Should sight reading be my main goal, or do it on the side?

[shingo]

Hello,

I recently PM'd a member on here who has been very kind to me in the past regarding various advice. However, not knowing if they are still active and now that I have condensed my quandary I thought it might be nice to make a poll on the matter and hear a few more opinions.

In short I got busy, I stopped practising piano (I know!). I am starting again and plan to dedicate an hour to music theory and then have 3 further hours for practise each day (I have about a year before I will have to cut back to 2 hours a day).

When I stopped playing I also forgot all the repertoire I had learned. This means I can't play anything for my enjoyment at the moment. This got me thinking about whether I had really learned anything at all, I mean, had I actually any piano skills?

When learning pieces I would take it bar by bar and commit to memory this way, piecing it together in one long struggle to the end (this takes week/s). I have recently started thinking that this is superficial, sure I could then rattle off something impressive if I was at someone's house who asked me to play but in reality, wasn't it just brute force that got me there anyone could do the same with enough time. Is this Piano practise? I suppose I feel like I haven't actually learned any skills I just have grit and patience. I would joke when learning a new piece that I may as well learn it on a completely new instrument as well as it would be just as difficult for me.

So, I realised that I wanted to improve my sight reading ability so that I could learn new pieces faster - if not be able to play purely for fun rather than having to learn everything in the same way. I could then hope in the future to play through maybe half speed 2 hands and then go back and practise the particularly tricky bits and generally enjoy practising more (or so I hope).

I have purchased a series of sight reading books so I can work from very beginner and hope that by going through these and Bach chorales and then other pieces whilst never taking my eyes off the music I can improve.

So the big question is, do I devote all 3 hours to sight reading. This would lead to faster improvement but would mean I still wouldn't have memorised a piece to play for someone or myself (yet are these really worth it). Or should I give 1 hour a day to sight reading and 2 to normal practising bar by bar thus having pieces to play yet also improve my sight reading a little bit. Equally there could be a third option of 2 sight read 1 practise but what I really want to know is, should I invest all my time now in trying to get better at this as fast as possible or just do some on the side.

I suppose the root of this question for me was thinking whether learning these pieces 'brute force', as I say, is really what playing the piano is about. Maybe the long game (and the right one) is to focus on sight reading until you can play what you want and pick up pieces a lot faster which would much more rewarding than struggling through piece after piece which although flashy is kind of cheap and superficial.

I don't know, obviously one wouldn't be able to sight read a fast and tricky piece very soon (perhaps one that could be brute forced) but even if it could be done half speed in a few years time, one would be so much nearer and have wasted much less time than someone else spending months over it. I suppose this is because sight reading is a universal skill that is then applied to all pieces and would thus be the best sue of time rather than drilling in a few pieces which are just unique to themselves.

Thank you for reading this and I look forward to any thoughts.

[larapool]

If you're devoted to a three hour practicing period, 1 hour sight reading and 2 hour practice sounds good to me - you could even do 30 minutes!

Right now for sight reading I've been going through a ton of sonatinas.  First Lessons In Bach and the Anna Magdalena Notebook, along with the Schumann Album for the Young book, are all great for sight reading if you're feeling up to it.  The sonatinas are wonderful too, and they're very musical, I really enjoy sight reading those as opposed to the Bach, which always sounds much more mechanical -- but that's just my opinion.

Then again I'm not a teacher so take my advice with that in mind!

[nyiregyhazi]

If you learn how to approach reading properly, practising pieces that you know/intend to learn can be almost as good for your reading as sight-reading itself. If you're a long way behind, you may need to shift the balance in a big way- but even a whole hour of pure sight-reading sounds excessive. However, the right attitude to reading is something you can reasonably be working at in almost 100% of your practise- whether you already know the piece or not. You just have to keep looking and be directly associating between what you are seeing and what you are doing.

[shingo]

Thank you both for your responses, sorry I haven't been able to reply until now.

larapool - Those materials you mentioned sound like a good place to step up to after completing the work-book/course book things I have.

nyiregyhazi - What would be this correct way to approach reading?

[nyiregyhazi]

Thank you both for your responses, sorry I haven't been able to reply until now.

larapool - Those materials you mentioned sound like a good place to step up to after completing the work-book/course book things I have.

nyiregyhazi - What would be this correct way to approach reading?

Carry on doing genuine reading when you practise music that has been learned. Don't just remember how to play it. Associate every individual note on the page with every individual note that you play.

[Bob]

You could also go through more "medium level" music for you and do more of that.  You don't have to get it to the point of memorized, ready to go for a performance.  Just work it up and move on to the next piece.