Reading Ahead

[bzzzzzt]

My piano teacher often says that I don't read ahead enough, when sight-reading, or playing something relatively unfamiliar.  I obviously need to work on this somehow - but how do you practise that?  Any tips, or is it just something some people naturally do well?

[roncesvalles]

One can read ahead when one recognizes patterns.   This is like reading a whole word rather than reading each letter separately.   The goal is to be able to recognize chunks of notes rather than single notes.   If you can do this successfully, you'll be able to glance ahead, which is important to your playing (how can you phrase properly if you don't know where you're going?).

The general way to do this is to start easy.  Devour easy piano books until you can master scales, arpeggios, and basic chords at sight in both hands.  Then move on to things like Chopin's b minor and e minor preludes, and especially the slow movements of Mozart sonatas (they are generally pleasing and can teach you a great deal).  Once you can sight read things of that difficulty, move on to the faster movements of Mozart--they have so many patterns that if you have the basic techniques under your fingers, after a lot of easier practice you may be able to sightread these.   Then I would recommend Bach's Two Part Inventions.  These may be really hard at first, but the important thing is to recognize patterns.  Note the theme, be aware of its inversion.   If you can sight read these, you will be able to sight read quite a bit of music.  Move on to the 3 Part Inventions, which require some thinking about fingering.   

Again, the main thing is to be able to spot patterns so you don't have to read every single note individually.  You might also want to read up on harmonic theory, so you can understand accidentals and how they can facilitate modulations.   This will help you out a great deal until you get to twentieth century music (and beyond).

[bzzzzzt]

Thanks so much for this.  I've decided to go through the Mozart slow movements and 2 part inventions