more than 1 year experience with sight reading

[drazh]

hi
I have practiced sight reading for more than 1 year. I printed about 6000 pages of classical piano pieces (most of them diffcult) and played them.I played 4-8 hours a day.first run took me about 5 months second run 4.5 months 3rd run was 4 months and i am now on 4th run .my first priority is correct note recognition and play correctly .second priority is tempo. it was very difficult at first but it is much  easier now. but far from ideal.
advantages of this practice are:
1. it is not repititive so the practice is alwas new and not boring
2.better understanding of music (harmony , chords etc )
disadvantage:
1.you can not play a pieace in short time
any idea ?

[point of grace]

don't be mad at that... is it your goal to have a good first sight reading?

[harmonica]

Hi Drazh,
It's wonderful that you are so dedicated to improving your sight reading. Remember playing the piano is first play. I don't think it's so necessary to challenge yourself with only difficult pieces. These will only hinder smooth and accurate playing. Practice with accessible pieces and play for a reasonable amount of time; not endless hours of drudgery that will fatigue you. The Clementi sonatas and sonatinas, the mozart sonatas, and many Beethoven sonatas and bagatelles are material worthy of your labors. Instead of going over thousands of pages, work over several dozen compositions which will, at length be familiar enough to become repertoire material. I've found that playing with other musicians strengthens sight reading also. Playing with another instrument reinforces your ability to proceed even after missing notes. This is a habit you want to preserve in all of your playing. There's nothing worse than having holes in your playing from stopping or hesitating. If you enjoy your piano playing you will bring more joy to others.
Best of Luck

[drazh]

don't be mad at that... is it your goal to have a good first sight reading?

]hi
of course I want to be a good pianist but I think a good sight reader is a good pianist also.I think a pianist without a good sight reading ability is limited who can play few memorized pieces. this is so bornig . and practicing few pieaces is repititive and dificult .
thanks

[drazh]

Hi Drazh,
It's wonderful that you are so dedicated to improving your sight reading. Remember playing the piano is first play. I don't think it's so necessary to challenge yourself with only difficult pieces. These will only hinder smooth and accurate playing. Practice with accessible pieces and play for a reasonable amount of time; not endless hours of drudgery that will fatigue you. The Clementi sonatas and sonatinas, the mozart sonatas, and many Beethoven sonatas and bagatelles are material worthy of your labors. Instead of going over thousands of pages, work over several dozen compositions which will, at length be familiar enough to become repertoire material. I've found that playing with other musicians strengthens sight reading also. Playing with another instrument reinforces your ability to proceed even after missing notes. This is a habit you want to preserve in all of your playing. There's nothing worse than having holes in your playing from stopping or hesitating. If you enjoy your piano playing you will bring more joy to others.
Best of Luck

what do you mean?[Remember playing the piano is first play]
 every pieces has a specific difficulty so to improve sight reading it is better to practice all of them
limited pages to practice is exactly what  I dont want .I want to sight read prima vista.

[point of grace]

ok, i see... do you mean something like this maybe? or a more complex read? https://imhaserri.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/piano-partituras-principiante.pdf

try it... you have nothing to lose

[lostinidlewonder]

I teach sight reading like you would learn normal reading in school. Students do not learn to read by starting to read that they do not understand or cannot read fluently. They would be simply sounding out the words and not speaking in sentences.

Instead of something like: "Today is a wonderful day" it resembles "T..oo..d..ay i  ... i..s .... is , a .... a , wen.... wi...wo....won.... wond....er...... ful, d..day."
This might be useful to some people however to most who are developing to read music this is a very annoying way to improve. You have to learn how to read simultaneous things in music with  a progressive stepwise study. Like you learn to sound out combination of letters, you learn to sight read chucks of music at a time, you learn to read intervals more effectively, you start to see shape/pattern in the score and how that effects your hands.

However when studying to improve your sight reading you must of course stretch yourself to read more difficult music, then when you decrease the difficulty it seems somewhat easier. It is like swinging 3 mental baseball bats to warm up, then swinging with one, it will trick the mind to work more effective for most people.

We must know to treat reading difficult music to improve our sight reading. When sight reading difficult music we must always ensure we use the correct fingers and correct notes. With easier music we can do the opposite strangely enough to encourage speed of reading. With more difficult music we are aiming to improve our accuracy of reading so we must approach sight reading hard music with a much slower tempo and a lot of controlled pausing (freezing the hands then moving only when you completely consciously understand what to do). Making fingering mistakes and note errors with difficult music does little to improve your sight reading as what you do becomes more and more obscure and more difficult to recover the more errors you make. However with easier music you may do these mistakes and recover very easily.

The problem with constantly reading difficult music is that it does not allow us to learn to read ahead of ourselves. We are so caught up over trying to pronounce the music that we lose several things 1) the musical meaning of what we play 2) the fluidity of what we play, speed/accuracy of reading 3) being able to read ahead and anticipate what is to come next via reading or sound.

Read easier pieces so that you train your eyes to read ahead of what you are playing as we do when we read words this will help you to read more dense difficult works faster. You must learn not to play what your eyes read when they read it you must read before you play, this comes most effectively from playing music at your level (this is a very deceptively difficult level to establish for the individual and one could write many pages on how you are to establish/monitor this, you cannot study pieces that are too easy and you cannot study pieces that are too hard, there has to be a point which challenges but is predominantly controlled.)

[point of grace]

drazh: do you know all music theory?

[drazh]

ok, i see... do you mean something like this maybe? or a more complex read? https://imhaserri.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/piano-partituras-principiante.pdf

try it... you have nothing to lose

hi I will use them too .thanks for your help
best wishes

[drazh]

."
The problem with constantly reading difficult music is that it does not allow us to learn to read ahead of ourselves.
Read easier pieces so that you train your eyes to read ahead of what you are playing as we do when we read words this will help you to read more dense difficult works faster.

hi
very useful ideas.thank you.
you know most real classical music is a mixture of hard and easy pieces eg :moonlight soata etc.so I decided to play real music . the problem with easy pieces is that you think every thing is ok and will be lasy
best regard

[drazh]

. With more difficult music we are aiming to improve our accuracy of reading so we must approach sight reading hard music with a much slower tempo and a lot of controlled pausing (freezing the hands then moving only when you completely consciously understand what to do).

hi
slower tempo is necessary to play correct notes and fingering.the controlled  pausing seems very good I should try it.
thank you

[drazh]

. You must learn not to play what your eyes read when they read it you must read before you play,

hi this advice is exactly the same  in most sight reading books.although that is absolutely right  but what I discover more important than that is looking backward because that is where your fingers are and you will not confuse in fingering in keys
best wishes

[drazh]

drazh: do you know all music theory?

hi
I do not know all music theory who knows ALL?
I read something about basic ;harmony; melody ; and history
thanks

[point of grace]

hi
I do not know all music theory who knows ALL?
I read something about basic ;harmony; melody ; and history
thanks

i said that because someone was explaining you how to learn to read music but at the same time learning the theory.... just wanted to know, so we can ask that person what would he do in case you already know music and want a first sight read