Sightreading pros and cons

[avetma]

Hello everybody!

Little bit about me. Everybody that knows me said that I am incredible good sight-reader. And everybody are delighted with my sightreading. Let's say that chopin waltzs and nocturnes are no problem to read even in tempo. Liszt is similar too. After few listening I read HR2 without any problem. Same thing with HR13, Gondoliera (Venezia e Napoli), HR6, Liszt's PC1 first movement, Rach PC2 2nd movement, even Rach 3 ossia cadenza and similar. That is not hard at all to read at sight. Because there are accessible harmonies, they have logical denoument of melodies and what is most important - I like to listen them on recordings so they are in `range of my taste`.

Everybody is talking to me that this is great blah blah, but I have a problem. A serious problem.

I feel that I don't memorise pieces so good because of speedy-reading. My friends doesn't have that good reading abilities and they learn *relative* faster than me.

I want to say, I just want to learn faster when I have abilities to sight-read fast.

Don't missunderstand me. I am not ruffling.

Any opinions or thoughts are welcome!

Thank you,
Ante

[stevie]

work on your weaknesses, you just need a more disciplined method of memorization.

you need to force yourself not just to read, but to internalise information, the main thing this takes is simply repetition, dont jump ahead, stick to one page, and get that done first, then the next, etc.

of course, you try repeating this thing over and over, and sometimes it still doesnt ingrain itself in your mind, this is because youre using the sheets as a crutch.

you need to find out your capacity of short term musical memory - it may be 1 bar, it may be 4, 8, 16, even a page...

then take a section of your chosen bitesize - and read through it, maybe twice or so, till youre fairly comfortable with it...THEN take away your crutch and see if you can walk...take away the sheets and try to repeatedly recall that small section from memory.

forcing your brain to recall is what its all about, youre flexing your memorizing muscles, and using this technique you will gradually get better and faster at memorising over time.

ive only just started doing this, but it seems very logical, try and see if it works..

[tac-tics]

In my humble opinion, the ability to sightread outweighs the ability to memorize. When you memorize, you only have a handful (though, potentially a very *large* handful) of repetoire. However, when you can play a piece strictly from sheet music, you can play just about anything. You can expose yourself to more musical ideas more quickly.

Despite whether or not other people will agree on me with that, I think everyone would agree that you shouldn't let people condescend on your abilities. There's no reason to be competitive about it.

And if you do want to improve on memorization any, follow what stevie said. Play songs phrase-by-phrase, repeating each phrase a dosen sans le sheet music times before moving on to the next.

[allthumbs]

Greetings

While I agree with stevie and tac-tic's posts, I feel that there is much more to a piece of music than merely sightreading through it.

Don't get me wrong, the ability that you have is envious and no doubt the result of alot of pratice from an early age. However, I feel that to do a piece justice, one has to 'internalize' it. That is to say that a piece needs to be studied and analized and yes, memorized to really give it life as the composer intended.

One down side to not having any pieces memorized is if you are ever at a gathering that has a piano and are asked to play, without your music you're toast.


Cheers

allthumbs

[avetma]

Greetings

While I agree with stevie and tac-tic's posts, I feel that there is much more to a piece of music than merely sightreading through it.

Don't get me wrong, the ability that you have is envious and no doubt the result of alot of pratice from an early age. However, I feel that to do a piece justice, one has to 'internalize' it. That is to say that a piece needs to be studied and analized and yes, memorized to really give it life as the composer intended.

One down side to not having any pieces memorized is if you are ever at a gathering that has a piano and are asked to play, without your music you're toast.


Cheers
allthumbs

I understand what are you trying to say, but there is no need for that kind of lessons. Understanding music was never problem to me. In this thread I tried to be concentrated only on reading.

Anyway, I consider these as good advices. I will try to concentrate on special phrases or parts of piece to memorise it faster.

Thank you everbody

[darla]

Ante,

How did you become such a great sight-reader!?  Did it come naturally or were there specific things you did?

Thanks,
D-

[avetma]

I think that's because I was lazy to practise Bach when I was young. I have always played Bach on-sight to my teacher and she didn't knew that.

Besides that... I dont know... I think I understand some styles in music and I can predict in my head what will be used in next chord or progression.

It is hard to say when it started and why...