What has been your experience with sight reading?

[ranjit]

Broadly speaking, there are a few ways I’ve heard accomplished sight readers approaching sight reading.

1. Sight read easy pieces and build up eventually. You will be able to see more patterns over time and it will just start to make sense.
2. Sight read difficult pieces slowly, and gradually push your sight reading up to the point you would like.
3. Sight read whatever strikes your fancy, and it just happens over time.

What has been your experience?

[brogers70]

Broadly speaking, there are a few ways I’ve heard accomplished sight readers approaching sight reading.

1. Sight read easy pieces and build up eventually. You will be able to see more patterns over time and it will just start to make sense.
2. Sight read difficult pieces slowly, and gradually push your sight reading up to the point you would like.
3. Sight read whatever strikes your fancy, and it just happens over time.

What has been your experience?

A bit of all of the above. To get started, super easy things read slowly without looking at the hands. Then gradually harder things, very slowly looking at the hands, still at a tempo at which I never have to stop and think. As I got better, started adding slightly harder things and allowing myself an occasional look at the hands. The got to the point of going through more serious music (Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart sonatas, lately even Beethoven) slowly enough that I don't break the flow too often. That's all fun. But I also go back to the super easy stuff and play without looking at the hands, though now a bit faster. After 3 years of doing 30 minutes a day my sight reading is much improved, and it makes it easier to get through the initial stages of learning a new piece.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Mine probably falls into scenario 3, but I have no recollection of what my sightreading was like when I was in my teens. Nowadays I make a point of trying to sightread whatever is in front of me a tempo.

[geopianoincanada]

Broadly speaking, there are a few ways I’ve heard accomplished sight readers approaching sight reading.

1. Sight read easy pieces and build up eventually. You will be able to see more patterns over time and it will just start to make sense.
2. Sight read difficult pieces slowly, and gradually push your sight reading up to the point you would like.
3. Sight read whatever strikes your fancy, and it just happens over time.

What has been your experience?

Painfully slow with just about everything. Eventually I get a piece memorized but it takes me ages. I long for the ability to just look at a piece on paper and play it fluidly and fluently but those horses left the barn long ago.

[lostinidlewonder]

The standard approach is typically to start building skills from the "bottom up". This in itself requires an exploration, discovery and reasoning process thus a deliberate exploration of a diverse range of pieces at various difficulty levels (with generally a deeper focus on the lower grades). It's crucial to understand why some passages pose greater challenges than others, rather than dismissing them all as impossibly difficult. Along the way, you will encounter passages that are expectedly easy, but you will also pleasantly stumble upon unexpected ones that you can handle adeptly. On the flip side, there will be passages that prove difficult and even those that initially appeared simple may surprisingly turn out to be quite challenging. This should provide a rich amount of questions to come to reason with and also provide a compass directing one through repetoire they can study effectively with.

A comprehensive grasp of technical work such as scales, arpeggios, and chords is crucial for developing a foundation in fingering technique. The greater the variety of pieces you play, the more evident it becomes how fundamental fingering patterns can be adapted and modified. It is essential to concentrate on comprehending why specific fingerings are optimal for particular passages and to be able to evaluate alternative fingerings, providing a rationale for their assessment. By doing so, you deepen your understanding of fingering principles and refine your ability to choose the most effective fingerings for different musical passages on the go.

[anacrusis]

As others have said, I think it's a mix.

If you wanna be deliberate about it, I'd try to do a lot of 1. with a little bit of 2.

If you want it to happen organically and have no problem with it taking a bit longer, do 3.

My girlfriend massively improved her sight reading by doing 1. deliberately every day for a couple of months.

Improving your technique and theory help a ton too.