What is sight reading?

[chongkeat]

I have just started learning the piano. I've heard the word "sight reading" used in this forum a couple of times, but I don't know what it means.


And, what is the best way for a complete beginner to learn if he is self taught? Do I just need to keep practicing a lot of different pieces? Or is there a certain method? And is it all right to learn without a teacher?

[shortyshort]

Sight Reading is the ability to read the music from the page and play it at the same time.

This is a skill that requires much practice, and something that I have not achieved yet.

If you have just started learning, I would not worry about it too much yet.

It is possible to learn to play without having a teacher, but if you have no musical knolledge, this will probably be a slow process.

There are books available for you to teach yourself, but I really know nothing much about them. I have heard that "Alfreds" books are good, but cannot vouch for them myself.

There is a wealth of knolledge here, if you "search" for it.

Good luck, and welcome to the forum.

[G.W.K]

Hello,

I teach myself and it can be difficult at times...just look for online help and advice (here is a good place to use) and it is possible to do it well.

Practise the REALLY basic tunes first and then slowly begin to learn more advance things. Are you using an electric piano or a "normal" piano?

Sight reading is the ability to read the notes and play the music at the same time without looking away from the music. Difficult skill to master, but great once learned. I can do it slightly. Practise "reading" music for about 10 minutes a day...any type of music. Eventually, the skill will become second-nature and you won't even think about doing it!

Good luck!

G.W.K

[m19834]

I have just started learning the piano. I've heard the word "sight reading" used in this forum a couple of times, but I don't know what it means.


And, what is the best way for a complete beginner to learn if he is self taught? Do I just need to keep practicing a lot of different pieces? Or is there a certain method? And is it all right to learn without a teacher?

I think it's obviously useful to practice "this" skill each day, but it is much more useful to have a specific goal in mind, a specific aspect of "sight reading" that you are aiming to practice, and this can be done with your repertoire.   Sight reading is not as mysterious as it may seem to be, I think.  There is definitely more involved, however, than just sight.

Basically, reading in general boils down to being capable of organizing groups of notes into musical meaning, similarly to grouping letters into words.  There are particular guidelines to organizing notes into groups that are musically meaningful, and the skill in how to do this can be practiced and quickened to the point that, eventually, one can recognize at sight (at a glance) how to organize what's on the page.

However, like I mentioned above, there are other aspects than just our sight involved, too.  Our ear must also learn how to organize these notes into musically meaningful groups, and our aural impression needs to match our visual impression and vice versa.  This is similar to hearing the word 'cat', for example, and simultaneously visualizing its correct spelling, or reading the word cat and simultaneously hearing its correct sound(s).

Another aspect of "sight reading" is that of our kinesthetic sense.  Our playing apparatus must learn how to accurately "pronounce" both this aural and visual impression, and this kinesthetic information would be specific to the particular organization of notes.  We learn to pronounce groups of notes and we collect kinesthetic information by the motions and movements we use to play them with.  This information would ideally become available at "sight" -- at a glance -- and be attached to the aural/visual impression, similarly to how our physical sense becomes programmed on how to pronounce a word based on both our aural and visual impression of it.  Try just thinking of a word that you know well, perhaps your name, for example.  Hear it clearly in your head and notice that you will both see -- in your mind's eye-- its correct spelling and layout, and you will feel how to pronounce it as you hear/see it in your head.  Congratulations, you have just successfully "sightread" your name !

There is also the piano, the great beast  , and all that s/he entails .  We at least want to know its keys very well, understanding the symmetry of its layout and how our body naturally/symmetrically relates to particular sections/registers of the piano.  It is worth-while to check this particular thing out, since we ultimately would like to have a clear aural impression of each register of the piano planted within our ear, as well as how our body relates to this portion/aural impression of the piano.  It is also useful to program ourselves with a clear impression on how the topography of the piano relates to the grand staff, as well as what registers of the piano that particular sections of the staff covers.

The good news is, these are all skills that can be worked on "separately" and practiced being put together in specific ways -- with real live music .

[slobone]

All true, Karli, but I'm not sure what the relevance to sight reading per se is. Basically it just means reading a piece of sheet music you haven't seen before, and attempting to play it in something like real time.

When I was an accompanist with a chorus (stop me if you've heard this before) I had to do a lot of sight reading, and greatly improved my skill at it. The first thing you learn is that you can't stop or slow down no matter what. You quickly learn which notes you can drop if necessary, and which you can't. And all kinds of other tricks like always reading ahead a measure with your peripheral vision. I admit I never did solve the page turning problem though 

Now that I know how to do it, I love to sight read for fun at the end of my day's practicing. I pick pieces that are below my grade level (whatever that is). And I cheat a little by always taking repeats so I get another shot at fixing the booboos...

[keypeg]

Karli, if I understand what you are saying, you are telling us that sight reading is not one big package deal called "sight reading".  Nor is it a case of learning prima vista "reading of a kind" where we follow one note, another note, another note (for both hands of course) sort of stayind a couple of "one notes" ahead.  Rather, you are saying, we read notes in natural groups, seeing and hearing them, in the way that we see an entire word at once.  So we should become accustomed to seeing and hearing these groupings.  That's the first thing I see, and I'd like to get back to that to understand further.

Next you use the word "specific":

....specific goal in mind, a specific aspect of "sight reading"

  So sight reading is no longer one blob of a goal that one ends up trying to do faster with increasingly more difficult material, as one often sees suggested.  You are saying that when we practice or learn how to sight read, we should actually zero in on one aspect of sight reading, and work on perfecting that aspect.  Could you give an example of such an aspect so that we can picture more clearly what "specific goal" might mean in terms of sight reading for the sake of clarity?

I have been guessing something about sight reading and it goes like this:  It is easier to sight read when you are familiar with various things.  For example, if you have practised playing scales and broken chords, then when you see these in a piece, your hand is familiar with runs (scales) and your eye sees the pattern of straight line going from note A to note Z.  Or you see chords and chord inversions and they are so familiar that your hand just shapes itself in anticipation.  Or there is a cadence, and you have been practising I IV I V I at the end of scales, so again this pattern forms in the eyes, the hand, the ear, the touch of the keyboard.  All of this prior familiarity facilitates sight reading, because the music is familiar and predictable.

So what I have been guessing is that there are things we may be practicing that have nothing to do with sight reading, but will enable us to sight read.  Therefore it is important for us to be working on these "other things" and that will have a direct bearing on our ability to sight read.  Would I be correct in this thought?

I fell into piano playing willy nilly as a kid and my playing grew like Topsy.  Now after a 35 year hiatus I want to get it into order.  "Back then" I went by sound and generally based myself on the location of one note - the tonic - and then thought in movable do solfege.  I had no map of the keyboard when I returned, no note names.  (Well, the odd thing is that while I worked on getting note names for other instruments, as soon as I touched the piano my reading habits seemed to revert, and I could play that way, sort of.)

So I have already given myself a specific task: I want to build a strong association between the notes on the page, their names, and the keyboard orienting kinetically but being aware of the black key patterns.  "A nestles between the top two of the three keys" for example.  I am using both a basic Czerny, and The Riemenschneider Bach but in my own way (not all four voices at once, immediately, the first day).

I will pass through a Bach choral for 6 days.  The first day I initially go through each voice separately, very slowly, and make myself very aware of the keys, their name, location, texture, by feel - what is a semitone apart and what that means physically and to the ear etc., "immersion".  This is for the goal of getting those notes and the keyboard shape embedded in my system.

Then I play two voices together: soprano and alto, soprano and tenor.  It gets me to not get lost among the notes after a while  Except I'm thinking like a single-note instrumentalist and like a singer.  I'm not thinking in chords vertically like a pianist.  I got into this because I needed to be able to trade off the tenor between the left and right hand because of the way Bach spreads the notes.

On days 3 & 4 I begin with two voices and add the tenor or bass.  I'm still sight reading it though it's not prima vista.  But I have not "worked on it" putting together phrases and such, working out passages, as one does for preparing a piece.  On days  5 & 6 I begin with three voices and then bring in the fourth.  That starts to be smooth and it never gets sloppy.  In order to not break up the rhthm it is incredibly slow.  My beat is to the 16th note.  the 8th note gets two beats because I need to prepare for the next note when all four are going if I don't want to lose something somehwere.

Anyway, currently without a teacher I can't work toward guided goals, or goals set by a teacher.  But my sight reading has smaller goals embedded in it, and those are what I focus on while I am practicing.  Is this the kind of thing you would mean?

** Back to the first thing: the patterns of shapes and sounds, "words", etc.  I was glad to read this.  I began a few months ago with the impression that there was a right way for sight reading and that I had it wrong or "different".  The way instrumentalists play seemed to be from visual note to finger action, by interval, and almost one note after the other, but rapidly.  What I've had since childhood is seeing music in chunks and hearing it, and that sound leading my fingers.  Apparently that is actually good and ok so I can keep it and use it.  I'm still not abandoning slowing things down, seeing less notes, and pushing that awareness in because I used to also improvise unknowingly since I saw the music in entire paragraphs and could not zero in on an individual note.

Another thing that comes to me is that one may be working on something like sight reading and some particular difficulty may come up.  It may be a strange rhythm, a note that is slurred across bars with another note coming outside the beat, an unfamiliar interval.  I think that I would like to make note of such difficulties, and work on them separately afterward, maybe make up a little exercise, maybe plan to focus on this one thing in the next time that I practice.  Would such a thing normally fall within sight reading practice as well?

[m19834]

Basically it just means reading a piece of sheet music you haven't seen before, and attempting to play it in something like real time.

What you have written describes what is happening, what I have written describes how it happens.  You are telling that you can do a magic trick and it just takes practice (and you suggest that it takes practice in front of an audience), I am telling that there is a magic trick and let me show you how it works.  Which do you think a beginner of magic is more likely to be needing first ?  More practice of the trick, or a basic concept on how the trick works and how to go about learning the steps involved within it ? 

When I was an accompanist with a chorus (stop me if you've heard this before)

STOP !!!    I have in fact already heard a thousand and one times.  The thing is, this is not how you began to read.  You have just described how you used a skill you already had (reading), in a situation where the way you used it was tweaked (knowing what to leave out) and is considered to be useful in that form.  Basically, we are either reading efficiently, or we are not.  I have described in my first post how this all relates to "sight reading," but one must remember that "sight reading" as most people say it, is the end result -- it is the magic trick that people are capable of performing after gaining the specific skills in steps to perform it.

Now that I know how to do it, I love to sight read for fun at the end of my day's practicing. I pick pieces that are below my grade level (whatever that is). And I cheat a little by always taking repeats so I get another shot at fixing the booboos...

Congratulations .  However, this does not tell a complete beginner how to start reading.  Once again, you are basically saying that you use your magic skills in easier tricks.  That's all applicable *if* you know how to read, and I specifically mean, if you can cope properly with what's on the page.  The thing is, if you are already capable of reading/sight reading, you are already doing everything that I described in my post above.  Somebody who has been at this skill for a while will have it all together in one package and will not necessarily be able to explain what they are doing and how they are doing it.  That is fine, but the person who started this thread is a complete beginner at reading in general and needs to know *how* to begin.

Telling a complete beginner (or anybody who suspects there is more to getting better at it than just sitting in front of a piece of music for 10 minutes a day, while they angrily fumble around the piano) to "just practice" is similar to plopping a book down in front of a 3 or 4 yr old and telling them to just practice reading words and they will get better.  There are steps in learning how to read, just like there are steps in learning how to practice or learn a piece of music -- and the two are related.

Then again, many people's idea of practicing and learning a piece of music is already very close to how you described "sight reading" :

Basically it just means reading a piece of sheet music you haven't seen before, and attempting to play it in something like real time.

 

Perhaps for many people the difference between "sight reading" vs. "learning" or "practicing" a piece is that they will include the repeats for practice so that you can go back and "fix" any booboos.  This is not efficient for a beginner.

[m19834]

Karli, if I understand what you are saying, you are telling us that sight reading is not one big package deal called "sight reading".

Well, not necessarily.  It is in fact ending up to be one big package deal that people call "sight reading" but it has components to it that many people don't think about and/or don't even consciously realize exist.  I do take issue, however, with the title of the package  , because I believe it to be a very misleading title.  I would much rather there is not a mistaken distinction between "reading" and "sight reading" -- they are one and the same.  We are either reading efficiently (organizing/coping with what's on the page), or we are not.  And as we get better at organizing what's on the page and translating that code into usable information, we gain in the overall skill of reading, enabling us to read -- and PLAY what we read -- at a glance.

Reading, in whatever form, involves multiple capacities -- aural, visual, kinetic -- and it is these capacities which need to be trained as it relates to music. 

Nor is it a case of learning prima vista "reading of a kind" where we follow one note, another note, another note (for both hands of course) sort of stayind a couple of "one notes" ahead.

 

Yes, actually.  While knowing how to decipher and comprehend a single note is necessary and useful for the sake of perception and communication, it is not the "key" to reading, though it is often treated as such.  Knowing how to name the lines and spaces on the staff, learning what the note names/keys on the piano are, and seeing how these correspond -- this is useful, but its use is often not properly comprehended as it relates to reading and playing music.  This kind of comprehension is more like an orientation, kinetically, aurally, visually, of the terrain in those capacities.  This kind of orientation is similar to walking on a trail through a forest and pointing out the different plants/flowers, rocks, and animals -- or taking a walk through the city and discovering the rush of traffic, the stores and resturants ...  all of the sights, sounds, "feelings" of these places.  This kind of orientation does not, however, tell us how to organize it into something meaningful for us -- this kind of orientation does not tell us how to use this terrain.

How we use the terrain -- if in the forest we decide to walk, run, skip, jump, roll around on the ground, yell, whisper, scream ... along the way -- that is our own, precise musical interaction with the terrain.  Music is the interaction. 

Rather, you are saying, we read notes in natural groups, seeing and hearing them, in the way that we see an entire word at once.  So we should become accustomed to seeing and hearing these groupings.

 

Yes, mostly.  I think it is a disservice to the student to teach the terrain as being the music, however, the terrain must be learned by all of our capacities in order to be capable of properly using it.  We can gain though a comprehension of the terrain by using it in a meaningful way. 

Say, for example, a couple decides to hike into the hills in order to spend time being couple.  Depending on how they use their experience, they will get to know the terrain in particular ways.  If for some reason they decided to learn the terrain by wildly rolling around on the ground, they may discover rocks and poison oaks and even a bear den.  This would be a particular "type" of experience (probably pretty unforgettable, too  ), but it is not the only way to figure out how the terrain is oriented and it's not the only way to experience the terrain. 

Learning note by note is like going through the terrain as though there is only one way to do it.  It's like walking a skinny trail of rocks that are surrounded by lava on every side.  One must be very, very careful on whether or not they go onto the next rock properly, because if they don't do it properly, they may fall into the lava and burn up and die.  Okay, obviously we are not going to die if we hit a wrong note, but people sure seem to treat music reading as though we will.  I believe I have digressed a bit though  ...

I will be back for the rest .

[keypeg]

Thank you so much for the input, Karli.  I look forward to the rest of your input.  At this very moment I am taking a second look at my perception of pianistic sight reading.  Let me explain.

I've come back to piano only recently.  First: I realized that what I used to do for reading music 30 years ago consisted of reflexes on the sight of certain note patterns.  It came as a shock when my son, who is a violist, asked if I could accompany him and I noticed that all I had were these primitive patterns and no reading at all.  Now that I play another instrument I have something to compare that to.  I wanted to substitute these "patterns" with something solid and I had to replace my reflexes, slow them down, so that I could be associating what was on the page with known notes.  I made this my goal.

I've already described what I'm doing the the chorals.  I also took Czerny preliminary studies which begin by introducing the notes in one five-finger position, and in the next small study, a new location for the hand and five fingers.  Essentially he covers the two halves of a staff, and then a section of leger lines above and below.  I brought in every awareness and focus, working very slowly, dwelling on each study.  The chorals came in about a month later.   By month three I can safely say that my first goal has been met.  I have a strong sense of how a note on the staff relates to the keyboard, the keyboard's "shape", the sounds, note names, orientation.  It's all there for me.  Moreover the "panoramic view" way of playing I had before is gone, totally replaced.

Actually, you know what it feels like?  When I was 8 years old they discovered I needed glasses.  When I came home with my new glasses I saw my room for the first time.  The bed cover had a pattern of pink roses with sharp outline that had been pink splotches, and ....er .... there were crumbs on the floor.     That's what this result feels like.

Exploration:
When I discovered the two piano boards, I learned that the big issue for pianists is reading.  Given the nature of the piano, it is easy to see why.  Sight reading as ordinary reading, and the prima vista kind of reading were two things.

Currently I'm seeing two kinds of reading skills, or maybe to ways of using reading.

When I go through the Bach chorals in those six days, I am after being able to see the notes and have them flowing into my fingers with the proper rhythm and uninterrupted.  It is a rather mechnical process, only vagely musical (I can hold on to the meter).  It is for the purpose of being able to see music and play it prima vista.    I'm finding that a "side effect" of the exercise is that when I go to something simpler like my old Clementi book, it has become much, much easier to work with and see the notes.  How do I put it: This is an exercise, a dry skill - not quite being a reading-robot (not quite!)

But this is not how I would approach any music, a study, or even a scale that I am "working with".  In the latter case I work with it, examine it, develop it in stages, turn it into music, understand it, make it flow over time, find technical difficulties or solutions etc.  It is a different action, and it is a different kind of "reading".  I can use the first as a skill to help with the second (possibly).

So I have the impression that there are two things that are different from each other. Would this make sense?

[m19834]

Thank you so much for the input, Karli.

Yes, you are welcome  .  Thank you also for yours .

Currently I'm seeing two kinds of reading skills, or maybe to ways of using reading.

Yes, there is a reading of the terrain and then a reading in how to use it/interact with it. Bear in mind though that no matter what, there are multiple capacities involved with both readings, which can/do relate to each other.

Take mountain biking, for example.  A person must do many things at once when trying to accomplish this goal.  Firstly, they must know how to ride a bike.  Then, ideally, they would study the terrain (like a river rafter may do) before riding it, so they know what to expect and how to deal with it when they get there.  And then, there is actually doing it.  While a person is actually mountain biking, they are "reading" the terrain in a way that relates to what they are doing in or on the terrain.  It all must line up right or else they will crash.  Now, imagine a person not knowing how to ride a bike at all, never having been in the mountains, and being afraid of slopes and speed.  It's a crazy situation !

When a complete beginner comes to the piano, they do not necessarily have any idea on how to organize what they see on the page.  They don't know what any of it means unless they are properly oriented with all of the elements involved.  They need to learn motions, they need to learn the terrain (aural, visual, kinetic), and they need to learn how these all mingle and interact with each other.

So I have the impression that there are two things that are different from each other. Would this make sense?

Well, there are *at least* two things going on simultaneously.  What becomes "one" with anything in piano playing, is how these separate/different factors simultaneously interact -- the interaction becomes the package deal we call music.

[keypeg]

When a complete beginner comes to the piano, they do not necessarily have any idea ......

... teacher guidance (a competent teacher) is strongly called for.

Would I seem to be rougly on track with what I wrote? 

It gets "interesting" when you are not coming in as a child or a novice.  I have at least three things going on.  I have the way I played as a child.  There are certain approaches to pieces and studies which I now have from my music studies elsewhere.  And then there are my current studies on the instrument.  In the way I am going about it, it feels as though I were playing an instrument I have never played before in a new way, and I mean this in a good sense.

I am quite aware that I don't have the disadvantages of being a beginner and novice, but I also don't have the advantages.  I already have "ways" which may not be the ideal ones.

[m19834]

... teacher guidance (a competent teacher) is strongly called for.

Well, yes, I think it's a big advantage in many respects.  A teacher knows the terrain, knows the trails, knows every bend.  They also know the maneuvers needed to get through the terrain, and they know how to guide in such a way that the learner will be "protected," build confidence, and discover the way to learn about getting through such matters on their own. 

The plus side to a competent teacher is that the teacher is live and can directly respond to the needs of the learner within the moment.  A live teacher will help to also psychologically guide the learner through the course, and this is an important element because everybody reacts to what and how they are learning in different ways (and a teacher needs to be able to respond to these reactions). 

If we like to use driving as a metaphor, a person who is learning to drive will ideally be in a car that has two steering wheels and brake pedals --- one on the driver's side and one on the "passenger's" side -- so that an experienced driving instructor can actually override and step in when necessary, but have the learner get first-hand experience in how to drive (in my experience, there are normally at least two learners and one instructor within the vehicle, and while one learner is at the wheel, the other sits in back and has yet another perspective on the learning experience.  I wonder how much observation of the learning experience can play a role in the learning experience itself ?).

I am quite aware that I don't have the disadvantages of being a beginner and novice, but I also don't have the advantages.  I already have "ways" which may not be the ideal ones.

Yes, this is true to some extent for everybody.  We are constantly (hopefully) in a state of improvement in the results that we are getting from our methods as well as what the methods themselves are.  The steps are necessary.  A teacher will know how to guide a learner in using the steps to their biggest benefit, and will help to guide a learner beyond the current platform (whatever that is).   

[keypeg]

There is another aspect to teacher guidance - and I am referring to an excellent teacher and a student working with tht teacher.  If a teacher is guiding me then I can put my attention completely on the task. That is to say, your assignment may not be "sight read passage X" but to pay attention to doing a particular thing while I'm sight reading passage X.  I'm not taking piano instructions so I can't give an example: hypothetically maybe not turnign elbows out, or making the passage legato with an instruction of how that legato is to be done.

My attention can be completely on that legato, or those elbows.  I will also know that if I am going astray it will be caught the next lesson.  Again my attention can be completely on the task.  If I am thus focussed, that is a very tight kind of practicing which is very potent.

I cannot do that if I am self-teaching.  I must plan, observe myself partly with a teacher's type of eyes as much as I can, run the risk that I am directing myself falsely or stressing the wrong things.  My attention is scattered or my energies are scattered.  It cannot be as powerful as the first possibility.

Unfortunately sometimes we don't have a choice and have to make the best of it.

[m19834]

There is another aspect to teacher guidance - and I am referring to an excellent teacher and a student working with tht teacher.  If a teacher is guiding me then I can put my attention completely on the task. That is to say, your assignment may not be "sight read passage X" but to pay attention to doing a particular thing while I'm sight reading passage X.  I'm not taking piano instructions so I can't give an example: hypothetically maybe not turnign elbows out, or making the passage legato with an instruction of how that legato is to be done.

My attention can be completely on that legato, or those elbows.  I will also know that if I am going astray it will be caught the next lesson.  Again my attention can be completely on the task.  If I am thus focussed, that is a very tight kind of practicing which is very potent.

I cannot do that if I am self-teaching.  I must plan, observe myself partly with a teacher's type of eyes as much as I can, run the risk that I am directing myself falsely or stressing the wrong things.  My attention is scattered or my energies are scattered.  It cannot be as powerful as the first possibility.

Unfortunately sometimes we don't have a choice and have to make the best of it.

Well, yes.  This is part of what I mean when I say that a teacher knows every bend and every trail and all the terrain, and that they can guide a student through it. 

I will get back to specifics in a bit .

[slobone]

Sorry, Karli, I don't agree. Reading and sight-reading are not the same skill. Obviously you have to know how to read before you can sight read, but there are many people who read quite well who never become good sight readers. It really only has to do with how fast you can do it, and that's where all the tricks I mentioned come in. Ear training and kinesthetics and so forth are part of the general technique of learning the piano, but the question was specifically about sight reading.

As to how to learn how to do it, I suggest finding a short piece that you haven't seen before, that's a couple grades easier than your current level, then turn on the metronome and start playing. Try not to stop any more than necessary. Since this is just practice, you can repeat the same piece until you mostly have it under control. If you can't do it at all, slow down the metronome or find an easier piece. But this is not the time to worry about all the techniques you learned in your regular piano practice.

[m19834]

Sorry, Karli, I don't agree.

Well, there is no need to apologize, you are free to your own devices and opinions.  In any event, anybody is welcome to actually try anything they read or hear about and see for themselves if they are actually achieving what they desire.

[omei]

In my opinion, sight reading involves the following:

1) Reading the notes with tonal imagination, so the sound appears in your inner hearing.

2) Trying to understand the structure of the music, so you see the musical landscape in your mind’s eye.

 3) Being equipped technically, you know how to make the sound you want.

All these lead us to see that, sight reading training is a must in the piano lesson at all levels.

[m19834]

Yes, so the key in reading is in training our capacities to organize information, and the key to doing this instantly (which it must be for "sight reading") is in programming our capacities along the lines of how they must be oriented to musical shapes and instrument.

If we want to get "faster" at it, our capacities for musical organization need to be better trained and take in information as clearly as possible.  The more clearly we comprehend the information, the quicker the information will have usable meaning.

[keypeg]

In other words we give it direction by being given direction; otherwise how does one know what to listen and look for, or recognize ...... is what I'm understanding.

[m19834]

Yes, 'informed' musicians.

[keypeg]

Yes, 'informed' musicians.

Responding to..... ?
Or restating my statement above to stress that it is done in an "informed" way, which means there must be an informer who does the informing, so that the person practicing can then implement the information in an informed manner.  (?)

I've never noticed before that the word "inform" contains the word "form".

[m19834]

Responding to..... ?
Or restating my statement above to stress that it is done in an "informed" way, which means there must be an informer who does the informing, so that the person practicing can then implement the information in an informed manner.  (?)

As you wish, actually  .

[theodore]

Keyboard familiarity:

What are some of the ways a pianist can reach the correct left hand bass note without actually looking back and forth from score to the keyboard ??

The melody is usually in the right hand and connects quite well.   However, the left hand may have large leaps of over an octave to a single note and then it must move again to play a group of triads.

Thanks for any input...

Theodore