Sight Reading, navigation

[johnvw]

Hi to All,
Old devil beginner here, two years. Frustration level increasing due to lack of personal progress. I appreciate the advantage of sight reading, But, no one seems to explain a technique for successful key navigation.
Simple one and two intervals present limited problems, greater intervals involve looking at the hands, losing where I was in the score.

Apart from practise, is there a recognised method to become far more familiar with the key and octave positions.

At this time I am relying too much on memory and I know this will eventually become unreliable.

Thank you in advance
 Regards
John

[quantum]

Familiarity with locating larger intervals at the keyboard comes with time and experience. 

Meanwhile, you can practice locating keys on the piano through tactile sense.  Using the visual senses to locate keys often produces quick results, but can lead to the under development of using other senses and methods to locate keys. 

Some exercises to try:

Locate individual notes using the entire gamut of 88 keys.  Close your eyes, use a blindfold if you feel tempted to look.  Place your hands on the keys, and move them laterally across the keyboard without sounding any pitches, always keeping in contact with both white and black keys.  Feel your way around the keyboard using your tactile sense.  Using this sensation of feeling your way around the piano without sounding notes, select a pitch in your mind, then locate all keys of that pitch. 

In this order: move your hands using tactile sense, locate the key without playing it using tactile sense, sound the pitch and confirm with your ears if it is correct, finally take a peek with your eyes and confirm if your selection is correct. 


Another exercise:
Take a familiar hand position, such as 5-note, triad, octave, or 4 note chord.  With closed eyes, use your tactile sense to locate intervals inside of that position.  Use that 5-note pattern, triad, octave or 4 note chord as your reference. 

For example: Using the triad of C-E-G.  Close your eyes, and try to find these intervals:
D-F
C-D
D-E
E-F
F-G
Db-F
D-F#
C#-E
D-G
C-F#
C-G
and so on...

Practice with both hands.


Another exercise:
This time we use the eyes for part of the activity.  Hands off the keyboard, visually select a key.  Close your eyes, place hands on keyboard, and find the key using only tactile sense.  Play the key and confirm with your ears if correct. 

[johnvw]

Dear Quantum,
Many thanks for the advice. I found it really interesting, in regard to sight reading, that so much effort and information is made available on ( score ) note recognition and yet little is presented in regard to keyboard geography. I guess old Trademan’s hands are more suited to laying bricks and hammering nails, rather than gracefully gliding over a Piano keyboard.
Unfortunately Time is my enemy.

Thank you again, I will devote more practise to your suggestions.

Regards
John

[lostinidlewonder]

A large part of this is using correct fingerings, if you are using wrong fingers while reading orientation is inhibited by a large margin. You should focus on reading material that doesn't demand position changes too much and slowly build from there. You should also learn to brush over the black notes without looking and find all the 12 keys.

[johnvw]

Dear lostinidlewonder,
Thank you for your reply.
Yes using the incorrect finger , as per ( learnt ) muscle memory does cause me major problems with play back. Blessed with slightly larger (average ) women’s hands, I on occasions substitute score indicated fingerings  to suit my hand position.
I am not sure just what you mean in the second half of your first sentence. Would the “wrong fingers in regard to orientation “, be the fingering as suggested by the composer.

Brush over the Black keys.
I have tried to find the C3 position ( ie thumb on C ,pinky on G, eyes closed ) and moved up and down the keyboard. There are two positions ( eyes closed  ) where my fingers find a comfortable C position, one of course is incorrect. I feel for the EF keys, fingers 3 and 4, but a similar ‘ feel’ moves me away from the correct C position.
Are you suggesting brushing over the CD black keys and not using the EF space keys for my positioning.

Is it any wonder with all good intentions, my eyes drop from the sheet to the keyboard.

Regards
John

[lostinidlewonder]

Yes using the incorrect finger , as per ( learnt ) muscle memory does cause me major problems with play back. Blessed with slightly larger (average ) women’s hands, I on occasions substitute score indicated fingerings  to suit my hand position.

We all have to work with our own hands which comes with different finger lengths and stretching capabilities. Scores don't always have good fingerings too so it can  be a little misleading sometimes. Good to see you are at least modifying to feel comfortable but be wary sometimes what might feel uncomfortable at first actually is a handy tool to try and make comfortable and add to your fingering tool set. Logically however if something feels utterly uncomfortable making changes is fine.

I am not sure just what you mean in the second half of your first sentence. Would the “wrong fingers in regard to orientation “, be the fingering as suggested by the composer.

Of course I don't know your skill level or what "wrong" fingering might mean in relation to your experience. I mean more that you can use bad fingers that make you lose track of orientation in several ways, in terms of feeling where you are at the keyboard without having to look at your hands, playing the work with control, losing track of your coordination etc. Sometimes with poor fingerings we must look at our hands and re-adjust ourselves, this of course doesn't help with our reading as we take our eyes from the score.

Brush over the Black keys.
I have tried to find the C3 position ( ie thumb on C ,pinky on G, eyes closed ) and moved up and down the keyboard. There are two positions ( eyes closed  ) where my fingers find a comfortable C position, one of course is incorrect. I feel for the EF keys, fingers 3 and 4, but a similar ‘ feel’ moves me away from the correct C position.
Are you suggesting brushing over the CD black keys and not using the EF space keys for my positioning.

The two blacks a three blacks are the most important keys to brush over, without them you'd not know where you are at all.

Also consider how your fingers work with one another. You should feel things like fingers replacing one another, perhaps a thumb replaces a 234 or 5 or other fingers replace the position of others, or perhaps they leap to neighbouring notes that other fingers were near, or perhaps you play within a gap created by certain fingers, or perhaps the shape of the chord changes in a specific way. Shape can be defined by white and black notes, for example CEbG might feel like a triangle. Scales/key signatures can also have a contour at the keyboard which define a shape. These shapes help with keyboard orientation and allows us to play without looking so much and also aids with memory work too.

Is it any wonder with all good intentions, my eyes drop from the sheet to the keyboard.

It's OK now and then to look down but it should be avoid all the time if possible.

[johnvw]

Dear Lostinidlewonder,
Many thanks.
I guess this may be something most beginners face, and yet with all the available knowledge and advice one seems to fall back to memory as a means of relieving the frustration and just getting the job done.

Looks like my practise / practice ( never get that right ) routine needs some changes.

Best wishes
John

[lostinidlewonder]

...one seems to fall back to memory as a means of relieving the frustration and just getting the job done.

I'm assuming you mean memory in terms of memorizing works so you don't need to read and can watch the hands. This of course is fine to do and at your early stages it might be what you do the most. You will find playing in this manner you usually can play harder works compared to if you where sight reading works. So this means sight reading work almost always is with much easier works or with slower tempos so that you can manage them successfully. This in itself can take a little to humble oneself to build themselves up at a lower level but it is certainly worth it.

Looks like my practise / practice ( never get that right ) routine needs some changes.

Changes in terms of adding new ideas and concepts not so much deleting ways you might have been doing things but perhaps sometimes this is so but you should feel confident it's what needs to be done rather than just doing it. There is the well known saying "Perfect practice makes perfect", of course there is no perfect but rather that forever reaching for more efficient more effective. I think we don't really ever stop doing that, always some new "tricks" or ways to see things when learning.