Areas of practice concerning sight reading?

[shingo]

Good evening,
     Although I have known my sight reading to be very bad for a while now, today it really struck home. I was sight reading a piece which was already at or above my level and it was very poor. My teacher said that I should read patterns and not notes, like one would read words and not letters. He also mentioned the study of Harmony.
     However I forgot to ask the most important thing. How then do I become able to do this. I really don't know how or what to focus on. Clearly just practicing my pieces over the years has not given me a similar level sight reading wise so surely there is more then just playing lots of music. Also I found it daunting and slightly depressing to think I have to study Harmony to such a degree, sure a key aspect of music but I felt that this was something I was not going to be able to achieve without having chosen to study it at college and would hold me back from ever becoming acomplished at the piano.
     Anyway I will ask next week and wanted to recieve some suggestions before hand so that I can ask the right things, and generally have a clearer picture for the time being and get a summer crash course regime sorted.

1. To read patterns surely I need to learn these through some form. Are these mainly from chords and scales?

2. What actual components are there which would be useful to learn. For example I have read in another thread that someone learned major chords + inversions to which someone replied "Way to go...now learn the 3 primary chords and the relative minor for each key so you can anticipate harmonic movement...Also learn perfect and plagal cadences in each possible inversion...Also learn all scales...that's the basics...keep it up"
When entering a new subject as this I do not know which specific topics to tackle.

3. How to go about learning the material in number 2. Is there a comprehensive book covering these with exercises and other methods? This probably sound silly, but I just can't see how I would learn this kind of stuff as it isn't exactly pue theory nor pure technique and application. I am confused. I am willing to put the effort in but where do these abstract and non physical aspects found in order to learn.


Sorry for the long post I just suddenly feel reduced to square one and overwhelmed by what I do no know and will have to start learning. Thank you for your patience if you have read it all, I look forward to any responses.

[hyrst]

Hi Shingo,
I wanted to encourage you not to sit too long with your feelings of being overwhelmed.  They probably come more from not knowing what to do or how you need to do it rather than from feeling depressed that you can't do it.  Don't lose sight of what you can  do - and if you had to make a plan to get to where you are now, without the benefit of skills you have now, you would then be overwhelmed too.  You have learnt and got somewhere already - you will move on from here, too.

As a basic recommendation for a start, a good series of sight reading books should progress you through the most common patterns that you use to read music.  If you start at a lower level in these books and work through them as quickly as you feel comfortable, they should help build your identification of patterns.  But, don't just read through them - try and find the patterns they are rehearsing (rhythm, chord and pitch progressions).

Part of the skill is having a certain perspective about the music.  I think that was what your teacher was trying to say - looking at how the black markings on the page actually form shapes that are then translated into actions and sounds.  A struggling reader looks at one note at a time and reads A C E, etc rather than acting more intuitively.

Scales are only one type of pattern.  They can help you read when you are playing from a particular key.  If you are in C major, you anticipate that nearly every note you play will be a white key.  If you are in G major, you expect to play F#.  In a minor key, you expect to see accidentals.  All this is a very basic level of reading, and I am guressing you are way past this.  (It also helps if you see a long, straight ascending/descending section becuase it is probably the scale foundational to the piece)

Related to this is the harmony.  If you are in C major, you might pass through A minor or G major (at a basic level).  You would also expect to play chords from C, G, F and a.  If you have learnt the chords for each key (you should look at I, V, and IV before you start playing a piece and think what shapes (inversions producing these) these chords might appear in).  Harmony becomes more complex than this, but this is where to start.  (You can get away with reading without a creative knowledge of cadences and things - but this knwoeldge also helps with interpretation and expression, so it is necessary to develop understanding eventually.)  Reading harmonies is building the visual and what you will expect to see, and if you see it then knowing where to place your hands.

Other patterns are rhythms.  You will find different common rhythms in different time signatures.  Work out what these rhythms are.  Different time signatures, music styles, compound or simple time, etc all influence the types of rhythm patterns you will meet.  Start with simple time and look at what you often see in your music at your level.  Write out these patterns and tap them.  Get the feel for them when you are doing other things away from the piano.  (Tap your feet, etc).  If you can see the shape of a rhythm pattern, you don't have to count its details, it becomes automatic.  (You do need to do some study and analysis here to find your patterns.)

The other is arrangement of pitch - related distances between the dots on the page and how that translates spatially.  These are chords/inversions/arpeggios and common movements (like your 1st to 3rd).  These common movements create visual patterns when linked together.  There are some that are very common (such as 4 notes progresssing one at a time).  These really common ones are like the simple words (like 'and').  You get so used to reading these words that you don't stop to think that is 'a', 'n', 'd' spells 'and' - but once you had to when you  first started reading.  Now you just know becuase that is what the shape means.  This is what happens in music and what I believe your teacher was referring to.  Sure, you come across new and complicated words that you have to sound out before you can read them - but once you have done that you recognise it the next time.  If it's a while since you looked at it, it might need sounding out again, but it sinks in with familiarity.

So, if you aren't already doing it, look at your music as a flow of pitch direction and time rather than as individual notes with thier own time value.  Identify hte shape of progression within each beat for a start.  Instead of reading G A B C, read four notes ascending from G.  Adjust this principle to whatever level you are playing and reading. 

Hope this helps.

[slobone]

I have very little to add to hyrst's excellent advice except two minor points. One is that if you have trouble with rhythmic patterns, you should count out loud while you are playing. The out loud part is important because apparently the sound of your voice coming back into your ear brings another part of the brain into play (or something). Anyway, I still do it when I'm having trouble, and I've been playing for many years!

The second piece of advice I can offer is to concentrate on overall harmonies rather than individual notes. Start with a piece you already know. Ask yourself, What is the underlying chord in a particular measure? If you think it's C major, say, then play a simple C major triad with your left hand while playing the written melody in the right. Your ear should tell  you if it's the right harmony. You can also listen to recordings with the music in hand, just concentrating on the harmonies.

Most pieces start by establishing the key the piece was written in. To establish that harmony they use familiar sequences like IV-V-I or II-V-I. If you see an accidental in the score (a sharp or flat that's not in the key signature), that may indicate that a modulation to another key is coming up. (That test doesn't work for minor keys, unfortunately.)

You should get in the habit of anticipating what's coming up next. Of course, the best composers are full of surprises, but even in Beethoven, say, you can often predict what the next few notes will be based on what you've already played. Most composers use a lot of repetition, often with minor variations.

Also look for sequences, which is the same pattern duplicated going up or down the scale one whole tone or half tone at a time. Most sequences repeat the same idea about 3 or 4 times, starting on E, for example, then starting on D and then C. Bach in particular does this a lot.

[shingo]

Thank you very much for your indepth and detailed reponses  I appreciate them greatly.
     Hyrst, may I ask if you know of any sight reading series which are particularly useful? One of the problems I sometimes have when researching possible learning materials is to spend a lot of time deliberating and deciding rather than actualy ordering one and getting stuck in.
     It is a lot of information to fully comprehend at the moment despite my surface understanding, so thank you very much for spelling the elements out to me. Especially the rhythmic side as I feel I am poor here also, it hadn't occured to me that they would contain universal patterns used throughout music also, on reflection of that I am not sure why as it seems so obvious now. I will be sure to try the vocalisation Slobone sugegsts to help this.
     Just on a side ntoe I had indeed noticed that in Bach, I am just glad to assert this and be on some musical wavelength   .
     Thanks again.

[hyrst]

Hi 
You are sounding much more confident.  I am glad 

I am sorry, but I cannot think of a series of books off hand.  There is one series I think particularly good, but it is a while since I have seen it and I just can't remember the name.  The series looked at a set of typical rhythms, then applied it to a set of keys and gradually increased the complexity of rhythms and keys / tonalities as it went through the grades.  It worked through levels to grade 8, but covered pretty much anything you could think of.

Look for something that works independently with pitch, harmony and rhythms and then progressively combines them rather than something that looks like it just becomes gradually more complex (like reading through a set of beginner lesson books).  You need something that identifies these primary aspects and then gives you practice applying them.  Basically, it saves you the effort of analysing and finding them yourself from general music literature. 

Sorry I can't help more.  Hopefully someone else will have a good suggestion.