if you actually read the article I linked in full, you'll see what about it is a load of cobblers. And the bit at the end reveals that, when there are multiple possibilities the exact order of letters is quite hugely vital to the meaning (just like in music, where multiple permutations of notes could make sense).
Not quite. My second paragraph was to demonstrate that the first and last positions do in fact have a special role.
The paragraph in the article serves a different purpose. It shows that there are times when it doesn't work. That in some instances, the word remains ambiguous, and the words chosen by them are actually carefully chosen to demonstrate this. A random paragraph converted to this rule will in most cases be legible.
Now, I did not use this as an example of what happens when we sight read. I used it as an example of where the way we actually process information is not as straightforward as might appear at first glance. In cognitive sciences, the oddities - things that fail (such as optical illusions) and things which surprisingly work (such as the word example) are often useful tools in understanding what's going on under the hood.
Applying that latter point to sight reading might prove a useful starting point. The things we cannot read, or the points where we make reading errors may prove a useful insight into the underlying mechanism. And, being a complex task, the underlying mechanism may work differently at different stages of its development and possibly differently in different people anyway.
In my experience - subjective entirely, here - there are things I can read easily, where I am completely oblivious to what's going on, and then a range of various elements that, when introduced, increasingly make the task more complex, slower and more conscious.
It also seems to me that part of the sight reading process also involves the brain in forming an auditory expectation, and a mechanical strategy for execution. I suspect that the better the sight reader, the more intertwined all of that is, and that also serves to complicate the picture.
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Not quite. My second paragraph was to demonstrate that the first and last positions do in fact have a special role.
The paragraph in the article serves a different purpose. It shows that there are times when it doesn't work. That in some instances, the word remains ambiguous, and the words chosen by them are actually carefully chosen to demonstrate this. A random paragraph converted to this rule will in most cases be legible.
Now, I did not use this as an example of what happens when we sight read. I used it as an example of where the way we actually process information is not as straightforward as might appear at first glance. In cognitive sciences, the oddities - things that fail (such as optical illusions) and things which surprisingly work (such as the word example) are often useful tools in understanding what's going on under the hood.
Applying that latter point to sight reading might prove a useful starting point. The things we cannot read, or the points where we make reading errors may prove a useful insight into the underlying mechanism. And, being a complex task, the underlying mechanism may work differently at different stages of its development and possibly differently in different people anyway.
In my experience - subjective entirely, here - there are things I can read easily, where I am completely oblivious to what's going on, and then a range of various elements that, when introduced, increasingly make the task more complex, slower and more conscious.
It also seems to me that part of the sight reading process also involves the brain in forming an auditory expectation, and a mechanical strategy for execution. I suspect that the better the sight reader, the more intertwined all of that is, and that also serves to complicate the picture.
I referred to the end of the article not the end of your paragraph. It shows the supposed formula is wrong.
Sorry, but it's complex isn't good enough against probabilities. You objected in response to a post where I merely said the brain must process the actual notes to get them right. I didn't even say the conscious brain and I'm baffled by your objection to this evident fact, whatever your stance. The only version in which the player somehow gets all individual notes right without the brain processing them all is when a very simple formula is stuck to so rigidly nothing ever surprises even a little or if the player is insanely lucky. When notes are not predictable at all, it's 100 percent sure that they must all be processed for accuracy. Saying "It's complex" doesn't dent that. Under the hood, everyone who is highly accurate is processing details.
Also, you can't bring something to the table and then try to shut down debate on the issues where it is most relevant, just because you only wanted to show that stuff can be complex. Whatever your purpose, the word example you brought is a very easy thing to decipher due to limitations of language. The examples in the article better illustrate complexity in a situation with more possibilities and also reveal the sheer importance of detail. Any piece of moderate complexity has vastly more permutations than even the example at the end of the article. Even if words are read as a whole (which in no way suggests failure of the brain to process details, given that I reliably see small spelling errors) it's easy to build a repertoire of most words and remember them next time. It's not easy or even possible to build a comprehensive repertoire of the wealth of possible musical building blocks. Even if a piece has nothing but tonics and dominants, there are so many different spellings that memory could not help ensure that I get every chord accurate according to every note unless I read in proper detail. Even in such limited circumstances, nothing but mental processing of details results in anything but a very low probability of the actual notated detail being played. There are too many possibilities in even a guaranteed tonic and good readers are as capable of reading new chords as they are of doing very standard or very non standard arrangements of c major. It's chiefly mental processing of detail. Even if memory were a notable issue, it simply pretty useless for the vast majority of what is actually possible. Processing detail into a visualisation of what to do is what yields reliable results. Not hoping to have such a wide repertoire that any combination that comes up will already be familiar. It's like hoping to have already played every game of chess. Good reading is chiefly from processing in the moment, not from having prior familiarity with unique situations or from hoping everything is so badly formulaic that you've seen it and done it already.
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I referred to the end of the article not the end of your paragraph. It shows the supposed formula is wrong.
My second paragraph, quoted above addresses that. It appears you missed it.
Sorry, but it's complex isn't good enough against probabilities.
I'm missing entirely your continued reference to probabilities.
My "it's complex" is a response to your "it's this and only this".
I am aware you are talking about the unconscious level of processing. So am I.
We both, I think, agree that good sight readers reliably and consistently get notes right, and that it is a reliable and fast way of processing the information off the page that allows them to do that. Not a "luckier then most" approach, but one that consistently works.
I would also suggest that for even the best sight readers, there are occasional errors. I would also suggest that errors are informative.
Indeed, sometimes it would be an error to play as written as the score itself is in error. I would suggest that successful corrections of these may also be informative. Further, hypercorrections would provide an additional level of insight.
I am happy to pursue a discussion on any of these avenues, but frankly am not interested in doing so if you propose to wilfully misunderstand what I say and to merely restate your "I think this therefore it must be true" line.
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My second paragraph, quoted above addresses that. It appears you missed it.
I'm missing entirely your continued reference to probabilities.
My "it's complex" is a response to your "it's this and only this".
I am aware you are talking about the unconscious level of processing. So am I.
We both, I think, agree that good sight readers reliably and consistently get notes right, and that it is a reliable and fast way of processing the information off the page that allows them to do that. Not a "luckier then most" approach, but one that consistently works.
I would also suggest that for even the best sight readers, there are occasional errors. I would also suggest that errors are informative.
Indeed, sometimes it would be an error to play as written as the score itself is in error. I would suggest that successful corrections of these may also be informative. Further, hypercorrections would provide an additional level of insight.
I am happy to pursue a discussion on any of these avenues, but frankly am not interested in doing so if you propose to wilfully misunderstand what I say and to merely restate your "I think this therefore it must be true" line.
All I have ever stated is that you cannot accurately determine a whole except by processing all of its components in full - because if one of those components should diverge from expectation then it is not the whole it was mistaken for. And if one and only one note should diverge, that too can only be known for certainty if every single one of the other notes is processed accurately, so as to reveal for certain that it was only that one note that diverged and that no others did. In any scenario involving accuracy rather than sketching out the general harmonic impression, sightreading is based on thoroughly processing all the notes. This should really not be controversial within a serious discussion. From this necessity, it's clear that it's a case of the brain creating wholes from detail and not one of the brain deriving details from instant wholes in sightreading. Only when detail is being processed is the brain operating under an accurate knowledge of bigger chunks, rather than under speculation. Good sight readers only speculate as an emergency resort, not as part of their normal foundations.
PS regarding mistakes, if we used an internal autocorrect in the same way as we do with language we'd autocorrect a wealth of "mistakes" that are not mistakes. Once again, this example shows how much detail we must process. Once every now and then a mistake in the score really is a mistake. But the vast majority of divergences from expectation are not. We have to be overwhelmingly sure about actually reading details to make sure we get these details right and do not allow false expectation to stick to a forum that fails to apply. Accurate internal corrections are based on processing so much detail that we can then use a broad context to realise that the score really is wrong. It's nothing like being able to read through spelling mistakes or reordering those letters say - as the brain has to go far deeper to either confirm or deny whether the unexpected note is meant to be just that. Things which make reading language quicker would simply generate errors in music, were there not more attention to detail. It's small wonder that a study recently showed that musicians are better at spotting mistakes (outside of music).
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j_menz,
I'd be interested to know if you think this recent experience is relevant. I apologize in advance for the length, which regrettably may approach one of n's shorter posts.
I don't sightread well on piano because normally one can only sightread a couple levels below what you can play, and my playing level isn't high enough! <smiley>
I play trombone in several community level ensembles, and I am consistently one of the better sightreaders. I also sing in a church choir. We hire a couple of section leaders, music majors from the local university, and they have much better voices than I but I always out read them. I mention this because these experiences are the basis for my theories, and I freely admit my lesser ability at piano means they may not apply 100%.
At any rate, one of my strategies for improvement has been to note where I make an error or struggle, and work specifically on that. On trombone, it was big band rhythmic figures, something not as common in most of the music we play. Heavy syncopation, rapid tempos, swung eights, conventions for notating. So I spent time daily working out of a syncopation book until I could play them correctly by feel, rather than counting. And this improvement transferred immediately to ensemble.
Until this week, when I sightread a jazz piece in rehearsal. The band had worked on it before but I had not seen it. The arranger knew what he wanted to hear but not how to write it. (For example, by convention an eighth note is legato and a quarter staccato in most patterns; he wrote a quarter note anywhere he wanted a note long, and an eighth note eighth rest everywhere he wanted a note short. Think of the difference between seeing 4 quarters in a measure or 4 eighth note eighth rests where and this is key you don't expect it.)
I could not absorb these notes and play them at sight, though they were well within my comfortable technique AND reading level, in fact easy. Instead I had to focus on the details n talks about them and actually prima vista sightread them. It was 10 times as hard. I can do it, I'm good at counting and reading, but there was an extra layer of mental processing going on that does not exist if you slap In the Mood or String of Pearls (or a Sousa march) on my stand, and that layer interferes somewhat with being stylistically correct and leading the section.
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j_menz,
I'd be interested to know if you think this recent experience is relevant. I apologize in advance for the length, which regrettably may approach one of n's shorter posts.
I don't sightread well on piano because normally one can only sightread a couple levels below what you can play, and my playing level isn't high enough! <smiley>
I play trombone in several community level ensembles, and I am consistently one of the better sightreaders. I also sing in a church choir. We hire a couple of section leaders, music majors from the local university, and they have much better voices than I but I always out read them. I mention this because these experiences are the basis for my theories, and I freely admit my lesser ability at piano means they may not apply 100%.
At any rate, one of my strategies for improvement has been to note where I make an error or struggle, and work specifically on that. On trombone, it was big band rhythmic figures, something not as common in most of the music we play. Heavy syncopation, rapid tempos, swung eights, conventions for notating. So I spent time daily working out of a syncopation book until I could play them correctly by feel, rather than counting. And this improvement transferred immediately to ensemble.
Until this week, when I sightread a jazz piece in rehearsal. The band had worked on it before but I had not seen it. The arranger knew what he wanted to hear but not how to write it. (For example, by convention an eighth note is legato and a quarter staccato in most patterns; he wrote a quarter note anywhere he wanted a note long, and an eighth note eighth rest everywhere he wanted a note short. Think of the difference between seeing 4 quarters in a measure or 4 eighth note eighth rests where and this is key you don't expect it.)
I'm a little surprised that this would throw you. You simply need to think in beat locations and picture every beat in the bar before starting it. The first thing I'd do in that scenario is notice four quavers, which would almost certainly be spread out equally through the bar, visually speaking. Instantly, that tells me I'm just lining four equal notes to four standard beats. Seeing the rests is a confirmation of the fact that the bar adds up correctly in details, not an integral part of how I judge how four visually similar notes must match four beats. In my mind, it's little different to seeing four tenuto crotchets.
I spoke of how utterly implausible it is to accurately read off notes if you depend too much on expectations or memories rather than actually read all the notes in their own right. However, in rhythm, the right mental organisation can make all kinds of logical deductions that simplify the process of aligning notes to beats with certainty. Unlike with note reading, one piece of information can give 100 percent certainty about another detail, regardless of whether you read that detail directly. I should add that, although the situation you describe wouldn't throw me at all, the notation used by singers (where notes are often beamed separately rather than together, in a way that would have clarified which notes fall on a beat) confuses the hell out of me. In that situation, there is less scope to deduce beat locations via logic or common sense. You start with fewer instant visual references for beats. It takes a more conscious and more mathematical mental process to zone in on exactly which notes align directly to beats of the bar.
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I should add that, although the situation you describe wouldn't throw me at all, the notation used by singers (where notes are often beamed separately rather than together, in a way that would have clarified which notes fall on a beat) confuses the hell out of me.
I teach handbells, and the notation does not include all the rests. There will be a stacked column of notes of different values. In every new piece there are a few places where my ringers do not understand whether the note is on the beat or somewhere else. I tell them what to play and they scribble it onto the music.
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You simply need to think in beat locations and picture every beat in the bar before starting it.
No. In this type of music, before ending it.
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No. In this type of music, before ending it.
? Why? If you're reading ahead in a single line melody, there's no reason not to have perceived that whole bar in advance before going in- no matter how quick. This is what good pianists aim for, so there's really no excuse when there are just four notes to process in advance.
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I teach handbells, and the notation does not include all the rests. There will be a stacked column of notes of different values. In every new piece there are a few places where my ringers do not understand whether the note is on the beat or somewhere else. I tell them what to play and they scribble it onto the music.
I'm not sure what you mean exactly, but the overview of beats should be instantly visible with or without rests, except when there are unbeamed quavers and semi quavers. Is it that the case here? The only other exception would be with ongoing syncopations. But for the most part, the great thing about notational conventions is quite how easy they make it to pinpoint moments where beats land, without having to add up every note value for the start onwards, in order to be sure. In rhythm you can often use a combination of memory and logic to point to beat locations, without always needing more.
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I'm not sure what you mean exactly, but the overview of beats should be instantly visible with or without rests,
Believe me, it is not. It is often the case that my ringers can't tell what is intended and sometimes I have to puzzle over it a bit myself. You'd have to look at some handbell music to see why. It's a compromise system, designed for people who are only playing their two notes out of a dense cluster of notes and for the most part are not fluent readers. It is not uncommon to have a dotted half, 4 quarter notes, and a couple of eighth notes stacked on one beat, with some of them offset if the note heads are adjacent, and then the following notes may be beamed to show the melody line, and it's a real hash.
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Believe me, it is not. It is often the case that my ringers can't tell what is intended and sometimes I have to puzzle over it a bit myself. You'd have to look at some handbell music to see why. It's a compromise system, designed for people who are only playing their two notes out of a dense cluster of notes and for the most part are not fluent readers. It is not uncommon to have a dotted half, 4 quarter notes, and a couple of eighth notes stacked on one beat, with some of them offset if the note heads are adjacent, and then the following notes may be beamed to show the melody line, and it's a real hash.
I don't mean that it automatically will be. I mean that with practise it should be. If there are a lot of rests, one of the most important things is to zone in on rests which land on beats and feel an imaginary accent on those. Every beat location needs to be clearly organised first and then any syncopations or odd notes can simply be precisely aligned in between clear references. Also, much of the technique for using logic is based on working backward from the end of the bar as much as reading forwards from the beginning. This often reduces the amount of processing required. For example if the bar ends in two quavers then you should instantly know that the first of them is the fourth beat. That might also be more useful at narrowing down where the previous beat falls than counting lots of notes from the beginning. It's very important to get the overview of a whole bar before trying to execute it. Unless the notation in score is plain wrong, it shouldn't take too much work to get used to pinpointing the associations to the beats, if logic is used effectively in the process- rather than just maths.
Fugues work the same way- where you don't count every long note, so much as simply hold on to it until association to beats that are marked by other voices tell you that the next note of the voice is due. Vertical locations of beats must be understood first, for reading rhythm to become natural.
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For example if the bar ends in two quavers then you should instantly know that the first of them is the fourth beat.
In jazz, the second quaver is effectively the 1st beat of the next measure.
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In jazz, the second quaver is effectively the 1st beat of the next measure.
? Regardless of the musical association to it, it still falls before it in time and the two quavers still tell you precisely where the 4th beat lands- even if you can view the last quaver as a kind of anticipation to the next beat. What I'm saying doesn't contradict that at all. Jazzers still feel where the beats actually fall, no matter how much they might anticipate or delay the notes around the them. In fact, this is the crux of what I'm talking about. You must always know where the beats are, no matter how syncopated the notes you play might be. The square old beats still organise even the funkiest off-beat swing rhythms. It's when people are so lost in when they play that that they lose awareness of the location of the beat itself, that there are problems. At that point, nothing is truly organised around the pulse.
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j_menz,
I'd be interested to know if you think this recent experience is relevant.
Indeed it is. I'm often surprised that some things seem much harder to read than they should be, and some others work out quite a bit easier.
Sometimes, that's a frame of mind as well. I recently bought a book of "concert transcriptions" of hymns. I completely butchered the first one until I twigged that the arranger was a pop type composer. Then it all fell into place.
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From a student's perspective, each of my teachers has told me my sight reading is excellent.
I do 15 minutes of sight reading a day at the end of my focused practice. I chose something that is in contrast to what I'm currently working on...so Beethoven for study, jazz for sight reading, Mozart for study, the blues for sightreading.
Practicing and learning is serious work, but I find that I learn more readily if there's a element of fun and surprise.
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I think its a bit simplistic to talk about processing the notes when sightreading without specifying what sort of processing you are talking about, because it seems to me that there are several different types of processing going on.
There is analysis of individual notes: i expect that this is generally relatively slow and will feel 'hard' even when it is reliable.
But i think that for easy, familiar, styles there is also pattern recognition (based on memory) followed up by verification. This still involves processing every note, but verifying a patterm is as expected will be much faster than a full analysis.
In between, the (fast) verification process will quickly show up which notes are surprising (in that they don't match the patter). These notes can then (slowly) be analysed in full. In this way memory and pattern recognition can resolve many notes quickly and then act as a guide for where we need to perform a detailed, slow, analysis.
At least, this is how it feels like to me, and it offers an explanation of why familiar patterns of music can be sightread more easily than unfamiliar ones: its the number of relevant patterns that we have available to match against that matters for fluid reading because we want to minimise the amount of analysis we need to do.
But you do need to deal with every note, just not delaing with them in the same way.
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I think its a bit simplistic to talk about processing the notes when sightreading without specifying what sort of processing you are talking about, because it seems to me that there are several different types of processing going on.
There is analysis of individual notes: i expect that this is generally relatively slow and will feel 'hard' even when it is reliable.
But i think that for easy, familiar, styles there is also pattern recognition (based on memory) followed up by verification. This still involves processing every note, but verifying a patterm is as expected will be much faster than a full analysis.
In between, the (fast) verification process will quickly show up which notes are surprising (in that they don't match the patter). These notes can then (slowly) be analysed in full. In this way memory and pattern recognition can resolve many notes quickly and then act as a guide for where we need to perform a detailed, slow, analysis.
At least, this is how it feels like to me, and it offers an explanation of why familiar patterns of music can be sightread more easily than unfamiliar ones: its the number of relevant patterns that we have available to match against that matters for fluid reading because we want to minimise the amount of analysis we need to do.
But you do need to deal with every note, just not delaing with them in the same way.
That's how it feels to me too, but I believe it's subjective illusion. A jazz musician will be familiar with all kinds of dense harmonies. But will they identify them as quickly as a straight c major by sight merely because they are familiar? Even if they read a lot of fully notated jazz I doubt it, because they have to process more detail in order to accurately compare it memory banks. Nobody sees a dense accidental riddled chord as an instant whole. There are so many possibilities in chromatic harmony that any possible note could be subtly different. I could have played a particular chromatic chord 1000x over but it wouldn't enable me to spot it another atonal work any more easily- because I'd need to process every bit as much information as with every other complex chord to reference it to that memory. I don't think it would be easier to read due to familiarity if just one note was different, either. If anything, I'd be at greater risk of error than with a unique complex chord, due to the desire of the brain to make things fit existing patterns. Unless we are detailed enough in our processing to appreciate that they don't always fit to expectation of memory, we make false assumptions all the time.
Of course, good readers process dense chromatic harmonies better than bad ones. But that's where logic tells us that what they have is better processing power. The only place where memory helps "reading" significantly is in knowing how to execute patterns that have been done before. I do suspect to a degree that the brain is quicker when it has some kind of expectation to confirm or deny than when expectation is non existent. But I think the real issue in difficult music is primarily processing. Look at any standard major or minor chord and there are only thirds and a fourth so that's very easy to process. Only when they are written unusually do they seem difficult. If c major had an a double flat rather than g, it's not about lack of memory but about having more information to process, which would make it a fraction harder to do quickly. On the same principle a chromatic chord involves much more processing of different intervals (rather stacks of thirds) and adjustments to black keys. I only see memory as being an obvious issue after the reading already happened, in terms of whether you remember being there before or have to figure out from scratch how your hand gets to the notes visualised. With the way good readers read, even if they didn't have memory of c major, it would be spectacularly easy due to to the simplicity of processing straight thirds plus the odd fourth. A bad reader might have read c major triads 1000 times over yet still be crap at processing and mentally organising intervals and thus fail to get it in an instant.
You could draw parallels in language. Weird combinations of letters are harder because they don't spell an obvious sound and thus leave the brain getting confused when it tries to integrate them into something bigger. But I could also make a fictional word and read it effortlessly, if there is logic in phonetics. Plab is not a word but it's no harder to read than slab. I don't buy the memory thing at all, because there is a big flaw in the argument about familiar vs unfamiliar. Examples of the familiar are almost unfailing simple to process and examples of the unfamiliar are almost unfailingly difficult to process. If you use the example of dense jazz harmonies, I think it actually turns out that complex familiar chords are just as hard to read with precision- for the simple reason that they are more complex to process from the page.
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@ nyiregyhazi
Not to argue with you (I think I lack the skills for that ;D), but since you mentioned Bach's fugues, I'd like to mention that after practising (and transposing to all possible keys!) Cortot's preparatory exercises for polyphonic technique from his "Rational Principles", Bach's works became a lot easier to process (that is: sightread and execute right away). I hope this makes sense, but I have a feeling that good sightreaders don't sightread with their eyes alone. :)
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@ nyiregyhazi
Not to argue with you (I think I lack the skills for that ;D), but since you mentioned Bach's fugues, I'd like to mention that after practising (and transposing to all possible keys!) Cortot's preparatory exercises for polyphonic technique from his "Rational Principles" in all keys, reading Bach became a lot easier to process (that is: sightread and execute right away). I hope this makes sense, but I have a feeling that good sightreading pianists don't sightread with their eyes alone. :)
I'll have to look into those. Funnily enough, I had just that kind of idea while I was playing fugues the other day. There's a very big physical element in the ability to hold one long note clearly and precisely while simultaneously passing from one finger to another. I was thinking to myself how futile it would be to attempt these these techniques in complex music if you haven't already got down the basics of this via simple exercises. I can execute the five part fugues with proper voice leading, but i do still notice that a slight wobbly or stiff quality on held notes makes it a fraction less simple than it could be.
Anyway, I agree entirely with the importance about having memories and experiences of these basic building blocks. My point is about quite how little what goes in through the eyes relates to memory and quite how much it relates to processing skill. A fugue cannot be sightread at all without prior technical skills, but even with those skills in place it's one of the ultimate illustrations of how much is down to speed of processing, rather than need for things to match to memories on the page. Even those with excellent physical habits won't do well in fugues without ultra evolved processing.
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Having learned more than half of the first volume of the wtc, unfamiliar fugues continue to be what I would be least confident at sightreading. It's nothing to do with familiarity.
Maybe you are not familiar enough that is why they continue to be least confident with. If you are familiar with them this means you have had a lot of experience playing counterpoint and patterns you face when sight reading will be easily executed and inferred, you will understand what you hear and anticipate the changes, the reading will be more easy and fluent, the fingerings are well known.
Put an expert in Bach into a totally different style they will most likely fall flat on their face. Try to sight read some Kasputin or perhaps with other rhythmic music which Bach does not explore. It will be terribly difficult. But put a stride pianist in front of some Kasputin and much of what is read might be easily understood because of their experience base.
Familiarity has everything to do with good sight reading.
The idea that memory is the big issue in reading difficult repertoire is just a load of old guff.
Your conscious, muscular and sound memory helps you to sight read a huge amount. Sight reading courses I give require students to read through hundreds and hundreds of works. The more experience you have with pieces and the general movements at the piano the more this will help you ability to sight read these commands and produce the correct fingerings efficiently.
I have no problem with any style, but only with levels of difficulty.
What about a style which is full of procedure you are unfamiliar with? Saying you have no problems with ANY STYLE is rather over confident, and ridiculous.
Memory of other pieces doesn't make works of great difficulty any easier in anything but a slender handful of respects....
Whatever "slender handful of respects" you mean you have obviously skipped over with no explanation. If I have memorized one thousand pieces you think this will not help reading difficult works? Works become less difficult to play the more known procedure you read from them. If you have a large experience base of a lot of technique and fingering at the piano then when you are faced with technically demanding pieces you can understand what it requires of you without having to recreate the entire fingering wheel of understanding to produce it.
The more pieces you know the better you will be at sight reading because what you read will be procedure at the piano your conscious, muscular and sound memory has a close affinity with. Your fingers know what to play you don't have to write in the fingering because it is procedure you have done many times. When you stop and keep trying to work out the fingering then you are playing music with content you have little experience with, you can only produce the fingerings instantly without having to stop and decode it beforehand because you are drawing from experiences from many many pieces and the procedure is well known because of that!
Becoming more adept at figuring out what the score asks for (and more adept at executing whatever you can visualise at once, no matter how hard) are what makes sightreading easier.
You haven't explained yourself at all. What does more adept at figuring out what the score asks for.......visualise at once" mean? It is meaningless without any elaboration. Explain this with zero connection with piece memory or experience because you have already said they do not contribute a great deal at all to sight reading. Go on, please tell us what this "figuring out" and "visualise" is all about.
A good sightreader simply decodes scores better and sends intentions to their hands better.
But how do they decode it better? Where do they draw their experience from? Smokes and mirrors!!!
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"Maybe you are not familiar enough that is why they continue to be least confident with. If you are familiar with them this means you have had a lot of experience playing counterpoint and patterns you face when sight reading will be easily executed and inferred, you will understand what you hear and anticipate the changes, the reading will be more easy and fluent, the fingerings are well known."
I've learned more than half of book one of wtc to a standard of accuracy. I suspect that plenty of pianists who have done it all would still struggle to do fugues of the same standard. By your logic, having learned the complete transcendental etudes should make la campanella feasible sightreading. It becomes easier to learn fast when you know the techniques. But not to process enough information to do it straight off first time, simply because you processed a lot of information before at your own leisure. Sight reading starts with reading information rapidly and accurately. All too many pianists forget that. The reading side doesn't automatically become great either by ploughing through loads of material once or by learning loads of repertoire in your own time- unless you are doing both in the right kind of way. It's no different to the fact that some pianists who practise hours per day are still rubbish. Quantity doesn't always make for quality.
"Put an expert in Bach into a totally different style they will most likely fall flat on their face. Try to sight read some Kasputin or perhaps with other rhythmic music which Bach does not explore. It will be terribly difficult. But put a stride pianist in front of some Kasputin and much of what is read might be easily understood because of their experience base."
So anyone who has played enough kapustin should be sightreading anything else by him? Does that also work with Tatum transcriptions? Learn a few and then breeze through the rest at sight? Sorry but the processing power required to know what is being asked for does not automatically improve by learning complex things under no pressure. It may but it's not guaranteed. Familiarity with riffs and patterns improved ease of execution but not ease of accurate reading, if the demands take a lot of visual processing.
"What about a style which is full of procedure you are unfamiliar with? Saying you have no problems with ANY STYLE is rather over confident, and ridiculous."
Why? I have played very little jazz. I read through numerous Keith jarrett transcriptions fine at first sight. However, I cannot do so easily ones involving elaborate passage work. Not because I don't know the style (because I sure don't have experience of the harmonically dense and chromatic style in the ones I read fine) but because it's too much information to process to rattle it off right there. I have friends who play jazz properly and are classically trained. I doubt whether many of them can actually sightread dictations of elaborate solos notably better than I can and they may even be worse at first sight. They'd be better equipped to improvise around, to fake it. But unless they process more information than I can at greater speed, they'll not rattle them off accurately first time merely down to their knowledge of the style.
Difficulty is what limits people with a broad skill set, not style. Good tools don't stop working on specific musical styles.
"Whatever "slender handful of respects" you mean you have obviously skipped over with no explanation. If I have memorized one thousand pieces you think this will not help reading difficult works?"
That depends whether you got better at processing information by sight better.
"When you stop and keep trying to work out the fingering then you are playing music with content you have little experience with, you can only produce the fingerings instantly without having to stop and decode it beforehand because you are drawing from experiences from many many pieces and the procedure is well known because of that!
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Actually doing just that is why I sightread fugues much better these days. If you're not good at finding effective fingerings with time to think, there's slender chance under pressure. I learned the processes of how to finger counterpoint better in freer time. But it's not memories in reading so much as transferable skills in executions. Of course skills help execution of what you have correctly read, in sightreading. My point is about the actual reading process. Memory is scarcely an issue there. Even overall, it's general reading skill plus general ability to turn visualised counterpoint into an execution. Clearly there's a difference in the skills to execute counterpoint and homophonic music, but once we start getting much further than that there's no need to know really specific styles. When you have skills in general plus good visual processing, you can be sightreading French or Russian or jazz or whatever. The only limiter is innate difficulty, not style.
"You haven't explained yourself at all. What does more adept at figuring out what the score asks for.......visualise at once" mean? It is meaningless without any elaboration. Explain this with zero connection with piece memory or experience because you have already said they do not contribute a great deal at all to sight reading. Go on, please tell us what this "figuring out" and "visualise" is all about."
I suggest you read the Karl Leimer book that Gieseking was associated with. I didn't think this was exactly an unknown concept in pianism. If it is to you, it's well worth investigating. Gieseking practised little other than visualisation most of the time. It's having an internal conception of what you are actually going to do. All good sightread are ultra advanced in processing information and creating a visualisation from that. Unfortunately, no amount of memory automatically turns densely packed symbols into an instant visualisation of the piece, unless there is extremely rapid ability to actually read and convert those symbols.
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Put an expert in Bach into a totally different style they will most likely fall flat on their face. Try to sight read some Kasputin or perhaps with other rhythmic music which Bach does not explore. It will be terribly difficult. But put a stride pianist in front of some Kasputin and much of what is read might be easily understood because of their experience base.
You forgot the Kapustin Preludes and Fugues. ;)
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So anyone who has played enough kapustin should be sightreading anything else by him?
I don't think its much to do about having played enough, its about recognising patterns. If you don't understand the style of the composer enough to recognise their characteristic patterns, then you will have to analyse every note, rather than recognize the pattern and verify that the notes do indeed match the pattern.
Unfortunately, pattern recognition seems quite individual and variable, so some people find it hard to recognise patterns in some styles of music, and i don't know of any reliable methods of improving that kind of pattern recognition.
If you understand Kapustin well enough, you can sight read him.
If you can sight read Kapustin, then you understand him well.
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"I don't think its much to do about having played enough, its about recognising patterns. If you don't understand the style of the composer enough to recognise their characteristic patterns, then you will have to analyse every note, rather than recognize the pattern and verify that the notes do indeed match the pattern. "
But you're starting on the assumption that these are mutually exclusive acts- ie using circular logic. In chromatic music, how can you recognise a pattern unless processing its components to put them against memory? Logic does not suggest memory reference demands less any less actual analysis. It just suggests that it's done more instinctively - ie with more evolved processing skills. Also, in chromatic music there are just so many permutations. It's like if any letter could go next to any other letter in words. Hoping to use memory in anything that is not simple is like trying to build a repertoire of all five letter combinations for recognition. Expectation would generally be low percentage gamble unless confirmed by processing details- which is simply inescapable when there are so many possibilities, memory or not.
"Unfortunately, pattern recognition seems quite individual and variable, so some people find it hard to recognise patterns in some styles of music, and i don't know of any reliable methods of improving that kind of pattern recognition."
You simply need to practise plenty of chromatic music, with a precise awareness of intervals and clarity in terms of how accidental move a specific distance from the reference pitch. Then it scarcely matters how familiar or unfamiliar something is. You calculate first, no matter how slow and then make sure you always get it right first time. Then the process gradually starts to be attempted under more pressure.
"If you understand Kapustin well enough, you can sight read him.
If you can sight read Kapustin, then you understand him well."
In practise, that just doesn't work. I don't understand Keith jarrett harmony one bit. However I sightread transcriptions of his music very accurately first time- by processing what I was being asked to do and then doing just that. I can simply process chords pretty quick, memory or not.
A player who has more advanced skills than myself could do the same with a greater number of notes in kapustin, whether they played him before or not. Another player could learn plenty of the music and still lack the processing skills to deal with the difficulty at first sight. You might as well be arguing that a player who has learned 23 Chopin etudes should thus be able to do the winter wind at first sight. It doesn't work that way. Knowing Chopin in general doesn't either mean you can process that much information at once, or figure the necessary physical issues to execute it without preparation. To put style before innate difficulty of reading and execution is missing the point. Those with the most evolved skills won't need to know the style. Those who know the style but lack the skills won't do as well.
Stylistic awareness might scrape you through some tight corners where you've pushed your ability past its limit and have to scrape your way through with educated guesses or outright fakery. But the primary factor in sightreading is the quality of the fundamental skill set. If difficulty falls comfortably within your skillset, style matters nothing except in terms of the interpretation.
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"I don't think its much to do about having played enough, its about recognising patterns. If you don't understand the style of the composer enough to recognise their characteristic patterns, then you will have to analyse every note, rather than recognize the pattern and verify that the notes do indeed match the pattern. "
But you're starting on the assumption that these are mutually exclusive acts- ie using circular logic.
Where is the circular logic? i don't see it.
You can acquire patterns through slow learning of pieces (ie not sight reading), and then use those patterns for quick verifications during sight reading. During sight reading, the known patterns will help process many notes quickly leaving a few to analyse slowly. The experience of learning pieces slowly or sight-reading may lead you to add extra patterns to your repetoire.
I did not say that you didn't need to process every note.
I said that you don't need to analyse every note, because you can verify that the note fits a pattern much faster.
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Where is the circular logic? i don't see it.
You can acquire patterns through slow learning of pieces (ie not sight reading), and then use those patterns for quick verifications during sight reading. During sight reading, the known patterns will help process many notes quickly leaving a few to analyse slowly. The experience of learning pieces slowly or sight-reading may lead you to add extra patterns to your repetoire.
I did not say that you didn't need to process every note.
I said that you don't need to analyse every note, because you can verify that the note fits a pattern much faster.
All you've done is repeat the unproven assumption above and build the rest on top. You can't use something to prove itself. The fact that patterns are recognised as familiar does not prove that the brain processes them more easily specifically because of memory. It is equally possible (and more logically probable based on other issues) that the brain processes components just the same and then matches what it has processed against memories to see if it fits or not. In other words memory conceivably aids execution after identification of a stock technique, but has little effect on actual processing of the instructions.
If it has to fit a pattern, forget ever learning to sightread thick chromatic jazz harmonies or atonal music. I don't notably differentiate between processing and analysis. However I certainly didn't consciously "analyse" when I read through totally unfamiliar patterns in the jarrett transcription, if that's what you presume would have to happen. If you think you need to know the style in order to avoid conscious analysis, you're wrong. I just processed the information in the same way internal way I process a much easier c major chord and my fingers found the keys. I have methods for very consciously analysing as a training process but I didn't consciously use any of those processes. It was all internal processing based on the acquired skills and direct familiarity was simply not necessary whatsoever. Good enough processing skills are why I could do it. Good sight readers don't need anything in the memory bank other than the basic reading skills. I don't care if something fits a memory. If I can decode the information quickly, I can execute it whether that involves matching to a familiar pattern or whether that involves seeing a brand new pattern thanks to the notes I have read. I don't need anything to match up to any memory, as long as I've read it correctly in time. I'd be a poor sightreader I was limited to executing only chords that I've done before, without a method for new ones.
You're speaking as if it's crazy to think that someone can actually read a comprehensive checklist and use precisely that to get the result comprehensively correct. How on earth could it be more rational to assume that note perfect executions come more from hoping that things fit memories that they might not, than to assume that perfect execution comes from the skill to simply process what it actually says to do, both quickly and precisely enough?
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Sorry, i am completely failing to get my point across here.
I don't know how to explain my viewpoint in a way that you will understand, so i'll stop trying.
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A good goal is to be able to sight read away from the piano. Sing the melody, practice rhythm. That way, if you can sightsing the melody correctly, you can already kind of figure out how the piece is going to sound, and no modulation shall throw you off. Also, since in piano you are reading 2 parts, make sure when you look ahead, you can memorize one of the hand's part based on the next beat or few beats, and play the other part, timing both to happen at the next beat, which happens the next time you look at the sheet music.
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timing both to happen at the next beat, which happens the next time you look at the sheet music.
What are you proposing you look at in the interim?
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What are you proposing you look at in the interim?
your hands! if need be
thank you, jmenz :)
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your hands! if need be
thank you, jmenz :)
Part of becoming a good sight reader is to reduce the need to look at your hands. Ideally, eliminate it entirely, but in the interim reduce the occasions where it is needed and reduce the time it takes to do so.
Two reasons for this: first it gives you more time with the score to take in and analyse information, secondly, it stops you losing your place and repeating or missing whole bits.
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If you don't understand the style of the composer enough to recognise their characteristic patterns, then you will have to analyse every note, rather than recognize the pattern and verify that the notes do indeed match the pattern.
That is very clearly written and I agree with it very much so!!
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(L)"Maybe you are not familiar enough that is why they continue to be least confident with. If you are familiar with them this means you have had a lot of experience playing counterpoint and patterns you face when sight reading will be easily executed and inferred, you will understand what you hear and anticipate the changes, the reading will be more easy and fluent, the fingerings are well known."
(N)I've learned more than half of book one of wtc to a standard of accuracy. I suspect that plenty of pianists who have done it all would still struggle to do fugues of the same standard.
(L)I play all 48 preludes and fugues and they became easier and easier to sight read the more of them I learned and the more of Bachs music that I played as a whole. Put a new fugue in front of me and I can play all the notes with good fingerings no problems, if it is a rapid tempo then of course you can't rattle it off at speed instantly but that is irrelevant because from slow and controlled playing comes any speed.
(N)By your logic, having learned the complete transcendental etudes should make la campanella feasible sightreading.
(L) You can sight read first go it with the correct fingerings perhaps at half tempo no worries.
(N) It becomes easier to learn fast when you know the techniques. But not to process enough information to do it straight off first time, simply because you processed a lot of information before at your own leisure. Sight reading starts with reading information rapidly and accurately.
(L) You are misunderstanding how sight reading is used. We don't just read it 1 time and expect to play it at tempo perfectly. But I can sight read it 100 times in a day and get it solved, rather than a memoriser who has to spend weeks analyzing their fingerings, notes etc etc. Sight reading, do you really know what is used for ???
(N)All too many pianists forget that. The reading side doesn't automatically become great either by ploughing through loads of material once or by learning loads of repertoire in your own time- unless you are doing both in the right kind of way.
(L) If you actually did read through a lot of music you would realize that it helps you to read the generali procedures there is in musical writing. There is no magical "right kind of way" you are trying to say again with ZERO clarification as to what this right kind of way is lol. You will simply be able to read better and faster and more accurate the more you read. There are of course structured ways to improve your sight reading, but simply reading a lot of music will help AUTOMATICALLY.
(N)It's no different to the fact that some pianists who practise hours per day are still rubbish. Quantity doesn't always make for quality.
(L)If everyone who practices does so in a wrong fashion then of course they are not going to get better. But the reality is that most people who practice will see improvement, there is only a small portion of people who practice completely wrong and this can be easily remedied with a good teacher. No practice is worse than bad practice.
(L)Put an expert in Bach into a totally different style they will most likely fall flat on their face. Try to sight read some Kasputin or perhaps with other rhythmic music which Bach does not explore. It will be terribly difficult. But put a stride pianist in front of some Kasputin and much of what is read might be easily understood because of their experience base."
(N)So anyone who has played enough kapustin should be sightreading anything else by him?
(L) Yes, but someone who plays a lot of Kasputin would play a lot of other styles which are similar from other composers. There is a network of knowledge that will allow you to read a particular style fluently. Playing 5 of his pieces is not a lot.... Sightreading through all his works and you will see his overall style. Read through other composers as well and you will see similiarities and contrasts between different people.
(L)"What about a style which is full of procedure you are unfamiliar with? Saying you have no problems with ANY STYLE is rather over confident, and ridiculous."
(N)Why? I have played very little jazz. I read through numerous Keith jarrett transcriptions fine at first sight. However, I cannot do so easily ones involving elaborate passage work. Not because I don't know the style (because I sure don't have experience of the harmonically dense and chromatic style in the ones I read fine) but because it's too much information to process to rattle it off right there.
(L) Maybe not on your first read but what about those that follow? How fast does it improve?
(N) Difficulty is what limits people with a broad skill set, not style. Good tools don't stop working on specific musical styles.
(L) A style can be difficult because of its style.... If you haven't read the procedure enough then you are not familiar enough with it. difficulty may slow the tempo of your playing while sight reading but it is irrelevant because from controlled playing comes any tempo.
(L)"Whatever "slender handful of respects" you mean you have obviously skipped over with no explanation. If I have memorized one thousand pieces you think this will not help reading difficult works?"
(N)That depends whether you got better at processing information by sight better.
(L) Learning thousands of pieces does nothing at all? You think there could be even a chance that it does nothing? AHAHAHAHAHAH
(L)"When you stop and keep trying to work out the fingering then you are playing music with content you have little experience with, you can only produce the fingerings instantly without having to stop and decode it beforehand because you are drawing from experiences from many many pieces and the procedure is well known because of that!
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(N)If you're not good at finding effective fingerings with time to think, there's slender chance under pressure. I learned the processes of how to finger counterpoint better in freer time.
(L) This means you can't sight read the works because you are still studying them to become familiar with them. The fingering is not automatically understood because you haven't gone through the procedure countless times.
(N) But it's not memories in reading so much as transferable skills in executions.
(L) If there is no memory in the reading then how do you see a group of notes and react to it immediately without having seen it before? You must remember the pattern, at first the memory is raw conscious observation, later it becomes an instant muscular reaction in the fingers to what the eyes see.
(L)"You haven't explained yourself at all. What does more adept at figuring out what the score asks for.......visualise at once" mean? It is meaningless without any elaboration. Explain this with zero connection with piece memory or experience because you have already said they do not contribute a great deal at all to sight reading. Go on, please tell us what this "figuring out" and "visualise" is all about."
(N)I suggest you read the Karl Leimer book that Gieseking was associated with.
(L) AHHAHAHAHAAHAH... wait? HAHAHA... please. If you cant explain yourself don't throw boooks at me.
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LNLNLNLNLNLNLNLNLNLN
Once wasn't enough?
BTW, it's Kapustin, not Kasputin.
Somewhere in there though you hint (or more) that there may be different purposes for which we may be sight reading a piece, and I think that's an important point.
Not the sight-reading vs just reading thing, but what we are reading for. For example, if one is reading to accompany a choir or other instrumentalists, the approach needs to be one of maintaining tempo and reasonable accuracy, missing what's not doable. If you're reading as a sort of private performance - this is what it goes like - then something like that works too, but maybe a bit more flexible. If you're reading to get a feel for a piece, the tempo can be a bit more fluid and off the pace, you can afford more mistakes (not a lot) and so forth. If you're reading to see what you would need to do to learn the piece, even slower, less steady and mistake ridden is possible. Horses for courses - so long as it works for what you're hoping to achieve with the exercise.
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(L)I play all 48 preludes and fugues and they became easier and easier to sight read the more of them I learned and the more of Bachs music that I played as a whole. Put a new fugue in front of me and I can play all the notes with good fingerings no problems, if it is a rapid tempo then of course you can't rattle it off at speed instantly but that is irrelevant because from slow and controlled playing comes any speed.
That isn't the point, if we're talking about advanced sightreading. As an experiment I just read through the B minor fugue of book 1 which is already slow. I had to a go a little slower than performance tempo but I could do it with a high standard of accuracy when I allowed a tiny bit of added space. I'm not in my comfort zone in the same way as in less contrapuntal styles but I can do it with focus. Then I tried the A minor fugue and fell flat on my arse unless I slowed down to around half the performance tempo.
You don't hear a whole lot of legendary stories about Liszt or Richter performing the remarkable feat of going slowly enough to get through a difficult piece first time and everyone being impressed because that's how you should learn pieces anyway. Less so still if a pianist agrees to accompany a Brahms sonata they don't know for an examination, due to an emergency. In relation to all this memory business it takes away from your line of argument- because going slow means it's more feasible to simply process all the information at that slow tempo. If the memory thing is so good WHY do you have to go slow- if not for the simple reason that you cannot process information quickly enough to actually decode all the written instructions (for reference against memories) except when going slow enough to do more processing? It's not a strong case. You can't do it faster because you simply can't process enough information to do it quickly. Truly great sightreaders can.
(L) You can sight read first go it with the correct fingerings perhaps at half tempo no worries.
Again, hardly a truly remarkable feat. Yet, equally, many skilled performers would struggle. Some people don't process the written score quickly enough unless they are allowed to take pauses to stop and have a good think. Learning is not a speed contest.
(L) You are misunderstanding how sight reading is used. We don't just read it 1 time and expect to play it at tempo perfectly. But I can sight read it 100 times in a day and get it solved, rather than a memoriser who has to spend weeks analyzing their fingerings, notes etc etc. Sight reading, do you really know what is used for ???
Actually, great sightreaders do. I'll not stop considering what creates the skills unless I can do just that. Being able to do something really slowly as the first step of learning a piece is not a remarkable ability but merely a pretty decent one. Also, you make a crazy false polarisation there. Optimal learners would typically neither "sightead 100 times" nor spend weeks due to analysis. They'd have a good hard look and think about a passage to mentally clarify what they want and use that deep understanding to have it down fast- a la Gieseking, who typically expected to get things right first time due to mental clarity. 100 times? Seriously? Is it not better to actually think where the target is rather than just fire off 100 shots?
(L) If you actually did read through a lot of music you would realize that it helps you to read the generali procedures there is in musical writing. There is no magical "right kind of way" you are trying to say again with ZERO clarification as to what this right kind of way is lol. You will simply be able to read better and faster and more accurate the more you read. There are of course structured ways to improve your sight reading, but simply reading a lot of music will help AUTOMATICALLY.
All the time I've been playing I ploughed through tonnes of music. I was a reasonable sightreader but I faked everything. The throw time at it method is very poor without organisation. You don't improve your limits unless you work at processing the information in fully first time without fakery. When I took this attitude (allowing tempo stretching if need be) I also improved at sightreading in strict tempo- and dramatically so. You need a variety of methods, not simply enough time on reading new stuff.
It's like in maths. If someone spends enough time on long sums, they will get better at processing any sum quickly via the base memories such as 2+2= 4 - not "memorise" all additions of two five digit numbers for memory recall. But only if they learn good methods while doing so. The children who are trained to use abacuses for rapid mental arithmetic will develop far quicker than those who use the standard western method taught in school. It's not an issue of memory and time only aids speed of processing notably if it is focussed to develop the right experience and skill- just like musical reading. That's why neither a chord nor a specfic sum needs to have been met before to be either read or executed quickly, by a person of skill.
(L)If everyone who practices does so in a wrong fashion then of course they are not going to get better. But the reality is that most people who practice will see improvement, there is only a small portion of people who practice completely wrong and this can be easily remedied with a good teacher. No practice is worse than bad practice.
That's quite a novel argument about the small percentage. Unfortunately, if we're talking about advanced rather than notably subpar sighteading (and I thought we were, no?), the most important thing is that bad practise is far worse than good practise and that good practise doesn't find itself- regardless of the statistic you invented about how only a small percentage practise wrong. Only a small percentage practise completely right is the reality- as evidenced by the fact that truly great sightreaders are rare, not the norm.
(L) Yes, but someone who plays a lot of Kasputin would play a lot of other styles which are similar from other composers.
Indeed. Processing other densely chromatic music in which few details are simplistically predictable would prepare them. Which is exactly why you need not have played a single work by him if you sharpen your tools elsewhere. Especially if half tempo counts as amazing sightreading, in your book.
(L) Maybe not on your first read but what about those that follow? How fast does it improve?
What? That comment makes no sense on any level. Who ever said memory wouldn't be an issue when you play exactly the same piece over again? I'm talking about the slender relevance of memory when decoding brand new material for the first time.
(L) A style can be difficult because of its style....
Yes, if there is a large amount of information to process in order to decode the score. Which is exactly why your best effort has to be in half-tempo, no matter how well you know the style, when it's that complex (and why ANY style is easy when there's less information to process) It's still hard because you need to go slow enough to allow your processing skills to do the job of identification. But a truly great sightreader with better processing skills can do it faster at once whether they know the style or not.
(L) Learning thousands of pieces does nothing at all? You think there could be even a chance that it does nothing? AHAHAHAHAHAH
Drop the strawman. It's a cheap way to argue. I said it doesn't guarantee excellence. Do you think there might perhaps be another category that falls between zero improvement and achievement of excellence? I can certainly see the possibility for somewhere between those two extremes. Can you not? You subscribe to the idea that anyone who has not achieved rare excellence must therefore have achieve "nothing"?
As I said, I did tonnes of sightreading all the time. I improved in a truly notable way, only when I made changes to the METHODS which I used while reading material- which improved the quality of my learning procedures in general and which also spilled into how effectively I process new information under tempo pressure.
(L) If there is no memory in the reading then how do you see a group of notes and react to it immediately without having seen it before? You must remember the pattern, at first the memory is raw conscious observation, later it becomes an instant muscular reaction in the fingers to what the eyes see.
Why is it a mystery to everyone that a clear and comprehensive checklist of information can actually be read off and executed without recourse to anything but itself? I already told you, I had no problem reading a Jarrett transcription without stylistic knowledge of jazz harmony. Why do I need any? The score covers that for me by telling me what to play. Is it seriously so hard to believe that I can simply read what a score says and then do just that, for no other reason than because that's what it told me too?
If this is controversial (and would demand the assumption that I secretly know jazz harmony and got my accuracy by taking educated guesses based on memory, rather than by simply observing what it said) the mind simply boggles. It's one thing to believe that memory helps to some degree in some areas but it's plain irrational to make such a silly claim, and speaks of desire to prove a fixed outcome at any cost, rather than an open and self-critical mind. I sure as hell have no experience of popular Chinese tunes either, or composers like Einaudi but it certainly didn't make it any harder to read them off at once when students have brought them. After looking at broad evidence, I dropped the beliefs I used to hold about how reading occurs well "because" of memory and switched to more credible view that any memory recollections are caused by good reading practises- and that you can do just as well where memory is not an issue, depending on how much information must be processed.
If something is difficult for the brain to process, it's difficult to sightread. If something is easy to process, it's easy.
(L) AHHAHAHAHAAHAH... wait? HAHAHA... please. If you cant explain yourself don't throw boooks at me.
If you can't be arsed to research the very widely known concept of visualisation, I'm not going to fill in the gaps for you. You might as well insist that I have to explain how C major fingering works before I'm allowed to speak of it. Visualisation is not some rare or obscure concept in pianism so I suggest you fill in the gaps in your knowledge by doing some research- rather than heckle a method that was used by Gieseking, Fiorentino, Hofmann and also Volodos today.
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Part of becoming a good sight reader is to reduce the need to look at your hands. Ideally, eliminate it entirely, but in the interim reduce the occasions where it is needed and reduce the time it takes to do so.
Two reasons for this: first it gives you more time with the score to take in and analyse information, secondly, it stops you losing your place and repeating or missing whole bits.
Looking at your hands shouldn't throw you off from your place in the score, if you completely synchronized where you are in your left hand part and where you are in your right hand part, and where your hands are on the piano and everything else that is going on with the score and t he performance.
In my opinion, you shouldn't need much time to look at the score and play the right thing, if you are a good sight reader. But while you are learning, you should be able to look away, look at your hands, analyze that situation and adjust immediately, and be able to switch what the hands are doing to where you were in the score, except to the next place of musical instance.
What it seems to me, you're saying, is about what a good sight reader does. I am trying to explain how sight reading works for me. There isn't always a prelude or fugue to be read. There are crazy contemporary pieces where notes aren't practical skips or mostly by step/close together. And yes you would practice those impractical skips to be reliable without looking, but what if you are reading on the spot?
It is important to look ahead, always. And be aware of what your hands are doing, not only by having a sense of touch and awareness of how that works for you in sight reading, but also of how looking at your hands can help you be more precise sight-reader.
If you have the chance to learn a piece purely by sight-reading and not looking at your hands, then do it, and yes, you would want to mostly or altogether eliminate the looking part. Although, this has benefits and downfalls, because some people memorize only one way and not the other. Your strengths should be many, not few. In my opinion :)
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Looking at your hands shouldn't throw you off from your place in the score, if you completely synchronized where you are in your left hand part and where you are in your right hand part, and where your hands are on the piano and everything else that is going on with the score and t he performance.
Well, maybe it shouldn't. But it sometimes does for me, and more as I age. Where I notice it is when playing in a wind ensemble, and while sometimes I can follow the conductor with peripheral vision, at times I need to memorize a couple bars and actually focus on him. Then it isn't always easy to quickly get my eye back on the right spot. Older eyes don't change focus as quickly.
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There isn't always a prelude or fugue to be read. There are crazy contemporary pieces where notes aren't practical skips or mostly by step/close together. And yes you would practice those impractical skips to be reliable without looking, but what if you are reading on the spot?
No note is ever more than 87 from the last one, and the piano mostly stays still.
There are, I should point out, crazy contemporary preludes and fugues that employ large distances between notes too, but I wasn't limiting myself to that genre anyway.
If you're reading on the spot, you need to be able to manage those larger gaps with minimal looking. None if you can.
You appear to be confounding reading (off the sheet a piece you know) with sight-reading (a piece you've never played or heard before). In the former, losing your place is less likely, but in the latter it's entirely possible - especially where bars look alike.
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No note is ever more than 87 from the last one, and the piano mostly stays still.
There are, I should point out, crazy contemporary preludes and fugues that employ large distances between notes too, but I wasn't limiting myself to that genre anyway.
If you're reading on the spot, you need to be able to manage those larger gaps with minimal looking. None if you can.
You appear to be confounding reading (off the sheet a piece you know) with sight-reading (a piece you've never played or heard before). In the former, losing your place is less likely, but in the latter it's entirely possible - especially where bars look alike.
Nothing is banned outright. Good sightreading skills are based on breadth of experience. You're missing the fact that good sightreaders process information so quick that they should not always have to keep their eyes on the score. If they do have to stay glued forwards, they're the limited one- not the sightreader who can process and remember a chunk well enough to free up their vision for a bit.
One of the most important exercises is to look at a bar or half bar or whatever it takes and deliberately look away from the score as you execute it. I usually look at a wall or something rather than at my hands. But it's a powerful exercise in visualisation. Even in pieces you know, you can look at a chunk and then try to make sure the hand are executing on command of reading and visualising- to try to avoid either coasting on physical habit alone or reading on a note at a time basis. If I read the score continuously, it simply doesn't test my visualisation or processing speed in the same way. It doesn't force you to make bigger mental organisations or plan in full This little trick both aids my sighreading practise and how I work on learned pieces. It also helps build the skills that allow some to do meaningful practise entirely in their head.
If a good sightreader has the skill to glance and memorise a large chunk at once, so they can sometimes move their vision to their hands for a bit without any problem, all credit to them. Options are a positive, not a negative.
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Options are a positive, not a negative.
If it's an option, it's fine. For most struggling sightreaders, it's a necessity to look at the hands, rather than an option. And that necessity will hinder them.
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If it's an option, it's fine. For most struggling sightreaders, it's a necessity to look at the hands, rather than an option. And that necessity will hinder them.
Sure. But so will only looking at the score. They should practise instant memorisation of bars and deliberately play from visualisation of what they read, rather than allow themself to work note by note, based on small quantities of decontextualised information. I can't think of any safer way to break the habit of reading small, rather than big chunks.
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Sure. But so will only looking at the score. They should practise instant memorisation of bars and deliberately play from visualisation of what they read, rather than allow themself to work note by note, based on small quantities of decontextualised information. I can't think of any safer way to break the habit of reading small, rather than big chunks.
So you're suggesting that instead of reading (once) of the page, they read of the page, memorise it, and then read off the memorised image? And that's better? :o
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So you're suggesting that instead of reading (once) of the page, they read of the page, memorise it, and then read off the memorised image? And that's better? :o
No, you look at it once, memorize it (in a way that works for sight reading), play it. If you are proficient enough in piano, in general, you don't need to look at your hands while you READ music, anyways.
It works great in sight reading, but that's how I learn music, in the end, too...
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No, you look at it once, memorize it (in a way that works for sight reading), play it. If you are proficient enough in piano, in general, you don't need to look at your hands while you READ music, anyways.
It works great in sight reading, but that's how I learn music, in the end, too...
To clarify, I'd just add the term visualisation. I can sort of "see" the text for a brief time but it's not exactly sightreading from a photographic memory (and I certainly don't retain an internal picture of how the score looked beyond the short term). It's more a case of picturing the meaning of the symbols and having a comprehensive picture of how to execute them, before starting- so no details need to be confirmed by an extra look at the music. If that's impossible, a player must start with smaller chunks and practise making them bigger. Good sight readers have to both process a lot of notes quick and be able to form an accurate visualisation of the execution. This is an excellent reveal of whether you can actually do that, or whether you can only bumble your way around a note at a time. Without seeing a broader context, notes cannot flow smoothly. Someone who doesn't sightread well may be poor at decoding the text, but it's equally possible that they just aren't very good at processing chains of notes into a broader visualisation.
This comes back to the memory illusion too BTW. Memory is an organiser of what you read, not the explanation for how you read it. After reading many notes, a really good sightreader creates a visualisation from whatever they just read-regardless of whether it fits something routine. A less experienced one may be able to visualise a run of notes that fit C major, but they may not yet have the visualisation power to process 6 chromatic notes that fit no obvious pattern and instantly turn them into a single completed thought, that can then be executed without checking back to the music. A really good sightreader can either use memory of a standard pattern to simplify organisation of what they have read (if it fits), or they can create their own internal organisation to cover notes that fit no routine pattern. A lesser reader is just out of their depth when they have to make their own pictures in an instant, without reliance on existing ones. Obviously the good readers they don't look away much in normal sightreading. But forcing yourself to is exactly how you train and check the speed of visual processing plus the internal ability to organise many details into chunks that are ready for execution. It's way too easy to stay on a small scale (no matter how many times you hear about the need to read ahead) unless you force short term memory of larger chunks to evolve.
PS. the next challenge is where rather than look away, your eyes jump to the next chunk and start processing, while your fingers are doing the one you already processed. Although I'm a fair sightreader, attempting to always be one bar ahead shows me that my eyes are too absorbed in wanting to confirm the chunk that I'm still doing, rather than getting truly stuck in to the next chunk. I don't think small but I've realised that I have room to train myself to think far bigger still. It's really useful to have practise techniques that actually make it possible to bring the advance reading thing about - rather than stock advice that merely says that you're meant to be able to do it.
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attempting to always be one bar ahead
Why pick an arbitrary amount like a bar?
Not all bars are equal, and the amount of information in one an be vastly (vastly!) greater than another. If you aim for "a bar ahead", for any level of processing ability bar the heroic sometimes it's trivial and sometimes it's impossible.
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Why pick an arbitrary amount like a bar?
Not all bars are equal, and the amount of information in one an be vastly (vastly!) greater than another. If you aim for "a bar ahead", for any level of processing ability bar the heroic sometimes it's trivial and sometimes it's impossible.
It's not a rule. As I said, it could be half a bar. Whatever is reasonable.
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Once wasn't enough?
BTW, it's Kapustin, not Kasputin.
I could have said Rasputin, you'd still know who i was talking about right? :) Thanks for correcting me I am not good with names. I still mistake Schubert and Schumann all the time -_-
....there may be different purposes for which we may be sight reading a piece, and I think that's an important point.
Not the sight-reading vs just reading thing, but what we are reading for. For example, if one is reading to accompany a choir or other instrumentalists, the approach needs to be one of maintaining tempo and reasonable accuracy, missing what's not doable. If you're reading as a sort of private performance - this is what it goes like - then something like that works too, but maybe a bit more flexible. If you're reading to get a feel for a piece, the tempo can be a bit more fluid and off the pace, you can afford more mistakes (not a lot) and so forth. If you're reading to see what you would need to do to learn the piece, even slower, less steady and mistake ridden is possible. Horses for courses - so long as it works for what you're hoping to achieve with the exercise.
Sight reading can be used in many ways and you have given a few good examples. It is not necessarily being able to pick up a piece and play it at mastery, but at the same time it is and you should be able to do this for particular pieces. One should also question what is stopping them from being able to sight read other works with mastery, you can certainly discover a lot studying the piano in terms of sight reading, sure puts a different spin on the approach to the study (Eg: reading hundreds of pieces a month opposed to polishing a few pieces to mastery).
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The madness begins!
Quote from: nyiregyhazi on August 08, 2014, 01:11:55 AM
Memory of other pieces doesn't make works of great difficulty any easier in anything but a slender handful of respects....
L:
Whatever "slender handful of respects" you mean you have obviously skipped over with no explanation. If I have memorized one thousand pieces you think this will not help reading difficult works?
N:
That depends whether you got better at processing information by sight better.
L: Learning thousands of pieces does nothing at all? You think there could be even a chance that it does nothing? AHAHAHAHAHAH
N:Drop the strawman. It's a cheap way to argue. I said it doesn't guarantee excellence. Do you think there might perhaps be another category that falls between zero improvement and achievement of excellence? I can certainly see the possibility for somewhere between those two extremes. Can you not? You subscribe to the idea that anyone who has not achieved rare excellence must therefore have achieve "nothing"?
As I said, I did tonnes of sightreading all the time. I improved in a truly notable way, only when I made changes to the METHODS which I used while reading material- which improved the quality of my learning procedures in general and which also spilled into how effectively I process new information under tempo pressure.
L:
Wow... I mean... wow, in one mad rattling of keyboard strokes you have managed to super tangent the entire argument into a multi armed monster of randomness.
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So, out of all the many points that a person with strength of conviction could have responded directly to (including those where I outlined the methodology that you had heckled me for not providing and demanded to know about), your response is to take a small passage that pertains entirely to the topic of sight reading and call it a "tangent"?
If you want to make a topical follow up (rather than attempt a to divert everything into a single tangent, about tangents) , I'll continue. If your only interest is in going off topic and taking ad hominem shots, I'll bow out. You are welcome to a free shot in which you can slag me off outside of the topic, because I will not be replying to anything further unless it contains a topical argument. A free low blow is yours, Sir, so please go ahead and "win" by taking it. Feel free to add more cackling too, so we can see how much you enjoy your uncontested victory (out of a field of yourself and not a single other interested competitor).
As you've left the topic by the wayside, I'll leave you to teach your students on the basis that quantity is the most important, the assumption that most people already know how to practise and the motto that lots of bad practise is better than none at all. (I sincerely wish those points were a ridiculous strawman of the kind you had created to argue against- rather than points you sincerely used to support your stance, in your last post)
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The madness begins!continues!
Fixed that for you.
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I could have said Rasputin, you'd still know who i was talking about right? :) Thanks for correcting me I am not good with names. I still mistake Schubert and Schumann all the time -_-
I'd actually have assumed there was yet another damn Russian I'd have to go out and explore!
;D
Sight reading can be used in many ways and you have given a few good examples. It is not necessarily being able to pick up a piece and play it at mastery, but at the same time it is and you should be able to do this for particular pieces. One should also question what is stopping them from being able to sight read other works with mastery, you can certainly discover a lot studying the piano in terms of sight reading, sure puts a different spin on the approach to the study (Eg: reading hundreds of pieces a month opposed to polishing a few pieces to mastery).
Oh, I agree you should be able to play some pieces straight off. I don't think it's ever possible to get a first time through up to the musical standard of a considered performance, but it should be acceptable.
One of the things that can stop people being able to read a piece is not their sight reading abilities at all - it's simply not possible to read through a piece you are not actually able to play. So whilst I think that people would benefit by reading a greater amount of repertoire, I still think it's necessary to target pieces to bring up to scratch that will develop ones technical skills, and also provide the sort of depth of understanding that complements breadth.
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So, out of all the many points that a person with strength of conviction could have responded directly to (including those where I outlined the methodology that you had heckled me for not providing and demanded to know about), your response is to take a small passage that pertains entirely to the topic of sight reading and call it a "tangent"?
There is no point in taking up anything else. If this single situation cannot be solved why bother putting more on the plate? I asked specific questions which where answered with randomness. The questions were not hard at all but you still persisted in casting your silly shadows of doubt.
People will complain you are tangenting because you are simply just talking straight past them and rambling off in your own world. If you can't even be clear on this one point why would any really take you seriously on anything else?
....I'll leave you to teach your students on the basis that quantity is the most important, the assumption that most people already know how to practise and the motto that lots of bad practise is better than none at all. (I sincerely wish those points were a ridiculous strawman of the kind you had created to argue against- rather than points you sincerely used to support your stance, in your last post)
Wow your madness is getting worse. tut tut. Why are you making up all these situations to support yourself?
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Fixed that for you.
That's more appropriate tim thanks lol :)
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One of the things that can stop people being able to read a piece is not their sight reading abilities at all - it's simply not possible to read through a piece you are not actually able to play. So whilst I think that people would benefit by reading a greater amount of repertoire, I still think it's necessary to target pieces to bring up to scratch that will develop ones technical skills, and also provide the sort of depth of understanding that complements breadth.
I find improving technique with many pieces focusing on the same issue is better than perfecting a single piece that studies that action. Everyone is individual though in their musical approach though I would encourage people to choose to do many examples instead of trying to perfect a single one. You do have to have a technical confidence with a variation of many scales, chords, arpeggios and other patterns/progressions you commonly find at the piano. Learning a lot of repertoire will help to learn a lot of these and analysing music taking time to break it down, highlighting its patterns etc all are helpful steps for the developing reader. I find teaching students to read competently and then focusing on their technique is easier than the other way around. Good reading means being effective in finding the good fingering which can certainly aid good technique since fingering is technique as Liszt said.
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I find improving technique with many pieces focusing on the same issue is better than perfecting a single piece that studies that action. Everyone is individual though in their musical approach though I would encourage people to choose to do many examples instead of trying to perfect a single one. You do have to have a technical confidence with a variation of many scales, chords, arpeggios and other patterns/progressions you commonly find at the piano. Learning a lot of repertoire will help to learn a lot of these and analysing music taking time to break it down, highlighting its patterns etc all are helpful steps for the developing reader. I find teaching students to read competently and then focusing on their technique is easier than the other way around. Good reading means being effective in finding the good fingering which can certainly aid good technique since fingering is technique as Liszt said.
I agree - with the slight caveat that some single pieces are better than others. The idea is to have a suite of general solutions, not whole warehouse-fulls of specific solutions, upon which to draw.
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I agree - with the slight caveat that some single pieces are better than others. The idea is to have a suite of general solutions, not whole warehouse-fulls of specific solutions, upon which to draw.
Exactly. It's not a case of getting a memory of all possible building blocks but acquiring a set of skills. Skill is diversely applicable- including in styles of music that a good reader has no experience of. It's absolutely no problem for advanced skills to cover things that are completely different to anything in the memory banks. And it's equally possible to have huge breadth of experience yet inadequate skills.