Stacked Notes

[tac-tics]

Does anyone have any useful strategies for sightreading and executing fast passages with two notes in one hand? Do you think of them as a partial chord or do you read them as individual voices? I'm learning Chopin's Albumleaf to Emile Gaillard which has such a passage at bar 14. I can almost play it at full speed, but I was wondering if anyone had any general advice for similar passages.

[chelsey]

Practice sight reading Bach chorales, and you'll never have a problem reading "stacked notes" again 

As for other advice, study a bit of theory and become fluent with chords in every key and you'll begin to identify patterns subconsciously which will make sightreading (life!) much easier.

[tac-tics]

Practice sight reading Bach chorales, and you'll never have a problem reading "stacked notes" again 

As for other advice, study a bit of theory and become fluent with chords in every key and you'll begin to identify patterns subconsciously which will make sightreading (life!) much easier.

Forgive my beginnerism, but I found this link on Google. These are what you're talking about right? Do I just read the staves independently simultaneously? (is that a contradiction of itself somehow? ;-)

[chelsey]

The chorale you found there is in open score, you can find arrangements (realizations) in closed/keyboard style of scoring. Anyways, an anthology such as this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0769240917/qid=1144216437/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/102-9488425-0820939?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
would give you exactly what you need, if you include a  reading a chorale or two as part of your practice routine (as slowly as you need to go to play accurately), your sightreading skills will improve tremendously.

Reading in open score is tricky to get used to , and yes you read all the staves simulteneously (it gets especially annoying when you get weird clefs thrown at you... we read Brahms quartets with clefs treble/treble/alto/tenor  in my advanced keyboard harmony class this winter), but it's a useful skill to acquire, especially if you may be accompanying choirs in the future who may not have piano arrangements of their pieces.

[tac-tics]

Whoa. Is it just me, or do you need to have a finger span of a tenth to play some of these? I'm looking at the second chorale in the Amazon book preview, and the middle voice (starting on middle C) is between two notes over 2 and a half octaves apart. Would you just drop a note for that or something?

Other than that obscurity (I really hope its not a common occurence in these pieces X-D ), these look very interesting. I ordered the book and I can't wait to try them out.

[abell88]

Whoa. Is it just me, or do you need to have a finger span of a tenth to play some of these? I'm looking at the second chorale in the Amazon book preview, and the middle voice (starting on middle C) is between two notes over 2 and a half octaves apart. Would you just drop a note for that or something?

I assume you're talking about 4 bars from the end? I would roll the chord(s) to get the notes...also you often end up taking tenor notes in the RH in these things...you get used to it after a while.

Once you're good at sight-reading them, try sight-transposing them up or down a whole tone.