Sight Reading Difficult Pieces Like Chopin Etudes

[ballade345]

Even i apply all of the rules of sight reading like

1 - i never look at my hands
2 - i never stop ( pause ) playing even if i make a mistake i keep playing
3 - my eyes are processing ahead from my hands ( if i'm playing a chord with my hands my eyes are gazing the next chord already
4 - i try to see notes as patterns never reading 1 note at a time i try to see the big picture
5 - i read the score from down-up ( from bass clef to treble clef ) my eyes are zigzagging through the score

but still i can't sight read and play at the same time difficult pieces from start to finish efficiently and comfortably

yes maybe chopin etudes are bit hard to sight read for 10 years of playing but also i can't sight read easier pieces like chopin preludes or schumann kinderszenen or liszt liebestraum & consolations

how can i sight read like liszt did i want to sit down and sight read and play piano concertos, liszt etudes, chopin etudes without hesitation or nervousness what are the other rules of sight reading that i skipped.

i also study counterpoint and harmony but i don't see any benefit of them in sight reading except recognizing chords faster.

what you suggest for achieving liszt level of sight reading?

of course i'm not talented as liszt but i don't think sight reading is about talent i think it's about practice but i practice for like 2 or 3 years but still get nowhere except reading easy sonatas, sonatinas by haydn, mozart or scarlatti

[outin]

You might consider that sight reading difficult music at high speed is extremely demanding for one's cognition. People are not equal in their cognitive skills and it's not only about practice. Things like the size of your working memory, your ability to process information and the structure of your brain don't just change completely. You may be able to use what you have more efficiently, but there's a limit. Some people have a much higher limit than others (which is what I mean when I talk about talent). So sight reading is greatly about talent I'm afraid.

[ballade345]

how can i learn my cognitive limit ? or where? if i'm stuck at one point is it mean that i reached my cognitive limit so i can't go beyond ? if i believe that my cognitive limit reached to the highest point and i stop study isn't it the worst thing that i can do to myself?

so i'm at the point of give up or keep doing

[outin]

how can i learn my cognitive limit ? or where?

You probably can't...it's not that simple really, unless you have a specific deficit. I guess you just have to keep working to get better and see where it gets you. Don't give up on your goal to SR the etudes, but maybe also don't expect yourself to become like someone who is known to be exceptional. It's like setting yourself to fail...

[pianist1976]

ballade345, don't be that hard with yourself. Most Chopin etudes are not intended to be played at first sight but to be carefully studied, practiced, rehearsed, memorized, repeated and repeated again and again at different speeds in order to achieve a "decent" level of performance with them (except maybe some of those that are relatively easier to read such as the Op 10 no. 6 or the Op 10 n. 9).

They are not the kind of piece one would feel bad for being unable to sight read it as long as it's not a standard to do that kind of work with them, and there's lot of technical/musical/understanding work needed to be relatively comfortable playing them. I know quite a few persons who are very proficient playing the etudes (after investing a lot of work on them) and none of them are/were able to read them at sight on tempo (some of them are exceptionally good sight readers).

Also Liszt prepared the Op 10 in an astonishing short time but that doesn't mean he sight read them...

[pianist1976]

Also History has idealized Liszt's ability to sight read to legend status. I mean, I'm sure he was a great reader, a superb artist, pianist, in my opinion one of the greatest musical geniuses in History, and he was a person with an uncommonly high intelligence. But I'm also almost sure that his playing standard as sight reader and his playing standard as a performer with rehearsed pieces were quite different (as Clara Schumann once stated...). I also cannot be sure about it but I think he could be using reduction techniques to overcome certain passages that unavoidably need to be studied and practiced, even for a genius.

[8_octaves]

Hi,

I've got a question, since the term "sight reading" may be a broad field, and some people (among them are piano teachers, too) differentiate between "prima vista" ( meaning that the piece is unknown to the performer and he really sees it the first time and then directly plays it from the sheets ) and "sight reading", meaning playing from the sheets, but may be the performer has already played through it once or more, or somewhen in the past (e.g. 20 years ago) and now plays it from the sheets again.

Furthermore, there are the terms "true sight reading" (sight playing), and the term "audiation" (reading a score without the piano) , which is imho VERY important.

Cordially, 8_octaves!

[j_menz]

what you suggest for achieving liszt level of sight reading?

of course i'm not talented as liszt but i don't think sight reading is about talent

To be able to sight read like Liszt, you need to be able to play like Liszt. It's possible to play like Liszt but not be able to sight read like him, but the reverse is not true.

Yes, there are ways to improve your sight reading. But you will never be able to sight read something you can't play reasonably easily. The general rule of thumb is that a good sight reader can handle material 2 grades below what their practiced level is.

Taking your example of the Chopin Etudes, say 10/1 (but applicable to all). That etude explores a particular technique (and is designed to develop it). If you do not already have that technique to a high level you cannot expect to develop it on the spot just because you can read the notes. It has to be in the hands already to do it at sight.

In short, the best way to improve your sight reading is to improve your technical toolkit.

[michael_c]

In short, the best way to improve your sight reading is to improve your technical toolkit.

Improving your technique will not do anything directly for your sight reading, it will simply increase the technical level of pieces you could sight read if you ware a super sight reader. I've seen pianists with stunning technique who were lousy sight readers.

To improve your sight reading, what you need to do, unsurprisingly, is read a lot at sight. Don't try to play note-perfect: the most important thing is to keep going. Put yourself in a situation where you need to keep going: accompanying a solo singer, an instrumentalist, an opera rehearsal. Look for the essentials: what is the harmony, what is the melody, what notes can I leave out, what is an secondary figure that I can fake? If you can't find somebody to accompany, turn on the metronome and play to that.

Another thing: if you try to sight read a very well-known piece, something which you've probably already heard many times, you run the risk of wanting, even subconsciously, to make your rendering sound as perfect as a recording. That's not the point here. A good sight reader will give a convincing impression of a piece, but won't necessarily play all the notes. Here, skills of improvisation and harmony are important. An experienced improviser with a good grasp of harmony will see a run, a fast arpeggio or any other intricate passage, and immediately spot what's important about it: they will play something that sounds like what's written.

So go to IMSLP, look for composers you have never heard of and go on a voyage of discovery.

[timothy42b]

Improving your technique will not do anything directly for your sight reading, it will simply increase the technical level of pieces you could sight read if you ware a super sight reader. I've seen pianists with stunning technique who were lousy sight readers.

 

That part is true, but misleading.  You really do have to have substantial technical skill to read difficult pieces.  Many people complain about not being able to sightread pieces so difficult it takes them time to prepare.  Well, doh.  You can always learn a piece levels above what you can sightread.  So if you want to sightread Grade 8 pieces, you're going to need to be a Grade 10 player.  It is a necessary but not sufficient condition, as the maths people say.  You'll still need to do focused work on sightreading.  As your level increases, likely it will take you longer to prepare a piece, and without realizing it spend less time sightreading.

To improve your sight reading, what you need to do, unsurprisingly, is read a lot at sight.

At the beginner level perhaps. 

[michael_c]

At the beginner level perhaps. 

No, at all levels up to a professional level. I should know: I've spent most of my musical career accompanying. I sight read Wagner or Strauss operas. My colleagues joke that I can read anything that's put in front of me.

When I was a talented child, already playing difficult pieces, my sight reading was abysmal. Thus in an AMRSM exam I could get full marks in a piece but a fail in sight reading with the remark "couldn't make much of it". I hated playing from music but I had a good memory: as soon as I'd learnt the notes I didn't need the music anymore.

When I discovered the joys of chamber music I realised that I had to be able to sight read, so I set about doing just that. I read, read and read, faking my way through pieces of all levels of difficulty, including Liszt études and late Beethoven sonatas which were certainly above the technical level of the pieces I was actually practising. The more I read at sight, the better I got at it. The better I got at sight reading, the more musicians asked me to accompany them at the last minute. In a few years I had turned into a crack sight reader. My memorisation skills did suffer, but who needs to play chamber music from memory?

[timothy42b]

The more I read at sight, the better I got at it.

Yup.

And like many skilled performers, you think one size fits all.  (really skilled performers often have little idea of how they do what they do)

The evidence is this approach doesn't work for most people. 

[michael_c]

The evidence is this approach doesn't work for most people.

Could you give some details on that evidence?

In the world of opera, where I have worked the most, I have met many skilled sight readers. To the best of my knowledge, they all got good at sight reading by doing it a lot. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

[timothy42b]

Could you give some details on that evidence?

In the world of opera, where I have worked the most, I have met many skilled sight readers. To the best of my knowledge, they all got good at sight reading by doing it a lot. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

On this and other forums the testimonies of people trying to improve sightreading are ubiquitous.

Those who got good at sightreading may think they did it by doing it a lot, but that may not describe what actually improved them.  Or, they might not think that, this is your conclusion.

Let me give a very oversimplified example to show what I mean.

Suppose you are sightreading a piece and come upon !horrors! a 4-5 left hand trill. 

Oops, crash and burn.  Better sightread a 1000 pieces so I can get better.

1000 pieces later, come across another trill, crash and burn again.  Light bulb goes off, should have sightread 1000 pieces that had a trill.  Try that, oops, still crash and burn.

What you could have done was stop and realize mastering this particular skill once will improve your sightreading on all future pieces.  You used your sightreading practice as a diagnostic tool to find what is missing that's holding you back, and then you practiced that element separately, not sightreading. 

A trill is an oversimplified example but much of good sightreading depends on retrieving previously mastered and memorized skills, and that mastery doesn't happen when prima vista sightreading. 

A similar example is reading SATB hymns.  If you do enough of it, you'll get good at reading SATB hymns - which almost never have syncopation and never go above or below the staff.  You'll have to practice that stuff separately - and you'll have to master a few hymns by working on them, rather than just read them. 

[michael_c]

On this and other forums the testimonies of people trying to improve sightreading are ubiquitous.

Do you have some examples? Maybe of people who got good at sight reading by practising technical exercises?

Of course all sorts of skills go into sight reading: a harmonic sense, sense of style, the ability to quickly analyse what is essential and what can be faked or simply left out... You learn to recognise chords as you do words when reading your own language: as single objects instead of as a collection of notes (or letters) to be deciphered one by one.

The lovely thing is that sight reading itself helps you develop those skills. Read through a lot of pieces by Mozart and his contemporaries and you get a feel for the classical style and harmonic language. Read through a load of late romantic pieces and you'll get a feel for that style too. Reading through many pieces in a certain style gives you a global sense of that style, something that you won't get from working, however carefully, on a single piece.

If, while sight reading, you chance upon some technical element which is beyond your capacities, the important thing is this: does it trip you up, or can you fake it? Good sight readers are good fakers. To get back to the original request in this thread, you will find it extremely difficult to find somebody capable of sight reading pieces as hard as the Chopin Etudes perfectly note-for-note, in the correct tempo and with all nuances of expression (if you know of somebody who can do this, let me know!). You can find people capable of giving the impression that they are doing this with pieces of this difficulty, if the pieces are not so well-known so that nobody knows how much the pianist is actually faking.

I've never seen anybody get better at sight reading by practising trills.

[timothy42b]

Do you have some examples? Maybe of people who got good at sight reading by practising technical exercises?

Well, I never said that, did I?  But you knew that.

Of course all sorts of skills go into sight reading: a harmonic sense, sense of style, the ability to quickly analyse what is essential and what can be faked or simply left out...

Half right. 

The lovely thing is that sight reading itself helps you develop those skills.
Read through a lot of pieces by Mozart and his contemporaries and you get a feel for the classical style and harmonic language.

Perhaps it did for you.  For the majority of people it doesn't.  As you read through, you don't spend enough time to internalize what you need.  Most of us are far better off learning one Mozart piece thoroughly than reading 10 or 20 or a 100.  That's the biggest thing that gets missed with the advice to just get better by reading a lot.  You can't retrieve at speed from the memory banks that which is not overlearned.   

That is not to say you don't have to do a lot of reading.  But for any given style element you have to put in the time to really learn it.  There isn't any free lunch here, you have to do both.   

I've never seen anybody get better at sight reading by practising trills.

Now I know you're just a troll.  Plonk!

[8_octaves]

Rehi all,

It's still not really clear to me which definitions of "sight reading" are to apply here in the discussion of the thread.

@all: Do you mean "prima vista" ( = seeing the notes / sheets of music of a work you never saw before, and directly playing it at the piano )

or

"sight playing" ( = playing a work directly from the sheets, but you perhaps have seen it before, and sometimes have played through it before? (for example a long time before ) ?

or

is there another definition the basis here,

or

are all of the above mentioned valid in this thread?

( I refer to my unspoken question in reply #6 of this thread....)

Asks, with cordial greetings, 8_octaves...

[j_menz]

@ 8_octaves - prima vista ( or close to it)

@ michael_c and timothy42b - You're actually both kinda right. Practicing sight reading by doing lots of it will make you a better sight reader, but it will only do so within your technical limits. The practice you get is very likely to broaden those limits.

There are pieces we struggle to play without some learning work because the techniques employed are not in our toolkit properly and so cannot simply be drawn on to play the piece - we have to step back and do some practice to bring them up to scratch. Experienced "performing" sight readers have an additional skillset that allows them at times to fake over these shortcomings. Sometimes, but not always. The Chopin 10/1 example I cited seems to me a piece that couldn't be satisfactorily faked.

In order to be able to sight read advanced repertoire, one needs to be both a good sigh reader and also a very (very) good technical pianist. Even then, there will be pieces that are more difficult than others.

Fast, rhythmically complex (including advanced polyrhythms) polyphonic pieces involving extended use of accidentals (Bx anyone?) on multiple staves, involving hand crossings and intertwinings and all in rather untidy manuscript, and then throwing in unconventional technical hurdles --- just can't be done by mere mortals.

And this says nothing of pieces that really only work if the subtleties of the dynamics are present.

[timothy42b]

Rehi all,

It's still not really clear to me which definitions of "sight reading" are to apply here in the discussion of the thread.

@all: Do you mean "prima vista" ( = seeing the notes / sheets of music of a work you never saw before, and directly playing it at the piano )

or

"sight playing" ( = playing a work directly from the sheets, but you perhaps have seen it before, and sometimes have played through it before? (for example a long time before ) ?

Closer to prima vista, but if you have properly prepared there is little pure pv. 

I'm thinking of when you get hired as part of a combo to play a 4 hour wedding dance.  You haven't seen the book before, but inevitably you've run into some of the standards, and you wouldn't have been hired if you weren't experienced at the style, so you have a memory bank full of stylistic fragments to retrieve at sight.

Pure prima vista reading is rare and those who are skilled at it are rarer still, but many people are very very good at the genres they've chosen to become proficient at.  Their reading is part pv and larger part memory retrieval.  An example might be the opera readers m mentioned. Within that genre there are some commonalities that would not apply directly to a big band book, for example.   I've played some opera but only on brass, never on piano, sorry.  The brass parts I've read were reasonably easy to read though demanding in other ways (dynamics and timing) but did not prepare me at all for the show pit.  First show I played I could not sightread and was lost much of the first rehearsal! It took a lot of practice to play that one, but the next one was easier, and the next one even more so as I built a memory log of patterns and skills. 

[timothy42b]

@ 8_octaves - prima vista ( or close to it)

@ michael_c and timothy42b - You're actually both kinda right. Practicing sight reading by doing lots of it will make you a better sight reader, but it will only do so within your technical limits. t.

I had another thought, not sure how widely this applies.

One of the reasons the less skilled can't sightread fluently is they can't play anything fluently.  That's a separate skill in itself, and one that many never realize they don't have. 

For that skill, I think doing a lot of sightreading might really help. 

[lostinidlewonder]

The thing is it is all about fingering, being able to naturally use the correct fingers at all times. When you use a wrong finger while reading it feels bad and limits your fluency while reading, poor readers don't understand their fingerings let alone the notes they must read. If anything sight read has fingering you have much experience with then the passage will be easy.

The secret is definatly reading a lot. It is not unusual for my sight reading students to see 100+ pieces a week. Sight reading study is much more mentally draining than memory/polishing study of a particular piece. I find most people don't take reading seriously so never get better, most don't want to humble themselves with eaiser pieces and build from there. Takes many many years building.

[timothy42b]

If anything sight read has fingering you have much experience with then the passage will be easy.

YES!  So few people understand how important that is. 

[8_octaves]

@ 8_octaves - prima vista ( or close to it)

Closer to prima vista, but if you have properly prepared there is little pure pv. 

@timothy42b : Hi timothy, yes, I have...

Hi j_menz, and timothy, too: Thank you for the answers very much!

And normally, I would, now, ask "how close", since the expression "close" is not very exact in the field of "sight reading", I think. Here we (or at least the people who are interested in it and like sight reading very much, as do I ) are interested in very much more exact differentiating.

Additionally, unfortunately nobody on an internet-forum can prove to 100% that something is played by him "prima vista".
 
But I won't in reality dare to ask the question to you: "How close..." .

This has the following reason:

Many years ago, when I bought 2 books of sheetmusic simultaneously (Peters, and Dover), I did this because I knew the "Banjo" op. 15, of Gottschalk. I had heard it on TV, and since then, this composer was my life.

I went home, and played 4 or 5 times (which means: days, since I completely played through each piece no more than once a day) through the COMPLETE Dover-Book (in which 26 works of this composer are ) ( in the Peters-book, are only 8 pieces, which are in the Dover-book, too ) . -
I had known only the "Banjo" (op. 15-version) before, and not the other works. So, the "Bananier", too, was a piece I never had heard or seen before.

And I recorded the "Bananier", the recording I started was when it had been the 4th or the 5th time I was playing it from the sheets during the mentioned 4-5 days - ( which also means: times, for each piece, because, e.g., the Dover-book is voluminous! ) playthroughs.

This version I have attached ( or try to attach ) here as mp3.

Piano: It's my own one, at home, and a cheap one, but in former days it was OK, I think. Today, since I haven't had it tuned for years now, its sound wouldn't be appreciated too much. So I don't (yet) directly upload or link other works played on it recently here, i.e.: works, which I only had seen or played through very few times before I recorded them while playing them from the sheets, too.-

To my "personality as a sight reader": 

If forced  , or challenged  , I can learn pieces "by heart", too, and I can play, by heart, some pieces which are easy, some which are intermediate, and some, but few, which are hard.

And sometimes people (friends, or others) challenge me to play from sheets. That's super, and a lot of fun, when my friends do that here at home. But it can be VERY dangerous for me,  ( since I am, as I said in the Granada-thread, autodidact and never had formal training or a piano teacher, ) , but for them, who would challenge me, for example in an unfriendly manner, it could be VERY dangerous, too,  because I am able to counterattack hard and without compromises, by challenging THEM.-
 
Now, because Music shouldn't be supposed to be the basis for "piano battles" (as I mentioned in Thalberg's nice 10-years' jubilee-thread ) , the much more preferrable way to cope with Music in a community, is friendly conversation and informative postings.

@Sight reading versus memorizing:
For my subjective and personal "in-house-use", or playing together with friends or relatives, it's much more important for me to play new pieces as good as I can from the sheets, and then looking at other, new pieces. And this improves, today, since I'm accustomed and experienced to play from sheets very very many pieces.

I, meanwhile, have 30 years experience in prima vista (narrowest sense of word) and, CONNECTED to it, the "close to it" sense of word. As I mentioned in the "Granada"-thread in the audition-room, I was spotted as a good (my mentioned music-teacher said: "very dangerous / marvellous" ) prima vista / and sightreader.

I'm lazy and don't practice via "etudes", and I very rarely do really intensive practicing. But even then I ONLY would practice directly at the work I want to play.- 

BTW.: This recording of the Bananier I later sent to my friend in the USA, who liked it, but criticized ( "I disliked...", he wrote.. ) , that I played too fast, which led to a nice, and amusing discussion, at the end of which we came to the conclusion:

"Banana- Trees ( and Banana-men, who trade Bananas, since that's a rare, but existant definition or association for the "Bananier", too, as some might know ), don't run quickly through the landscape!"

And now: "En avant, Grenadier(s)!" (Which is a version of the French text of the creole song, which may be the basis for "Le Bananier!"

Very cordially, 8_octaves!

[pianoplunker]

Even i apply all of the rules of sight reading like

1 - i never look at my hands
2 - i never stop ( pause ) playing even if i make a mistake i keep playing
3 - my eyes are processing ahead from my hands ( if i'm playing a chord with my hands my eyes are gazing the next chord already
4 - i try to see notes as patterns never reading 1 note at a time i try to see the big picture
5 - i read the score from down-up ( from bass clef to treble clef ) my eyes are zigzagging through the score

but still i can't sight read and play at the same time difficult pieces from start to finish efficiently and comfortably

yes maybe chopin etudes are bit hard to sight read for 10 years of playing but also i can't sight read easier pieces like chopin preludes or schumann kinderszenen or liszt liebestraum & consolations

how can i sight read like liszt did i want to sit down and sight read and play piano concertos, liszt etudes, chopin etudes without hesitation or nervousness what are the other rules of sight reading that i skipped.

i also study counterpoint and harmony but i don't see any benefit of them in sight reading except recognizing chords faster.

what you suggest for achieving liszt level of sight reading?

of course i'm not talented as liszt but i don't think sight reading is about talent i think it's about practice but i practice for like 2 or 3 years but still get nowhere except reading easy sonatas, sonatinas by haydn, mozart or scarlatti

We might want to also look at how we were taught piano in the first place. For me, it was learning pieces week by week through practice and memorization , and when level one was done move on to level two, week by week, level three, four, etc all week by week. Now looking back at my study materials from way back I can see that is not conducive to sight reading. There are many more elements to music as we progress to higher levels, but yet it is still week by week. So we spend less time working on all technical details as we move to more and more advanced
music. I am not hung up on levels but I can see that is probably why sight reading must be at such a low level for me compared to what I could do if I practiced for a week. 

[marijn210999]

Hi.

Before you even start sight-reading through any of your music - which I suggest you don't do at all behind the piano - you should ask you two simple questions:

1. What is the reason you want to sight-read through this piece? If you have no reason to do it, then don't, and the only reason I can think of is to find out what are the most difficult bars/passages (for you) of this piece. But that, you should do away from the piano.

2. Will it help you sight-reading through this piece? Unless you are some kind of piano prodigy that can play any piece perfectly just from sight, it actually never does. Assuming you aren't, sight-reading a new piece is never going to help you since you most likely won't be able to sight-read trough it without making any mistakes. Hereby comes that hand memory is created by playing music with hands together. You probably already see it coming: you will be creating a hand memory of this piece that is full of mistakes which you will almost never be able to get rid of.

Now, if you asked - and answered - these questions and you're still convinced that you will be better of sight-reading new pieces before you're actually going to practice it, which you probably won't be anymore at this point) you can start sight-reading it. If, at this point, you indeed still want to do it, at least do it with hands seperate. Because if you play something with hands seperate, no hand memory will be created.

BW,
Marijn
 

[j_menz]

1. What is the reason you want to sight-read through this piece?

Fun, education or because there is no recording.

2. Will it help you sight-reading through this piece? 

Yes.

You sound very much like someone who only ever learns pieces, never just plays around for the fun of it.

You do raise an interesting point, though. If you are reading through a piece as a prelude to learning it, the exercise is quite a different one to reading through it to just play it.  Firstly, it is likely to be above your comfort zone for sight reading, and second the purpose is quite different - you want to start getting fingering, notes etc all perfect. It will be a much slower read through. and no cheating allowed.  It's not that a quick read through first will hurt, though - I doubt very much that bad habits start to engrain themselves so easily.

[marijn210999]

You sound very much like someone who only ever learns pieces, never just plays around for the fun of it.

I'm sorry, but you couldn't be further from the truth on this. In fact, I do play for fun. However, notice that I never sight-read for fun. If I would like to play a piece for fun - which almost all pieces I play are, else I wouldn't have been learning them - I would directly go on make a plan for learning it. Isn't it much more fun to play a piece in it's entirety with both hands at whatever tempo and with whichever interpretation you want, then just sight-read for fun?Why would you stay dreaming about that one piece you would like to play? Instead make a master plan for mastering it and be able to play it, which, depending on the piece, can usually be done in les then a few weeks.

If you are reading through a piece as a prelude to learning it.

Why whould you read through a piece as a preparation to learning it? This surely can be done safely when done in one's mind, or just reading through it playing seperate hands.

though - I doubt very much that bad habits start to engrain themselves so easily.

Try it yourself. Take a piece which is a little bit above your comfort zone, else it won't be hard to sight-read through. Then go on and play it trough without really practicing it for a few days. At the end of a week you will be amazed about you playing this piece in it's entirity now but also with the lots of mistakes your making. Mistakes you won't be getting out of your fingers for at least the next five years.

BW,
Marijn

[outin]

Try it yourself. Take a piece which is a little bit above your comfort zone, else it won't be hard to sight-read through. Then go on and play it trough without really practicing it for a few days. At the end of a week you will be amazed about you playing this piece in it's entirity now but also with the lots of mistakes your making. Mistakes you won't be getting out of your fingers for at least the next five years.

What a strange thing to say...five years? I make changes (fingering changes or improvements) to the pieces I learn all the time and it takes me at most a week to erase whatever I learned differently first. I guess your permanent memory is much more efficient than mine.

[michael_c]

1. What is the reason you want to sight-read through this piece?

Fun, education or because there is no recording.

I'll go into some personal detail on j_menz's reply.

"Fun": It's great fun to read through pieces with other musicians. A few weeks ago I spent a very agreeable evening with some friends, all professional musicians, reading through music for cello and piano, voice and piano, piano duet, etc. In most cases we'd never seen the pieces before: there's much fun in discovery.

"Education": I can't measure how much I learnt as a teenager by reading through most of the Beethoven sonatas and large portions of the works of Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and others. I acquired a heightened sense of style, a stronger feeling for the keyboard and of course a facility in sight reading. I was very far from being note perfect, but that didn't hinder me from diligently practising the pieces I was supposed to be practising and becoming a professional musician.

"Because there's no recording": even if there is a recording, I may prefer to discover a piece directly from what the composer wrote, not by listening to somebody else's interpretation. My wife (a singer) and I have recently been spending a considerable amount of time reading through French art songs from the 1930s and 40s, not just for fun (though it is fun), but for choosing pieces for a concert programme. These are not pieces from the standard repertoire. There may be recordings of some of them, but we're not looking for them: what interests us is to discover the pieces ourselves and see what suits us.

[marijn210999]

I make changes (fingering changes or improvements) to the pieces I learn all the time and it takes me at most a week to erase whatever I learned differently first.

If you change your fingering all the time, how can you possibly memorize your piece perfectly. Your hand memory will be all messed up and it will be almost impossible to really know your piece from inside out - which I think is a very important aspect of learning a piece.

BW,
Marijn

[marijn210999]

It's great fun to read through pieces with other musicians.

You should have said "It's great fun for me to read through pieces with other musicians." Anyway, I can understand why it is fun to just play something behind the piano while sight-reading, but you will learn much less from it, then if you sight-read through a piece in your mind. Let me say why:

I. By "hearing" music in your mind, you will get a much more clearer conception on how you want the piece to sound. This is because if you only "hear" the music in your mind, you won't get overwhelmed by the sound of the piano.

II. By sight-reading through the score away from the piano, you won't get support from the piano's sound to process the information that's coming at you. That also goes for the real sensation of depressing the keys. This doesn't mean that these three aspects don't enter your brain. It does enter but it has a much harder time to process it. This is because if you sight-read through a piece without the piano, you must try to "feel", "hear" and "see" the piano. Since you have to do this all in your head, your mind has to work much harder, which in turn results in a pre-memorization of the piece. So at the time you really go to the piano and play, you already sort of memorized it. This is a process which I can describe in much more detail than I just did above.

III. Before you can do the step above, you must of course have figured out a fingering already. Because, if you haven't, again in your head you will learn the wrong fingering or a random fingering you choose at that particular moment, which might be different the next time you just play it. Figuring out a fingering can be done both at and away from the piano. At the piano is easier because you can really feel how the movements feel for your hand and fingers. You can also do it away from the piano, which will be much harder because again, you must "see" en "feel" the piano when doing this.

BW,
Marijn

[j_menz]

You should have said "It's great fun for me to read through pieces with other musicians."

Possibly, but only because he actually can. Were you actually able to, you would understand.

I see from your previous posts that you are about a grade 8 pianist, and that from this thread that you ain't much of a sight reader. Perhaps you might consider whether your perspective might be influenced by that.

[michael_c]

You should have said "It's great fun for me to read through pieces with other musicians."

The other musicians seem to have a lot of fun as well.

Anyway, I can understand why it is fun to just play something behind the piano while sight-reading, but you will learn much less from it, then if you sight-read through a piece in your mind.

Guess what: you can learn a lot from reading both at the piano and in your mind. One activity complements the other. Since I am a conductor as well as a pianist, I am no stranger to reading scores away from the piano and hearing them in my head. But I also profit from reading scores at the piano.

[michael_c]

One more important reason for sight reading: because you have to. It's a skill expected of opera répétiteurs, for instance.

Say you have to accompany an audition of singers. If you're lucky and there are only a few singers, you might get a bit of time to rehearse. But maybe there are fifteen of them, and you have no time even to look through their music before the audition starts. They come on stage, one after the other and hand you the music. With a bit of luck they will sing many pieces you know: singers do tend to all bring out the same arias for auditions. But there will probably be arias you've never seen before. You need to use all your sight reading skills to produce an accompaniment that hits the right harmonies, melodies and rhythms. And make sure you follow the singer!

[timothy42b]

Why whould you read through a piece as a preparation to learning it? This surely can be done safely when done in one's mind, or just reading through it playing seperate hands.


BW,
Marijn

I'm glad you posted, because you bring a different perspective.  We all tend to get trapped in our own perspectives, and not realize where the others are coming from.

You are a skilled pianist who mostly prepares pieces and I would guess never has to read an unfamiliar one in public. 

I would agree with you that reading a piece in preparation for learning it is not an efficient process.

I never do that.

I read a piece to play it as correctly as possible the first time.  I don't do this well at piano because my piano skills suck.  But at trombone, if I sit down with an ensemble and the conductor calls a piece I've never seen, I expect to get all the notes, dynamics, tempos, expression right the first time.  And I will, with some exceptions; there are styles of music with weird syncopations, for example, that will throw me the first time.  I've sung unfamiliar hymns as an offertory solo in church, essentially sightsinging (of course I had time to read through mentally while waiting). 

If a piece is hard enough to require you to learn it, if a piece is hard enough to enable you to expand your skills, which I gather is why you learn them, then sight reading it is not really possible.  IMO. 

On the other hand, if a piece is easy, several levels below your skill level, and you can't read it, then I would suggest you are missing a skill that other instrumentalists consider rather fundamental.  Maybe you have become to accustomed to the luxury of long preparation. 

When I was a high school kid, 50 years ago or so, I sang with a madrigal group that had skilled readers and we would read through pieces to see if we liked them and wanted to add to our repertoire.  Fast forward a few decades, my daughter sang in her highschool choir, and they were very impressive musically, but that's one activity that I used to enjoy that she could never do, because the kids are no longer taught to read.  They sing prepared pieces very well, better than we did, but you would never give them a sheet of music and expect to hear it sung correctly. 

[marijn210999]

I'm glad you posted, because you bring a different perspective.  We all tend to get trapped in our own perspectives, and not realize where the others are coming from.

Well, I'm glad you appreciate my look into this very interesting question.

I read a piece to play it as correctly as possible the first time.  I don't do this well at piano because my piano skills suck.

But now you're saying that you're ability to sight-read music depends on how good your skill is. This is, with all respect, a statement that cannot be further from the truth.

"Skill" which I would like to call "technique" is not some sort of general thing ore ability that you can learn and improve per grade. That would mean that if I would take two pieces from, let's say, Grade 8: Brahms' Ballade No. 1, Op. 10 and the first movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata, K. 311 (the D major one) that I could play them once I achieved "grade 8 technique". There is no such thing as technique in common. Technique means the playing of the right notes, in the right time, at the right tempo, etc. which differs for every piece. I don't know about you but, if I could play the first Brahms Ballade (which is a grade 8 piece) it would most certainly NOT mean I could also instantly play the Mozart movement which has the same level of difficulty. (Difficulty  , another thing I would like to discuss extensively with you guys). These two pieces might be at the same level of difficulty, that surely does not mean they both involve the same kind of technical issues. On the contrary. Both Brahms and Mozart are two complete different composers who both involve very different kind of difficulties.

So let me please be clear on this. Common technique, which is improved by practice DOES NOT EXIST!.

BW,
Marijn

[marijn210999]

I see from your previous posts that you are about a grade 8 pianist, and that from this thread that you ain't much of a sight reader.

First statement is almost true. I live in the Netherland and here we don't work with de ABRSM Grades. We have our own grades here. But the grade I am at right now according to our grading system it would be around grade 9 in your system.

Second statement couldn't be further from the truth. I am. I am a very fanatic sight-reader. But only in my mind. I have experience with - and am actually pretty good at - sight-reading in real life though. I just can't seem to find any profit from sight-reading with hands together behind the piano. This I already described some posts ago. If you want me to explain it once again, speak up.

BW,
Marijn

[marijn210999]

The other musicians seem to have a lot of fun as well.

This is very dangerous. Look. I'm not trying to argue with you but you should never speak for others.

Guess what: you can learn a lot from reading both at the piano and in your mind. One activity complements the other. Since I am a conductor as well as a pianist, I am no stranger to reading scores away from the piano and hearing them in my head. But I also profit from reading scores at the piano.

Again, I'm sorry to twarth here again. I just have to disagree with you again. I already mentioned in an earlier post why this is. If you want me to mention it again. Tell me.

BW,
Marijn



[/quote]

[anamnesis]

First statement is almost true. I live in the Netherland and here we don't work with de ABRSM Grades. We have our own grades here. But the grade I am at right now according to our grading system it would be around grade 9 in your system.

Second statement couldn't be further from the truth. I am. I am a very fanatic sight-reader. But only in my mind. I have experience with - and am actually pretty good at - sight-reading in real life though. I just can't seem to find any profit from sight-reading with hands together behind the piano. This I already described some posts ago. If you want me to explain it once again, speak up.

BW,
Marijn

If you outline, rather than read through every note it certainly helps out because it helps you to discover the dance, song, and structure of a piece of music, that you can't discover figuring things out note by note.  

The balance of activity using a single upper limb is NOT the same as when you use both.  It would take you forever to learn the virtuosic, improvisatory-like works of those from Liszt or Scarlatti, if you only carefully tried to work through it bit by bit without discovering the overall form first.

[michael_c]

This is very dangerous. Look. I'm not trying to argue with you but you should never speak for others.

So if my colleagues not only say they have fun sight reading, but also visibly and audibly do have fun, you think I shouldn't say so?

I note that you posted about having difficulties reading notes:

Hey,

Already since I began playing the piano I encounter difficulties with reading notes. Music in the tonics: C, G, D, F, B-flat, E-flat etc. aren't that much of a problem but when it comes to keys with 5, 6 or even 7 sharps or flats, it becomes very difficult to read for me. Is there any way to improve this reading?

Marijn

I know of many ways to improve that reading, but since you are arguing against sight-reading here, I won't bother you with them.

[marijn210999]

The balance of activity using a single upper limb is NOT the same as when you use both.  It would take you forever to learn the virtuosic, improvisatory-like works of those from Liszt or Scarlatti, if you only carefully tried to work through it bit by bit.

I'm sorry , I probably didn't make myself clearn enough. I do know that playing the piano with seperate hands certainly is not the same as hands together. I also thought I mentioned this in one of my first posts on this topic. But anyway, I'll explain again:

Preparatory work which is done before one actually goes and sits behind the piano and starts practicing it, which might take him, who knows how long? I would go about preparatory work as work which is done away from the piano. What does this preparatory work contents? The following, that is, in my opinion:

This is what one should do before he gets behind te piano:

1. Take the score and lay it in front of you. Just read through the music and "hear" the music in your head. At this point it is not important to pay attention to musical notes by the composer. As you are not stil playing the music the manner in which you play it won't get ingrained. Just "hear" the notes and nothing more. If you have succesfully completed task 1, go on to 2

2. Leave the score in front of you and now you're gonna read (and "hear") trough it again, but this time, DO pay attention to musical aspects. Look at what the composer notes about how to play his music, which is why you should get yourself an Urtext, and then think about your own ideas which you would like to entangle. Together this should create a new way of playing this piece then it has ever before has been done. Now as the final touch for this step you have to listen to several recordings from this piece by different artists and follow the music as you hear it. Notice what other artists do to make there interpretation unique. Are there any things you like? Drag them into your own consideration of approaching this piece. And there you've got yourself a brand-new interpretation. Time for step 3.

3. Now you're gonna do some practical work on this piece. Begin with figuring out a fingering for this piece. If it's polyphonic, you should write out the complete fingering per voice, and ideally rewrite the piece over, how many voices it might have - usually not more than five. Only if you've figured out this complete fingering you're ready to move on the step 3.

4. Take the sheet music in front of you again. Search the score and find out where are the (for you) most difficult bars. Mark them. Now you're going to make a master plan for learning this piece. This is a totally different concept which we can also extensively discuss. Once you're master plan is ready, go on to step 5.

5. Now, after all you're hard labour away from the piano, you're ready to actually go and learn this piece. If you follow you're master plan, it should all be all right.

However, notice that using a roadmap for making a master plan will result in a plan that will fit best into this approach of learning new pieces. However, it will take to long here to explain. I can explain the plan for making a master plan to if you'd like. Let me hear!

I hope this brightens things up.

BW,
Marijn

[marijn210999]

So if my colleagues not only say they have fun sight reading, but also visibly and audibly do have fun, you think I shouldn't say so?

No, that's not what I said. But as I recall, you said: the other musicians. Some word I interpret very different from the word "colleagues".

BW,
Marijn

[timothy42b]

Well, I'm glad you appreciate my look into this very interesting question.

But now you're saying that you're ability to sight-read music depends on how good your skill is. This is, with all respect, a statement that cannot be further from the truth.

So let me please be clear on this. Common technique, which is improved by practice DOES NOT EXIST!.

BW,
Marijn

I had to think about this but I see what you mean and I agree.

Piano skill isn't an absolute level, but a mastery of multiple specific elements, and that's why playing Mozart doesn't automatically allow you to play Brahms at the same degree of difficulty. 

But doesn't that apply even more strongly to sightreading?  People who can sightread Mozart might not be able to sightread Brahms, and certainly would struggle with Gershwin?

The proponents of "just do a lot of sightreading" seem to be assuming a single common skill level of sightreading, which I think is even less true than a single common skill level of technique. 

[timothy42b]

Preparatory work which is done before one actually goes and sits behind the piano and starts practicing it, which might take him, who knows how long? I would go about preparatory work as work which is done away from the piano. What does this preparatory work contents? The following, that is, in my opinion:
<snip>

5. Now, after all you're hard labour away from the piano, you're ready to actually go and learn this piece. If you follow you're master plan, it should all be all right.


BW,
Marijn

That sounds like a good plan for the student.

I don't think of myself as a student, but as a performer and craftsman. 

I have no interest in playing a piece that would take that much work.  I'm not lazy, my interests just lie in a different direction.  I would rather play 50 pieces in the course of a wedding dance, easy pieces that bring joy to the listener. 

Not saying your interests are wrong - just that mine differ. 

[marijn210999]

But doesn't that apply even more strongly to sightreading?  People who can sightread Mozart might not be able to sightread Brahms, and certainly would struggle with Gershwin?
 

Oh, certainly. But that's not what this post is about. This is about the reasons why one would sight-read, not how good one is in it.

BW,
Marijn

[outin]

If you change your fingering all the time, how can you possibly memorize your piece perfectly. Your hand memory will be all messed up and it will be almost impossible to really know your piece from inside out - which I think is a very important aspect of learning a piece.

Obviously I don't literally change the fingering all the time, but make changes when needed. If I pick up a piece after a break, I almost always notice ways to improve it so I make some changes. Since I forget very efficiently, it's not a problem.

When it comes to hand memory, I simply don't seem to have much of it, and what I have fades very fast. To really learn a piece I need it in my brain, not my hands.  I know some people learn well by drilling things into their hands and it works for them, but never has worked for me. My brain does not allow any kind of autopilot to work consistently, it puts in little tweaks every now and then without a warning and those will throw me off if I am not aware what exactly I am doing. You see people are very different...

[anamnesis]

I'm sorry , I probably didn't make myself clearn enough. I do know that playing the piano with seperate hands certainly is not the same as hands together. I also thought I mentioned this in one of my first posts on this topic. But anyway, I'll explain again:

Preparatory work which is done before one actually goes and sits behind the piano and starts practicing it, which might take him, who knows how long? I would go about preparatory work as work which is done away from the piano. What does this preparatory work contents? The following, that is, in my opinion:

This is what one should do before he gets behind te piano:

1. Take the score and lay it in front of you. Just read through the music and "hear" the music in your head. At this point it is not important to pay attention to musical notes by the composer. As you are not stil playing the music the manner in which you play it won't get ingrained. Just "hear" the notes and nothing more. If you have succesfully completed task 1, go on to 2

2. Leave the score in front of you and now you're gonna read (and "hear") trough it again, but this time, DO pay attention to musical aspects. Look at what the composer notes about how to play his music, which is why you should get yourself an Urtext, and then think about your own ideas which you would like to entangle. Together this should create a new way of playing this piece then it has ever before has been done. Now as the final touch for this step you have to listen to several recordings from this piece by different artists and follow the music as you hear it. Notice what other artists do to make there interpretation unique. Are there any things you like? Drag them into your own consideration of approaching this piece. And there you've got yourself a brand-new interpretation. Time for step 3.

3. Now you're gonna do some practical work on this piece. Begin with figuring out a fingering for this piece. If it's polyphonic, you should write out the complete fingering per voice, and ideally rewrite the piece over, how many voices it might have - usually not more than five. Only if you've figured out this complete fingering you're ready to move on the step 3.

4. Take the sheet music in front of you again. Search the score and find out where are the (for you) most difficult bars. Mark them. Now you're going to make a master plan for learning this piece. This is a totally different concept which we can also extensively discuss. Once you're master plan is ready, go on to step 5.

5. Now, after all you're hard labour away from the piano, you're ready to actually go and learn this piece. If you follow you're master plan, it should all be all right.

However, notice that using a roadmap for making a master plan will result in a plan that will fit best into this approach of learning new pieces. However, it will take to long here to explain. I can explain the plan for making a master plan to if you'd like. Let me hear!

I hope this brightens things up.

BW,
Marijn

I think the main thing your are missing is that there is preparatory work at the piano as well.

Just because you are at the piano doesn't mean you are actually sitting down and establishing hand memory.  

What you've laid out only establishes the aural image, and a possible fingering that may or may not really work out later, which is really against your method since you are establishing a hand memory that you will have to undo.

What you haven't figured out is the basic underlying rhythm behind the piece, without which, your master plan will fail.

You can't figure out from the score alone, unless you have a lot of experience doing it. Oddly enough, actually dancing your music out away from the piano can help you figure out some aspects, but not all of it.  (Not toy many pianists would be willing to dance their music though.)

Fingering is subservient to this underlying rhythm and does not replace it.  So any fingering that hinders it will need to be gotten rid of.  

[marijn210999]

Just because you are at the piano doesn't mean you are actually sitting down and establishing hand memory.

It does. It's a proven fact. Why don't you just try it out right now. Take bars 4-5 from Bach's Two-Part Invention No. 8. Write in your desired fingering. And just play it hands together right away, around 15 times in succession should do it. After those 15 times, you'll see that you've created a hand memory for that day. Maybe the next day it's gone again, but then if you go sight-read your piece again you'll create hand memory but with very bad fingering. Or of course very good, if you stick with that one fingering.

 

What you've laid out only establishes the aural image, and a possible fingering that may or may not really work out later, which is really against your method since you are establishing a hand memory that you will have to undo.

This too is, with all respect, not true. It is not against my method. You didn't understand me quite well. I DO suggest you create hand memory, but only after you're sure which fingering you're gonna use. Else, you'll create a hand memory which wrong and awkward fingerings which you won't manage to get out of your mind for, at least a couple of years.

What you haven't figured out is the basic underlying rhythm behind the piece, without which, your master plan will fail.

As I already mentioned: I haven't even told how I make this master plan so there is simply no way you can already now what is involved with it, and what isn't.

You can't figure out from the score alone, unless you have a lot of experience doing it. Oddly enough, actually dancing your music out away from the piano can help you figure out some aspects, but not all of it.

You can. You don't gotta have a lot experience. But it indeed is true you musn't be mentally lazy, since it's a mentally exhaustive proces.

BW,
Marijn

[anamnesis]

When you are sitting down at piano, it doesn't actually mean you are repeating something over and over.

It's perfectly possible to experiment and not establish a hand memory. If I'm doing this experimentation I'm not going to be repeating it 15 times because that will indeed establish a hand memory.   

--------

Just to given an example about this dance. 

Take the infamous chromatic etude in a minor of Chopin. I could never figure out what it took to get up to tempo.  

But then I saw a brief schematic by Robert Helps that hinted at the underlying dance behind the piece, and then suddenly the piece became much easier to learn.  

Chopin wrote out the fingerings, and the piece is extremely easy to audiate in one's head.

That wasn't enough information to plan out how to learn the piece.  

Actual physical experience and experimenting at the piano to figure out the dance was needed.  

[outin]

It does. It's a proven fact.

Do you mind telling us who has proven it and how? As someone with scientific training I am aware how difficult it is to prove anything like this. And after reading quite a few studies on piano playing and pedagogy, almost nothing has been "proven a fact" in a way that would stand any kind of hard scientific scrutiny. A lot of interesting propositions have been made and some empirical evidence has been collected, but it's still all very little really and not with consistent results.

I have also experimented on myself and the results seem to go against some of the things you write...