Sight Reading And Practice

[benedict park]

Hello!

I am 13, have a lot of homework (recently started highschool), have been playing for 3 years, and am at about ARCT level, but my sight reading is horrible. I also cannot practice more than 3 hours! I just can't. I hear that some people play the piano for more than 7 hours...(is that even possible?)

So I was wondering if you guys would help me out on tips to improve my sight reading, and to improve my practice skills etc.

Thanks!

Benedict Park

[dmc]

When you say you are practicing 3 hours, I assume you mean 3 hours a day ?  If thats true, then (IMHO) you are giving it plenty of time.  Maybe even a little too much for your age.  But then I'm not a teacher either.

As for sight reading, don't feel bad.  Its a very difficult skill and not easily mastered.  I'm still working on mine and probably always will.  Generally one sight reads at a level well below their actual playing capabilities for a while.  Practice on short pieces that you have never heard and would find very easy to play.   Remember, sight-reading is being able to play a piece that you've never heard or are barely familiar with.   So after 3 or 4 tries, move on to another piece so that you don't memorize it.  The most important thing is to do this regularly every day for at least 15-20 minutes.  Gradually you will improve.  Just be persistent and patient.

Believe it or not, the fact that you're only 13 works very much in your favor right now.  You're absorbing a lot that will benefit you later as long as you keep at it.  As you get older if you truly love playing, seven hours of practicing will not seem unusual.  But don't worry about that for now.  Just hang in there & do the best you can.  You'll get better !

[thalberg]

3 hours a day is perfect for your age, I think.  7 hours a day isn't constructive unless you're under major pressure, IMO.

I agree about 15-20 min/day.

I was a HORRIBLE sightreader but improved with this simple method.  I got the book of 371 Bach chorales, put a metronome on 40, and made myself sightread them 15-20 min per day.  This is a good place to start.  You will get through all the chorales in less time than you think.  From that point on, FINDING MATERIAL is your big challenge.  Give yourself a few weeks of gathering time--find stuff that is of an appropriate level, and stockpile it.  Download it, photocopy it, borrow it, whatever.  Have a teacher help if you can.  Accompaniments are good for sighreading--vocal pieces, choral repertoire, etc.


At first you'll be super frustrated.  Sightreading is like a muscle--use it to make it stronger. 

At first it will be a challenge just to keep the right key signature in your head as you sightread.  As you go, you'll discover that the neurons running from your eyes to your brain to your fingers suddenly are working faster.

You'll also discover that rather than reading all the notes in an instant, you can sweep with your eyes and sort of memorize a bit of music for a split second, and put it all together in your head.  This ultra-short-term memory is what makes sightreading possible, since the eye cannot focus on a large enough area to cover the treble and bass clef simultaneously.  This develops over time.

Your brain will develop capabilities you didn't think you had.....but only if you push through the frustration for a period of months and even years.

USE A METRONOME when practicing sightreading.    Sightreading without rhythm is a waste!

Good luck.

[dmc]

Thalberg's suggestion of the Bach Chorales is a good one.  I may just try that myself to see how I do.  I'm sure it will be painful....!  

As for other sources, someone posted this on another thread:

https://www.practicespot.com/sightreading.phtml?t=79

There's plenty of examples to choose from with varying degrees of difficulty.  They're fairly short (4 measures) but try them anyway to get your confidence going.  Good luck !

[benedict park]

well actually, 3 hours isn't what I meant at all. I usually practice about 30 minutes now that im in highschool. In summer, the MOST i ever did was 3 hours. anyway, thanks for the tips so far!

[dmc]

Well try to spend some regular practice time sight reading anyway (even 10 minutes).  You will get better at it and later you'll be glad you did.

[goldentone]

Thanks for the sightreading advice, Thalberg.  The Bach chorales sound great.

[lostinidlewonder]

I find there are two ways in which we improve our sight reading, that is increasing the speed and accuracy. We can target to improve each one seperately. When you try to improve your speed of sightreading simply take out "easy" music for yourself and play it at tempo. When you want to prove your accuracy take out "hard" music and play it super slow with all the correct notes. There are a few restrictions as to how you practice your sight reading. You should, ignore dynamic, ignore rhythm, try to maintain correct fingering (at least start each bar with the right fingers).

When improving speed you must not stop if you make a mistake you should keep playing. Imrpove your speed of sight reading usually sounds quite bad since you will not be hitting all the correct notes and you do not need to. You simply keep reading and pushing yourself on, trying to recover if you hit wrong notes but NEVER stopping. This goes against peoples very nature of playing piano but it's very helpful to improve your speed of reading.

When improving your accuracy you must play note perfect and finger perfect very hard music for yourself, but take all the time in the world to determine what you must play. As you notice the music will sound pretty much nothing like it should again since you will be taking it super slow.

Of course imrpoving your ability to see groups of notes at a time is helpful, understanding the form of the keyboard to keysignature, building blocks of music like scales, chords, progression  etc. Sightreading comes through a lot of practice. It is pretty much the same as when you started to read words. You learn to understand the sound of individual letters, then you notice how they work together, after a number of years you are reading complete words and sentences without having to read every single letter, the same applies for music, you first start out reading every single dot and rest there is, eventually you understand how to absorb more at once. The difference is that you pretty much mastered how to use your voice to talk before you start learning how to read words, with music you always have the voice of your instrument to struggle with which can make reading music difficult.

[dmc]

Excellent ideas to consider lostinidle.  Would you (or anyone else) say that improved sight reading is the key to playing more difficult pieces ?  The reason I ask is because I'm returning to the instrument after several years away.  I've never been a strong reader and am trying to improve this myself.  I'd love to be able to play the more challenging Chopin or Rach works but the only way to do that right now is to stumble and stop which I know isn't the best approach.  I probably shouldn't even be attempting them at this point but its hard to resist !

I'm looking for a teacher to help with this at the moment.

[lostinidlewonder]

...Would you (or anyone else) say that improved sight reading is the key to playing more difficult pieces ?  .......I'd love to be able to play the more challenging Chopin or Rach works but the only way to do that right now is to stumble and stop which I know isn't the best approach.  I probably shouldn't even be attempting them at this point but its hard to resist !

Sight reading skills have nothing much to do with the ability to play "difficult" pieces. It is key more often than not however to the rate at which you learn a piece.

Excellent memorisers who might be weak at sight reader have a method to memorise their music quickly with too much reading. Memorisers need to read a small passage a few times carefully (determining which notes they do not know by ear) and slowly, then they understand how to always play that without reading it again. If a memorise needs to read they only do so to remind themeslves of the single note they might have forgotten.

A good memoriser has a close connection to their muscular memory, that is what it feels like to play a phrase of music, they have a much quicker aquisition of this than sight readers. They need to have this quick aquisition of muscular memory otherwise the repetitions to play a passage correctly would be impossible and they would have to rely on sighting the music.

Some memorisers can actually describe in words what they need to play. And its usually associated with patter observation like you say... Put 3rd fingers here and then you move to here which turns around to this chord and scale pattern which has this shape to my hands and then finish with this progression with this interval between these fingers. You describe what you need to do in general terms with actual physcial movements at the keyboard. and everything they do can be described in words. This is very helpful for memorisers to develop and indirectly will improve the sight reading.

A good sight reader however can use the sheet music to tell them how to repeat a passage. They slowly learn through many repetitions to slowly read less and less until you eventually memorise the passage. A good sight reader is has very strong conscious memory, that is statements  which prompt us what to do at the keyboard. For example when you notice what a chromatic scale looks like by itself it doesn't become hard to notice it in the sheet music, thus all you must do is know the max and min point of the chromatic movement and all of a sudden you memorise many notes. Great sight readers see a huge amount of ways to see groups of notes at once, they can see chords, scales, arpeggio structures etc in all music.

Of course most musicans use a combination of sightreading and memory. They use sight reading to describe to them what needs to be done at the keyboard, they play what it asks for, they think about what it feels like in their hand (by looking at the hands, this takes our attention away from sighting and forces us to memory), they listen for any wrong notes (using sound memory), if there are any read again (using conscious memory to identify the part of the pattern you messed up).

Generally I find people cannot sight read a piece if they have little experience with movements that that piece asks for. It is of course good to learn new movements but there is always a matter of efficiency. I remember when I first discovered Scriabin Etudes/Preludes I had to learn them, but my teacher back then suggested to do them later on. I didn't listen of course and learnt my favorite ones,  it would take me a month or more to learn one of them back then. In recent years I retruned to them with more knowledge about procedure at the keyboard and I can memorise them now on average in a matter of hours. It is just by magic if you work towards music how easy things become. I remember opening that book again thinking, oh I remember this, these peices took me more than a month to learn each, then I tried them again and it is all of a sudden much easier, I find I don't need to read every single dot anymore You apply musical knowledge and you can absorb a lot with one observation.

So the more music you memorise the more building blocks of music you learn. Eventually everything becomes routine and there is just different directions to take. A good teacher pushes us to observe routine at the keyboard and how to apply musical knowledge instead of looking at every piece as an individual new lesson. Of course it is only after many years of practice that you start to understand ALL the types of routine at the keyboard. Personally I find Bach brilliant for sight reading skills, his WTC is my daily bread.

[dmc]

I have less problem with the memorization side of things.  My ear is strong enough that I've come to use it almost too much as a crutch when learning new material.  For me the struggle is reading a piece cleanly enough the first few times to get it smooth.  I'm just thinking that if I can improve my reading, then the whole learning process will speed up.

Appreciate your feedback.  Hope this is also useful for benedict who started this thread (didn't mean to hijack - sorry !)

[alb-d]

I've made some flashcards of single notes within there perspective postion on the staff (treble and bass clef).

I shuffle them up and pick one... the object is as soon as I see the note, I should be able to tell what it is.

It's like you know the letter " A" is what it is .. without thinking of it.

That is one main key also.