Are you struggling with Sight Reading on the Piano?

[jason_sioco]

https://www.sightreadingfactory.com/

I started playing piano at a very late age of 20. When I started piano, I was struggling with my sight-reading. I didn't have trouble reading single notes as I had experience playing saxophone in a school band since the age 14. I had trouble reading multiple notes at once. I went to several different piano teachers and I was always slow at sight reading.

One day, I discovered this website called Sight Reading Factory. The website contains unlimited amount of sight reading exercises on the piano, and the levels of difficulty vary. The exercises are printable. I would have to say the exercises are not musically tasteful, but that's not the point. The point of the exercises is to let you see all the variables and patterns of notes that one might possibly encounter on a real piano piece. I prefer sight reading factory than sight reading mastery. If you use sight reading mastery, you have to pay every month, whereas in sight reading factory, you only pay annually or once a year. I believe you have to pay $34 the entire year for Sight reading Factory. While you have to pay $20 a month for using sight reading mastery. Your choice.

If you're struggling with sight reading on the piano, I highly recommend this website called Sight Reading Factory!

[jason_sioco]

Another thing I like to add is that during the time I was struggling with sight reading, my piano teachers would let me sight read off these graded piano sight reading books. It did little to help me. Sight Reading Factory works for me, because I can go to the website anytime of the day and I have a chance to work with the rhythm and the notes with the metronome. While the metronome is clicking, I am also counting aloud to get used to the pulse. I also work with a different key each day.

If you are curious to know where my sight reading level is at right now. My level is not even Grade 1, it's about preliminary RCM. I am still working with reading two notes at once on the bass and treble clef. I am also getting used to the rhythmic pulse of straight eights and dotted quarters at 40 bpm.

One of the things that help me get thru one exercise is reading ahead. I have been told by my piano teachers to read ahead. At that time, I didn't know how to read ahead, but with the help of the metronome, I am able to read one note (s) ahead sometimes.

Each day, I am improving on sight reading and I believe, I will get better as time goes on.

[adodd81802]

I think reading ahead is common advice, but maybe a little bit of a misconception of what's actually going on.

If we take normal reading for example, when we read words or sentences we are not reading letter by letter but we are glancing at the word we recognise and effectively mentally sounding it in our head.

When we come across a word we have not seen before we tend to slow down pronounce the word (even in our head!) and then next time we start recognising it faster and faster until it's added to the vocab.

This is obviously assuming a sound knowledge on the letters of the alphabet and how they sound together.

This is what actually needs to go on in music. Consider the key of the music to be the language/alphabet and the series of notes to be the words.

Now where it differs is music does not spell recognisable words, so what we do differently is not try and sound the words, but look at the shape of the progression of the notes, the different spaces in between and then voice that in our head.

Seeing a melody going up or down is easy, but learning the spaces in between is where people struggle.

If you are trying to read it note by note, it's like reading a sentence letter by letter it doesn't work. Now don't be discouraged, that at the start, you will read it note by note just like when we practice reading words for the first time, but just be aware your aim is not to get faster at reading the single notes, but to recognise the spaces and how it sounds.

It would be impossible for you to look at the right hand note, look at the left hand note, remember the key, remember the tempo, remember the rhythm, recognise the actual notes value and then the dynamics, and keep refreshing that every single note!

Many people will tell you that practicing chorals helped their site reading dramatically. (FYI these are typically passages of music primarily made of chords) and it is again because you have to quickly recognise the spaces between the notes rather than the notes themselves

You will know when you have improved or even at least mastered the fundamentals, as you can then just look at the score freely without confining that note on the 2nd line in the treble clef to be a G and the note on the 3rd line of the treble cleft to be a B, but you will just read them as 2 notes, a 3rd apart.

The final test will be to take a piece of music and transpose it on the fly.

I tend to waffle on, but I have seen you on the forum before and you seem to have lots of questions for improvement, I think you have a teacher, but I thought i'd throw in my understanding of sight reading in hope that it helps.



A little off topic but - This also then bridges another theory that "blocking" a method in which you take a series of notes in a melody and play them all together in a chord and practice that chord, really helps you accurately learn the piece, because you are just learning the spaces for your fingers.

[109natsu]

I think reading ahead is common advice, but maybe a little bit of a misconception of what's actually going on.

If we take normal reading for example, when we read words or sentences we are not reading letter by letter but we are glancing at the word we recognise and effectively mentally sounding it in our head.

When we come across a word we have not seen before we tend to slow down pronounce the word (even in our head!) and then next time we start recognising it faster and faster until it's added to the vocab.

This is obviously assuming a sound knowledge on the letters of the alphabet and how they sound together.

This is what actually needs to go on in music. Consider the key of the music to be the language/alphabet and the series of notes to be the words.

Now where it differs is music does not spell recognisable words, so what we do differently is not try and sound the words, but look at the shape of the progression of the notes, the different spaces in between and then voice that in our head.

Seeing a melody going up or down is easy, but learning the spaces in between is where people struggle.

If you are trying to read it note by note, it's like reading a sentence letter by letter it doesn't work. Now don't be discouraged, that at the start, you will read it note by note just like when we practice reading words for the first time, but just be aware your aim is not to get faster at reading the single notes, but to recognise the spaces and how it sounds.

It would be impossible for you to look at the right hand note, look at the left hand note, remember the key, remember the tempo, remember the rhythm, recognise the actual notes value and then the dynamics, and keep refreshing that every single note!

Many people will tell you that practicing chorals helped their site reading dramatically. (FYI these are typically passages of music primarily made of chords) and it is again because you have to quickly recognise the spaces between the notes rather than the notes themselves

You will know when you have improved or even at least mastered the fundamentals, as you can then just look at the score freely without confining that note on the 2nd line in the treble clef to be a G and the note on the 3rd line of the treble cleft to be a B, but you will just read them as 2 notes, a 3rd apart.

The final test will be to take a piece of music and transpose it on the fly.

I tend to waffle on, but I have seen you on the forum before and you seem to have lots of questions for improvement, I think you have a teacher, but I thought i'd throw in my understanding of sight reading in hope that it helps.



A little off topic but - This also then bridges another theory that "blocking" a method in which you take a series of notes in a melody and play them all together in a chord and practice that chord, really helps you accurately learn the piece, because you are just learning the spaces for your fingers.

I agree. Logic there.

Playing music is like speaking a language. Everyone has their own accents.

The hard part is, you will have to be able to speak the piano version of German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Crazyian, Psychologicallyimpossiblean,  Makesmyheadexplodish, Imnevergoingtobeabletoplaythati, and Itsveryhardtomastereverythinginpianoian!!!!! GAaah my head is exploding. And that's piano.

So, Chorales will help you at some points, but they won't help you sight read high pitched notes that have like ten lines under them. And sight reading Liszt won't help in Bach. So it is very important that you learn slowly and surely.

Sight Reading Factory.... What a creative name. I don't wanna go there just by the name but okay?? If you choose the right teacher, and the right practicing method, it's way faster.

Natsu

[quantum]

So, Chorales will help you at some points, but they won't help you sight read high pitched notes that have like ten lines under them. And sight reading Liszt won't help in Bach. So it is very important that you learn slowly and surely.

Becoming familiar with styles and composers is like building a word vocabulary.  The more repertoire you are exposed to, the more diversified your sight reading skills become.  You will start to recognize recurring patterns and be able to execute them with greater ease when sight reading.  Like progressing from reading one letter at a time, to immediately recognizing words and putting together sentences with those words to form meaning.

[mrcreosote]

"...transpose it on the fly"   yes, took a couple jazz improvisation classes, and clearly had an aptitude to transpose Beethoven while sight reading.

A completely useless parlor trick for me since what I wanted was improved improvisational skills which were not achieved.

One thing that will happen when you are starting from scratch is you will have epiphanies along the way interspersed with plateaus.

And at the beginning level, I think it is best to find your own way.  Then once you have some ability, perhaps teachers can make suggestions although I've NEVER had a teacher tell me anything useful to improve my sight reading.  But then, I was exceptional at sight reading.

[minhogang]

Necroing this thread.

To improve sight reading at a good pace, is it advisable to have dedicated pieces for sight reading (Like Czerny and cramer etudes, art of finger dexterity, etc.)

I just try to sight read whatever I am working on, like Bach WTC and Liszt etudes, but of course I try to read and play accurately as fast as possible. I'm hoping to improve in this way.

[jackpiano]

I played by ear and improvised as a kid. Then got a degree in music composition. Understood theory enough to compose serial music, but could barely read the basics. I assumed it was too late to learn how to site read until years later I read a book geared to piano teachers. The author stated an entirely simple logic: to learn how to site read you need to spend time site reading. Start as if you were a beginner and do it every day. I did as suggested starting with the simplest of works. Read maybe half hour a day. That helped. Slowly started to see more and be able to work ahead. The notes were coming into better focus but I think at the expense of the rhythm. Progress was slow. I tried a number of methods and read whatever I could find hoping to accelerate the pace. Now I think I may have found a way that is working for me and wanted to pass it along. Doubt this is anything really new, but here it is:

I have found it useful to use this site's highly organized library. I go to the piano music section (https://www.pianostreet.com/search/piano_music.php) and pick a period of music, or key, and sort results by level.  I look for pieces with both audio and score. I download the audio and then open it in an app (Mac) called Amazing Slow Downer. I slow down the score to a pace I can keep up with and then play along with the score. Right now I am sorting by level and by key so I focus on a different key each session to let that sink in. The tech is a bit tedious but combining the sortable library with the ability to slowly play along the pieces is working for me. I like that I am learning with real pieces of music and not fabricated snippets. The music has an artistic logic that somehow makes it easier to know where you are going and thus easier to read ahead.

A note to the teachers out there. I look back now and find it very sad that none of my piano instructors in college encouraged me to learn to site read. We moved straight into serious literature. It would have been so helpful if someone had said, "you can do this, you need to do this, this is how."