Sight reading

[kekewak]

Hello people.

I've been playing piano for a few years, no teacher ever involved. I'm not really a man with a lot of free time, I'm studying medicine and trying to keep a nice social and sports life, so I don't really have time to take classes and learn the proper technique and sight reading abilities properly, that's why I try my best by teaching myself.

I have a basic knowledge about music theory and basic skills in reading sheets. I can read them but it takes me a ton of time, no need to say that i'm unable to play and read at the same time, wich would be why I created this post.

I'm taking too long to learn songs, and one of the main reasons is the time I take to read sheets. So i decided to change this, I downloaded a few applications to practice sheet reading, and it has worked quite a bit. But there are a few things i would like to know.

To read sheet music and play, do I look at the piano?
is there any book or page that can give me sheets to practice, or I just keep practicing with the songs i'm learning?

Thanks, any tips and suggestions would be great!!

[mathiasf]

Basically you need to read something new every time you sit down at the piano. I would recommend getting a big collection of a lot of music you like, e.g. when I had to learn sight reading I read about 3 new pieces every day, not for adding them to my repertoire, but just for practicing sight reading. If you need suggestions for pieces, I can highly recommend grabbing Das Wohltemperierte Klavier 1/2 and Kleine Präludien und Fughetten by Bach and some Czerny etudes.
As I have no idea of your level, you should really just pick some pieces that are way under the level that you are playing. Remember, you aren't really supposed to put emotion into the pieces you are playing, and you should never play any of the pieces more than once for practice. That makes for the best sight reading practice in my opinion.

[kekewak]

is there any book or webpage or compilation to help me so?

thanks!

[schwartzer]

Sight reading is all about beginning with VERY EASY pieces and working your way towards harder ones. And by easy pieces, I really mean it. You can't start by trying to sight read any Chopin or  Beethoven or even a easier Bach work. Try to find a beginner book at your local music store, and work your way towards harder pieces.

It's the same thing as learning a new language. Sure, your korean friend may teach you a sentence and you can copy the sound, and know the definition of it. But to truly speak korean (or read music, in this case) you should start from scratch.

[kekewak]

sounds good! thanks you!

[saranoya]

If you need something easier than Bach (or even Clementi), try sightreadingfactory.com, which will give you very simple, automatically generated music.

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that it's a computer coming up with things for you to play, rather than a human being, is a feature instead of a bug. My experience is that computer-generated stuff tends to be a little harder to predict than human-generated stuff, which means you will be doing less anticipating and more actual reading.