A few questions about sight reading

[persona]

I'm a begginer, and I don't know the first thing about sight reading. These are my questions:

1) Is EVERY piece sight-readable? I mean, when I see a proffesional playing Beethoven's Apasionatta and reading the sheet music, should I suppose s/he's just using it to remember the technical specifications (crescendo, etc), or is s/he actually reading the notes s/he has to play?

2) How many years of experience should one have in order to sight read a piece as hard as, say, Bach's Menuet in G major? (I mean, as easy to play by memory as this one)

3) How is this learned? Are there special exercises or what?

[pianiststrongbad]

I will answer this to the best of my ability, as I have known some wonderful sightreaders.

1) The short answer is no.  Some of the 20th century stuff is just near impossible to sightread, or play.  I would love to see someone sightread Alborada del Gracioso, or Transcendental Etude 5 in tempo.  Not everything was meant to be sightread.

With that said, these things can be sightread a bit under tempo and maybe without all the right notes.

2) There is no set time that one should be able to sightread any piece in particular.  Everybody is different and everybody learns at different speeds.  For me it was about 2 years to be able to sightread something of this difficulty (Minuet in G) in the correct tempo.

3) The best thing that you can do is to sightread anything and everything.  And when you sightread (this is the secret nobody ever told me for the longest time) don't look down, but rather look at the page.  You should generally sightread things that are simple enough for you to be able to get rhythms and notes.  If you are constantly looking up and down you will slow down considerably.

[persona]

pianiststrongbad:
thanx a lot for your answer!

[nicco]

I have a very good pdf with some great tips on sightreading. PM me and ill show you

[tompilk]

i wouldn;t say that anything is un-sightreadable...
i would have thought that if you practise that sort of music and sightreading enough then anything is possible to sight read...
Tom
Oh, and my sightreading has very quickly improved after picking up bits of random music i enjoy listnening to and just playing bits i like slowly... i now can sightread large fiddly chords with relative ease than what it used to take me... and i remember the music better...

PS. I hold the belief that anything is possible - even a pink elephant appearing right next to me this second. I understand it is highly unlikely but i believe there is a chance... and no i don't believe in God...

[nicco]

OMG OMG OMG!!! Looook!!!

sorry i just had to 

[tompilk]

hehehe...
Tom

[chadefa1]

Interesting post. I am very interested in hearing how much time other people took to be able to sight-read something like the Minuet in G. Please, no contest of speed, I really would like to know. Right now, it seems to me like an unattainable goal to ever be able to sight read it, but who knows...
So please, reply with how much time it took you to reach that kind of level!

[bartolomeo_]

One day I decided to work on my sightreading.

I read through something for about half an hour every day for a year.

After that I was at the point where I could read stuff comparable to the aforementioned minuet.

I took a break for some years and have now given myself various sightreading assignments.

I've been through Joplin's complete works once, and I've played most of my church's hymnal, though I skip a few pieces that aren't interesting.

Some people are amazing sightreaders although I think that particularly at advanced levels the skill is learned one genre or style at a time.  I also believe that the more important ability is that of being able to learn pieces quickly, which is what I strive for currently.  It is rare that I have to sightread a piece in public though it does happen.  What is more common is that I'm given something with only a day or two to prepare.

[chadefa1]

Thank you Bartolomeo. This must be a stupid question but: Where exactly can I find church hymnals? Everyone says they are useful for sightreading, but I am not sure where to get them and what exactly to get. I suppose I'd know if I went to church.

Are there any available online, or a book that would collect a large number of them for a reasonable price? I am looking for something easy to sight-read, easier than the Minuet, but maybe more than a single melodic line.

Thank you!

[Bob]

You could use Bach chorales too.  That might be easier to find than a hymnal.

[chadefa1]

Terrific! I got a set of about 500 pdf with their midi (Bach Chorales). I could not have hoped for more. Thank you!
Now, here is my second stupid question of the day: there are four parts in most of these chorales : soprano, alto, tenor and bass... which ones should I play??

Thank you!

[Bob]

Hopefully, all four parts are on treble and bass clefs -- two staves just like piano music?  Just like a hymnal then.  Hymnals are usually 4 part music.  (Bob is no expert though).

But it's choral music, not piano music.  Try to play them all as written.  If the stretches are too nuts, try to play all the notes in the chord.  If you don't want to play as written, you can play the notes of the chord with a more piano style voicing.  It's not piano music after all -- Some of it works well for voice and not so great (doesn't fit the hand) for piano. 

A lot of hymns use "simpler" harmonies -- Diatonic, the dominant seventh and diminished 7ths being the most complicated chords.  That makes it easier to read (although you're not reading more complicated music though, but it's still good reading).  For me at least, I can see those chords and just play them in the hands sometimes instead of doing the awkward stretches.

Bach chorales are good for practicing chordal analysis too.

Where did you get the pdfs?  Are they free online somewhere?

[chadefa1]

Thank you  Bob. I found them at:

https://www.jsbchorales.net/

Yes, all 4 parts are on treble and bass, but on four staves (2 for treble, 2 for bass), which makes it tricky. However, I ordered this from the library:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0793525748/sr=8-3/qid=1149554556/ref=sr_1_3/002-8262092-7347237?%5Fencoding=UTF8

which, if I understood correctly, "merges" the 4 staves into 2, making it easier for a beginner like me to get started (2 staves scare me enough...).

Cheers,

[tac-tics]

PS. I hold the belief that anything is possible

Yes. One must be careful when deciding what is not possible, especially in musical abilities. Impossible often boils down to mean that the speaker is no where near that skill level.

[bartolomeo_]

Thank you Bartolomeo. This must be a stupid question but: Where exactly can I find church hymnals? Everyone says they are useful for sightreading, but I am not sure where to get them and what exactly to get. I suppose I'd know if I went to church.

Are there any available online, or a book that would collect a large number of them for a reasonable price? I am looking for something easy to sight-read, easier than the Minuet, but maybe more than a single melodic line.

Thank you!

Well, there's eBay, where people are always selling old hymnals, or you can get one of the better ecumenical hymnals, such as the Chalice hymnal (www.cbp21.com), the Celebration hymnal (amazon), or Sing To the Lord (nph.com).  The pew editions are cheapest (typicaly $10-$20 each) and will work fine as long as you use clothespins or something to hold the pages flat.  The more expensive "keyboard editions" are ring bound or spiral bound or otherwise designed to sit flat by themselves.

Avoid the Lutheran Book of Worship because the harmonizations are nonstandard and in some cases difficult to play due to greater use of dissonance.

[ole]

it took me about 2 years to sight read pieces of that difficulty, it is still a bit spotty for me to read a piece FOR THE FIRST TIME at correct tempo.  i am way better than i used to be tho. good luck.

[chadefa1]

Thanks. I received the Bach chorales, but they are way too difficult to sight-read for a beginner. Maybe people have lost track of what a real beginner is, but I doubt that anyone who has had less than (at least) 2 years of piano could sight-read them.
They are probably useful for developing accuracy by playing through them very slowly (and painfully), but there is no way I can render any meaningful sense of the pieces by just sight-reading them.

They will be very useful in a couple of years though.

Thank you for all your help,
Tom

[tac-tics]

Well, there's eBay, where people are always selling old hymnals, or you can get one of the better ecumenical hymnals

Why am I tempted to purchase a Hymnal when I haven't been to church in.......

To chadefa1, I too foolishly purchased the Bach chorales. They are soooo tough. You look at them and they look at you and you say to them, "I can master you! You are only 16 measures long" and the chorale just sits there looking smug while you kill off a part of your soul trying to make sense of even two voices at once.....

[jlh]

I know!!  What's really humbling is when you try to do the partwriting for Bach's chorales that are just bass, soprano and figured bass...  you get the other 2 parts written and you're happy with the results, and THEN you take a look at a realization of the SAME chorale by Bach himself.  The man was a god. period.

[princessdecadence]

Some questions are just asked far too many times but here's my tip:

Play a duet but sight read it! Best way to improve and test yourself on your tempo esp. in sight reading.