the underlying difficulties will cause tension in different places
I see your point, Dima, but I don't agree. You are only mentioning beginners, which suggests that your objections are mainly limited to those.
Just wondering what people in this forum advocate.
I am amazed at how many students are taught to sightread one hand at the time. <snip>To me this is absurd for many reasons, and of course if students never practise this way they will never become proficient at it.
I agree. But there's a worse crime, that of teaching sight reading at slow tempo. Never! Sight reading MUST be done at full speed, or even faster if possible, otherwise students will never become proficient at it.E
But there's a worse crime, that of teaching sight reading at slow tempo. Never! Sight reading MUST be done at full speed, or even faster if possible, otherwise students will never become proficient at it.
I see you have much to learn! There lies a long, slow road ahead of you, my friend.
I agree. But there's a worse crime, that of teaching sight reading at slow tempo. Never! Sight reading MUST be done at full speed, or even faster if possible, otherwise students will never become proficient at it.
What is 'full speed'? What does that even mean?
Bare minimum of 200 to the quarter note!
One thing I do believe is that if one is specifically practicing sightreading one must do it in strict tempo. That tempo can be fast or slow as needed, but must be steady.
Ahhhh! I agree with this completely. But you see, this is a very different statement from the very first one you made.... which was "But there's a worse crime, that of teaching sight reading at slow tempo. Never! Sight reading MUST be done at full speed, or even faster if possible, otherwise students will never become proficient at it"
I think it is as silly to say one must always sightread HT as it is to say one must always sightread really really fast. One thing I do believe is that if one is specifically practicing sightreading one must do it in strict tempo. That tempo can be fast or slow as needed, but must be steady.
Sightreading encompasses a few different purposes, which will greatly affect the approach needed.If I'm sightreading a piece in an ensemble situation, or to show someone how it sounds, then at tempo, keeping time, not stopping and with such fakery as is needed to achieve that is the way to go.If I'm sightreading it solely for my own purposes - to see what it sounds like or to assess it as a piece for further work or whatever - then I really don't need to keep strict time, go at the right tempo, play all the notes or alternatively fake my way through bits. As long as I get what I was after from the exercise, it's worked.It is no doubt a good idea to be able to take both approaches, and vital to understand which is which.
it can be extremely interesting when you start to notice a surprising about of overlap and discover how much the skill sets depend on each other.
I hadn't thought about it in that way, but that must be correct.Indeed, I think to a large extent, the "play it in and at tempo and fake out the problems" as a single approach actively works against the development of reading skills. Of course, there are times one has to do that, but I fear one learns more about the fakery than the reading. Not that a little fakery isn't useful to have up one's sleeve. It may also go some way to explaining what has always been something of a mystery to me. The constant barrage of "am I ready to play..." questions. I just do a read through, and that tells me all I need to know. But that only works if I read using the slow it down, explore a bit method. I can read a great many more things in this way, after all. And little that would be fruitful/necessary to spend time learning is likely to fall into the "I can read it at tempo at sight" category.
I hadn't thought about it in that way, but that must be correct.Indeed, I think to a large extent, the "play it in and at tempo and fake out the problems" as a single approach actively works against the development of reading skills. Of course, there are times one has to do that, but I fear one learns more about the fakery than the reading.
You wouldn't start a piece that's already well within your ability to play, there are always difficulties to be worked through.
Why not? Do piano students ONLY play music to "progress"? Never for personal pleasure, just because they want to play a piece, even if it doesn't pose any new challenges? I find that sad.
Why not encourage students to independently browse through music that poses no specific challenges just to get used to reading and enjoy learning pieces themselves?
A pianist should never stop dead and lose context between two notes. But they should learn to see trouble in advance and STRETCH time enough to play difficult details flawlessly first time around-just without sacrificing the sense of context and flow between adjacent notes.
Also, shouldn't READING for that kind of problem spots actually be done during the few seconds of preparation you have BEFORE you actually start EXECUTING the first notes of the piece? In other words, what sense does it make to start executing the first notes of a piece before you have a clear picture in your mind of how to solve the very last ones? Is this all simply a trial-and-error exercise?
My practice is to just open a piece up and start off, without glancing through it, or looking out for trouble spots. They'll soon make themselves apparent anyway, so why waste the time? That sightread through is supposed to be an exploratory mission, anyway.
For yourself at home that may be an option, yes, but I guess you know yourself what you can and can't do. You don't need to be told by your teacher that you can't do it. If you really want to progress in the skill, though, you will be interested in some expert advice from your teacher, and not simply continue the trial and error thing at home, won't you?
BTW, the "trial and error" thing isn't random. It's deliberate and self-instructional. Sometimes really no more than thinking out loud via the piano.
Of course, he quickly browsed the text as a whole before he started playing, not to meet any kind of suprises. Any other options make his feats (giving perfect executions of impossibly difficult repertoire at first sight) unexplainable.
Liszt was well known for his sight reading skills. I'm quite sure that what he did was not trial and error in any form. He knew IN ADVANCE what would come and was always ready to execute it. Of course, he quickly browsed the text as a whole before he started playing, not to meet any kind of suprises. Any other options make his feats (giving perfect executions of impossibly difficult repertoire at first sight) unexplainable.
Do you have any authority for that?
Liszt certainly comes down with a reputation as a staggeringly good sightreader. But why then would he need to skim through in advance? What "surprises" would he encounter that that would assist? And how would it assist? He'd still have to play it.
I didn't know I needed authority to make a statement that might be worth thinking about.
To my mind, that's what sightreading is all about: you read (don't play yet), you determine that you can do it, and then you play as written without excuses and with excellent results. If you know that you CAN'T execute it, it doesn't make sense to even start. Professional code of honor, so to speak.
I don't think what applies to Liszt will apply to an average piano studentThere's probably quite a lot that is unexplainable about Liszt. Especially since we cannot go back and study him and how he got to be what he was. I doubt we know how he was taught/learned to sight read?
But it's only worth thinking about if it is in fact true. You are citing Liszt as a practice model, so what he actually did is of interest, not what you presume he must have done.
What applies to Liszt is eminently applicable to everyone, albeit with consideration for the different level of ability.
But the different level of ability is exactly why what he did (or what someone thinks he did) is not applicable to everyone. My point was that it makes no sense to use him as an example when 99.999% (or less) of the people sight reading will never have his technical abilities or his composing skill.
You can't "read" what you can't execute, because "reading" is actually translating noteheads into parameters of execution.
P.S.: Isn't that why the students mentioned in the OP "sightread" HS? They know they can't do it otherwise. Their technique was developed in a way that has nothing to do with preparation for sightreading with both hands.
So, for a beginner, one note in the left hand, raise the wrist, put the pedal down, a note in the right, don't look at the keyboard, don't panic and is my teacher glaring at me, oh it should be staccato ,and loud, is memory overload. For a more advanced reader "its a two octave chromatic scale a 3rd apart starting here and with a gentle accelerando and crescendo" might be one chunk, leaving plenty of brain space left over.
I did not imply that we should have his absolute level. I wanted to say that at ANY level, the principles are exactly the same. We can't "sightread" what we can't readily execute.
the question of this thread was not how experts do something but which path to take to start builduing the ability.
That is also actually why I asked my question in Reply # 26: "How do you determine where the problems lie in students and what do you do about it?" I see no answer in virtually any of the many topics about sightreading here and on other resources. It's all trial and error and the student is basically expected to magically solve the problems himself. There is also the constant confusion between reading and actually executing. They are different stages that should be learned separately.
Maybe the answers are missing because we do not have any credible research on how to effectively teach sight reading, especially when there are differences in how the individual students perceive and learn things? And since we don't even have properly defined concepts, the discussions tend not to go anywhere because people are talking about different things...
I prefer a practical no-nonsense approach with predictable results to "credible research" if I may say so.
There's a lot of nonsense research around, so I understand why you feel that way. But credible research could be done by the individual teacher as well among the students, if there's the ability and skill to experiment and then evaluate and analyze the results.
By the way, the following document mentions many points that are not generally emphasized whenever the topic is under discussion. Enjoy!
That may be so, it makes sense; the trouble is I run into far too many people who like to stretch the time, as the verbose N likes, in performance situations; When the group is relying on you to keep a strict tempo, and you're arrogant enough to give it your own interpretation, you've failed as a session player; apologies for using the semicolon, but the period key broke off this computer; yes, the puppy had something to do with it;