How can a start to play with Sight-Reading?

[mauharam]

Hello everyone,
here is my case, I am a complete autodidact in piano, never took lessons before, (I learnt how to read music in my music class at school, and played flute as well) so the rest it was just experience i got everytime I decided to sit in the piano. I started watching youtube videos with tutorials of songs I like, and I downloaded music sheets and tried to play the at the piano, with this it's being said Internet was my private teacher.
since the very beginning I started to play songs, and i started to look for more and more complicated pieces, I improved a lot, and i could say I can play with an intermidate level. however the biggest issue for me right now I think is that I need to memorize the songs I play all the time because I can't read and play at the same time. at the beginning I never thought to be important to do it, and I didn't have no one to guide me,  but now when I am trying to play some long songs, it takes a lot of effort trying to memorize every note when I am trying to play a complicated song with a lot of chords.  I have no idea how to start reading and playing at the same time?
Do you know how do I need to practice? any method I could use to be able to improve?

thank you!

[brogers70]

Hello everyone,
here is my case, I am a complete autodidact in piano, never took lessons before, (I learnt how to read music in my music class at school, and played flute as well) so the rest it was just experience i got everytime I decided to sit in the piano. I started watching youtube videos with tutorials of songs I like, and I downloaded music sheets and tried to play the at the piano, with this it's being said Internet was my private teacher.
since the very beginning I started to play songs, and i started to look for more and more complicated pieces, I improved a lot, and i could say I can play with an intermidate level. however the biggest issue for me right now I think is that I need to memorize the songs I play all the time because I can't read and play at the same time. at the beginning I never thought to be important to do it, and I didn't have no one to guide me,  but now when I am trying to play some long songs, it takes a lot of effort trying to memorize every note when I am trying to play a complicated song with a lot of chords.  I have no idea how to start reading and playing at the same time?
Do you know how do I need to practice? any method I could use to be able to improve?

thank you!

What worked for me was to force myself to sight read 30 minutes every day. I started with very easy things, Czerny's Opus 599, basically beginner's exercises, or the first volume of these sight reading exercises,
https://imslp.org/wiki/Sight_Reading_Exercises%2C_Op.45_(Sartorio%2C_Arnoldo),
work on playing them so slowly you do not make mistakes and do it without looking at your hands. If you have not done this already just play around with finding notes by feel a little bit - as an isolated thing to do it's pretty easy. Then get yourself things like "Music for Millions" anthologies at the beginner's level. They are full of simple pieces. Do the same thing with them, read them very slowly without looking at your hands. Then you just gradually increase the difficulty of the stuff you are reading through. When you get to things with big jumps or complicated chords, I'd say you can relax the rule against looking at you hands just a bit. Once you get progressively better at this, you can really start to sight read interesting music, lots of Haydn and Mozart sonatas, Scarlatti, even the Bach Suites and Partitas. You should be able to play them slowly,but not so slowly that you cannot get a feel for what they sound like. After a while (about 6 months in my own case) the sight reading gets to be fun, and I look forward to the 30 minute section of my practice where I get to read through music I don't know.

I'd say for it to be good sight reading practice you shouldn't play through the pieces more than once or twice, although if you have a big stack of anthologies I think it's OK to cycle through them so that you only come back to the same piece once every 6-12 months; my memory is poor enough that after that much time they seem completely new to me anyway.

Also, there are lots of different meanings for "sight reading." Some people mean the ability to sit down with say, the accompaniment of a Schubert Lieder and play it up to tempo at first sight well enough to accompany a singer. That's a different skill than the one I think you are talking about. And some books on sight reading seem to simply teach you how to read music, which is, I guess, another meaning of sight reading. But if what you want is just to get faster at learning new pieces and being able to get an idea of what a potential piece sounds and feels like without many hours of study, then I think that what I suggested might help. I helped me a lot.

[lelle]

brogers70 gives really good advice.

As a complement, I'd suggest you start learning some basic music theory. Your reading will be helped a lot if you can recognize some basic chords, scales and arpeggios. Then you'll be able to read bigger "chunks" of the music in one go, because you'll recognize collections of notes as patterns you already know. (Compare this to identifying what's in the music one note at a time). This might take a bit longer time before it pays off, but it's well worth the effort. It's a part of why pros can read and play even complex scores on first sight.
.

[mauharam]

Thank you both!
brogers70 yes I think you catched my idea, I play piano for fun,  I do not have plans for being in a conservatory or being professional. first thing I did when I moved to live alone was buying a piano for my new apartment, I had a keyboard before, but  having a piano gave me again a motivation to improve, I am usually playing at home as a hobbie. even though some months ago i played a couple of songs in the talent competition in the company I work for.
so my goal is to find the way to be able to pieces and learn them faster, memory is not ilimited. and sometimes I learn pieces and after some weeks or months if I don't paly them I just forget them and when I want to play them again it is just like I need to learn again, it takes faster, but still not the ideal, learning sight reading at least will help me to play songs or remember at the moment.  when I am at home and someone ask me to play a song I forgot I have to say  i don't remember it, need to practice again  .. would love to say "sure", take my music sheet and being able to play it at the moment would memorizing once again.

[quantum]

For many people, one's sight reading ability is at a level below one's playing ability.  Take an example: say you are comfortable playing music at grade 6, you may only be comfortable sight reading music at grade 2 or 3.  Don't be too hard on yourself that you can not sight read music of a similar difficulty that you are currently playing. 

Find easier music to practice sight reading, and practice a little sight reading every day. 

Another good method to practice sight reading is to find another musician to practice with so you can sight read together.  Working in an ensemble can teach good sight reading habits, as one develops skills to listen to the music and keep time with the other person.  When sight reading alone, it might be too tempting to get tied up in difficult spots in the music and not realize that one is slowing down or stopping due to difficulty.  You could do piano duets, or piano + voice, piano + violin, really any combination would be beneficial.  Also sight reading music with another person is often fun, it does not feel like an exercise, rather it feels more like you are discovering music together.

[geopianoincanada]

All I can say is good luck! Sight reading for me is truly an awful painful experience. I'm light-years better playing by memory or learning by ear. It's a visual coordination issue for me trying to read both treble and bass clefs at the same time while playing two handed, resulting in sometimes very painful eye strain and exhaustion to the point of dizziness when it's really bad.

But if I just read and play one hand at a time (right or left) I do so much better without any problems at all.