Read carefully these reviews and ask yourself this simple question:
Does it look like that these reviewers actually sat at the piano and tried out Richmann’s suggestions?My own answer to this question is a definite “No!”
I may be wrong, but the way they write gives me the distinct impression that they leafed through the book and
dismissed it on purely intellectual grounds. In other words they already had a previous idea of what a “sight-reading secret” might be, and since it did not conform to that idea, they simply dismissed it.
It takes at least three months of diligent practice to go through all of Richmann’s ideas. For most students it may take two years. I doubt very much if any of these reviewers went to this trouble.
I did.
My reservations with this book are very simple:
It is badly put together from a reader’s point of view. In short: it is very reader unfriendly. You have to keep going back and forth in the book to keep track of what you should be doing. I do not know why it is so poorly designed. Maybe Richmann did it himself and paid for its publication so he had to fit it all into only 47 pages. With a good publisher and the help of a good editor and a good art department, this could be a really brilliant book. Does it matter? In my opinion not really, since I am often more interested in the substance than in the packaging. But I have to agree that in this case the packaging is poor. And yes, Richmann does not write all that well or articulately.
However the substance of the book more than makes up for it. First Richmann really knows what he is talking about. The order of the exercises (like in a cake the order of mixing the ingredients is at least as important as the ingredients themselves) is brilliantly well thought out. I have not yet (which is not to say that it doesn’t exist) come across a more methodical and efficient approach to sight reading.
Richmann states clearly at the beginning that you will have to go through the drills for anything from 3 months to 2 years before you start to see the full benefits.
Simply these reviewers were lazy. They thought they would get the book read it and start sightreading like pros immediately. Let us take the first one:
Reviewer: Robert E. Welcyng (see more about me) from Anchorage, AK USA
I am embarrassed that I actually bought this book of 48 pages without first examining it. I found no "super sight-reading secrets." In fact, I found nothing about reading music that I had not already learned from grade school music classes.
Sure, but reading music is not the same as sight reading. And reading music is like anatomy: a dead science. It is doubtful that you will buy a book of anatomy because you want to find some new bones or new human organs, so what sort of criticism is this? So of course, he will not find anything about reading music in this or any book on music notation that one has not learned in music lessons duh!
I did not find the following sort of advice especially useful:
"Get a book of all major and minor scales. Begin practicing all 24 major and minor keys."
When I got Richmann’s book I was already a competent sight reader, which I had learnt the hard way: By accompanying (this is the equivalent of learning how to swim by being thrown at the deep end of the pool – effective but not particularly pleasant) other musicians.
However I was very dissatisfied with
teaching it. I was teaching it by the traditional method that says that you learn to sight read by sight reading! Start with simple pieces (3 grades below your own) and do it everyday. This was not working at all. There had to be a better way. So I got Richmann;s book. And all I can say is:WOW!
It allowed me to tie everything else in my teaching with sight reading. For instance, scales that Robert found so unhelpful. Before Richmann I used to delay the teaching of scales for several reasons (that now I believe are untenable). Now I start teaching scales from the very first lesson, and boy what difference it does make! (and not only to sight reading). So, yes, if you want to sight read fluently complete intimacy with scales (and I would add chords too) is mandatory.
Other thing that Robert found unhelpful:
"Play every note of the Bach Chorales hands alone, without looking, one octave displaced."
The idea of using Bach chorales as sight reading material is in itself brilliant. Bach harmonisations are the ultimate teaching material in harmony classes. This immediately ties up the study of harmony with the study of sight reading.The efficiency effect here is so obvious that I can only conclude that Robert is very ignorant (I do not mean it in an insulting way, but in the real meaning of the word: someone who does not know much or does not have all the information). The particular exercise he refers too (diplaced octaves) is simply excellent.
I was able to follow much of Richman's text only because I recognized what he was trying to say. I found little clarity in his writing and I was annoyed by his many ungrammatical sentences.
My advice is to buy an old standby such as "Learn to Read Music" by Howard Shanet.
So Richmann is ungrammatical. So is Abby Whiteside’s “On playing the piano”, and yet I learned more from her books than from any other resource.
My advice is to completely ignore Robert and get Richmann (by the way I do not receive a commission from Richmann from saying so – maybe I should!
)
I will not bother with the Malibu reviewer.
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: How to not look at the keys..