Sight Reading

[kghayesh]

I had a couple of questions concerning sight reading..
What defines a good sight reader and what is the level that a respected pianist should reach???
How can one improve his/her sight reading??

[bernhard]

Sight-reading is a popular subject at the forum. Have a look here for starters:

Sight-reading:

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,1871.msg14384.html#msg14384
(Reading notation – Richmann’s book – Cambridge word scramble example)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,1976.msg15962.html#msg15962
(Sight reading – Richmann’s book)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2406.msg20820.html#msg20820
(the grand staff)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2577.msg22247.html#msg22247
(Keyboard topography – how to find notes by touch)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2713.msg23282.html#msg23282
(Teaching bass clef – full explanation for the grand staff)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2751.msg23710.html#msg23710
(detailed explanation of the sight-reading process)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2757.msg23890.html#msg23890
(Sight reading techniques – Good post by faulty on the folly of pedagogues)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2763.msg25148.html#msg25148
(music to develop sight reading from scratch)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,3205.msg28255.html#msg28255
(how not to look at the keys – discussion of Richmann’s reviews)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,3334.msg29381.html#msg29381
(Reading both staffs as a single grand staff - Reasons for working on scales - Detailed discussion of Richmann’s book)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,4461.msg41580.html#msg41580
(Looking at the keys: Good or bad? exercises to help finding notes by touch. Good contributions by Chang).

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,4506.msg42967.html#msg42967
(accompanying to teach sightreading)

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,5090.msg48850.html#msg48850
(the score is tabs for piano)


Now to answer your question. Consider reading. What would you consider a good reader? Someone who can pick up a book he has never seen before and read it aloud without hesitations and with a nice flow. If s/he is a really good reader, s/he will even be able to inflect his/her reading with the appropriate body language/tone of voice to express the emotions conveyed in the text.

Likewise a good sight-reader is someone who can pick up a piece of music and play it from the score straightaway at tempo without hesitations and with a nice flow. If s/he is a really good sight reader, s/he will be able to phrase and alter the dynamics/agogics of what s/he is sight-reading so as to express the emotions conveyed in the piece.

This is a wonderful skill, but not completely necessary: Many concert pianists have confessed to being totally helpless at sight-reading (Stephen Kovacevich, for instance).

Now, we know that most children start as bad readers, stuttering as they struggle to join letters into syllables and syllables into words (and some children never get over that stage). Yet, most children by age 10 – 12 have become proficient readers, and most literate adults can red proficiently and without any problems.

However, if you look at the situation in music education, most children never get over the stage of laboriously identifying notes on the score and tentatively playing them on the piano at excruciatingly slow speed. In fact so few music students devlop into good sight-readers, that often good sight-readers are regarded as nothing short than prodigies and musical geniuses.

Has it ever occurred to you to reflect on why should that be? Music notation – especially for the piano - is far simpler than language notation. So how come children can read language fluently after some 3 – 4 years study, and pianists cannot sightread after 10 – 12 years? If you compare the way literacy skills are taught with the way sight-reading is taught you are already halfway the path of the right answer.

But let me give you a completely new angle. Here is a fact that most people do not know. In the Middle Ages, when literacy was a closely guarded skill, only available to monks, everyone read at real tempo. That is, the monks would read by reciting silently what they were reading. If you would enter a monastery and observe the monks in the library, you could see them moving their lips as they read. As we know now, this is completely unnecessary – and very inefficient – you can read much faster (as opposed to reading aloud) if you do not say the words to yourself silently. But at the time, no one had figured this out. The first monk to do so was St Augustine, who was considered a genius and a prodigy because he could read a book ten times faster than his brothers. But he was no genius. He was simply doing things in a different way.

There are two lessons to be drawn form this short story:

1.   Very often what one lacks is not talent, but know-how. A so called “prodigy” or “genius” is not simply doing the same thing we common mortals do better and faster: he is doing them in a totally different way. Figure it out and you too can do it.

2.   In order to do something you must aim at it. When St Augustine started reading visually (as opposed to auditorily – that is he “saw” the words and took them in as pictures, instead of “voicing” them in his mind), he gave the other monks something to aim for: To read very fast. Unless you want to do the feat that the so-called genius is doing, you will not get there.

So what we have here is a problem of attitude and philosophy. You cannot read like St Augustine if you consider him a genius, since if you do so, only a genius can do it and you are not a genius. But if you – correctly – identify the problem as one of lacking know how, then you can do it to, if you can figure out how. Even St Augustine may be unaware of how exactly he does it, so asking him may be no good (“I don’t know, I just do it”). One thing however is for sure: you are not going to get there if you insist in doing things the way you have always done.

I think you get my drift. Read the threads above and come back with new questions.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Brian Healey]

Of course, sight-reading skill is also tied into your technical skill. If you're sight-reading a very advanced piece and it doesn't sound good, it may not be because you're not a good sight-reader, but rather because you don't yet have the tools needed to execute the piece. This equates, I think, to not understanding the material when you're reading regularly. For instance, I can read a legal dissertation with no problem, but can I understand it? Not if my life depended on it.


Peace,
Bri

[bernhard]

Of course, sight-reading skill is also tied into your technical skill. If you're sight-reading a very advanced piece and it doesn't sound good, it may not be because you're not a good sight-reader, but rather because you don't yet have the tools needed to execute the piece. This equates, I think, to not understanding the material when you're reading regularly. For instance, I can read a legal dissertation with no problem, but can I understand it? Not if my life depended on it.


Peace,
Bri

Completely true.

[pianonut]

unlike extemporizing, sight-reading has always come easy for me.  (i thought i was pretty good until going to school again, but that's another story).  anyway, i think some of it has to do with being able to take in large amounts of notes in your view and looking ahead.

i agree with bernhard about doing things differently though.  and, i liked the comparision to reading.  i wonder if teacher's used index cards (i used to used them linearly for my son to just focus on one line of paperback text - small letters - at a time).  what if you used them vertically and said 'try to take in beyond the measure' (first look, then play).  gradually, maybe the student will learn to look farther ahead AND not play before reading.  I ALWAYS scan first (sometimes with accompaniments i'll go through the whole piece in my head first and then go play)

[Disarmedpianist]

Likewise a good sight-reader is someone who can pick up a piece of music and play it from the score straightaway at tempo without hesitations and with a nice flow. If s/he is a really good sight reader, s/he will be able to phrase and alter the dynamics/agogics of what s/he is sight-reading so as to express the emotions conveyed in the piece.

theoretically it's true... but it takes years of relentless training and practicing in order to achieve, and it also depends on what kind of music we're talking about, i mean someone can pick up an easy piece of music and play it from scratch right away and the whole nine yards, but he probably cant play Chopin's Prelude Op. 28 #16 the same fashion.

Anyway, there are books where you can get to practice that, try getting some Sight Reading (they should be specifically marked as a sight reading book) book. A good sight reading training book should have enough little music parts for you to play every day, (yes, it's only effective if you practice everyday... even 10 minutes counts) along with the music it should also include rhythm for you to practice daily as well. (whats a good sight reader who can't count rhythm properly?)

Here's a good series of sight reading training books that i've been using, try getting a copy of RCM sight/ear training books from your local music store.

While you're at it, i agree with pianonut, a good sight reader is to be able to read the music further than you play it. It takes some training, but its doable.

[galonia]

theoretically it's true... but it takes years of relentless training and practicing in order to achieve,

It doesn't take years - I agree with Bernhard it's a matter of motivation.  e.g. if one of your duties at school is to accompany the choir, solo singers and instrumentalists, and people insisted on giving you the music only a few hours before their performance, then you'd better get good at sight reading real quick.  That was my motivation.

I agree sight reading books are helpful - they often have exercises that help you develop good responses to certain visual triggers, and are organised so that you don't have to deal with too much all at once.

But I think ultimately the best thing is to just read a lot of music.  Any music.  I played hymns at church, so that helped my chord reading.

I haven't seen the Richmann book; I only realised sight reading is a skill which has to be specifically taught and learnt when I was asked to be the guinea pig / demonstration student for some visiting academic who specialises in methods for teaching sight reading, and she was giving some workshop for piano teachers.  Now that was stress!  Try spending all day sight reading in front of a room of teachers, who then discuss it.

[bernhard]

 I only realised sight reading is a skill which has to be specifically taught and learnt when I was asked to be the guinea pig / demonstration student for some visiting academic who specialises in methods for teaching sight reading, and she was giving some workshop for piano teachers.  Now that was stress!  Try spending all day sight reading in front of a room of teachers, who then discuss it.

This is very interesting. Could you expand on it?

1. Any good tips from this teacher?
2. Any metod that is clearly superior to others?
3. How exactly did the demonstrations worked? I assume you could already sight-read, so what exaclty were you demonstrating? (that is, how coud the audience tell the difference)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Awakening]

I think Bernhard essentially summarizes the whole idea of sight-reading.  Most people feel they could be better, but there is a psychological barrier keeping them from truly becoming great readers of music.  Because there are people who "naturally" are great at sight-reading, they are seen as having a special talent that no one else can truly emulate.  I see sight-reading as a skill that must be developed.  For some, it is more quickly and easily developed than others, but I think that everyone can always develop their sight-reading skill further.

I became motivated to improve my sight-reading skill about a year ago, and have since been sight-reading pieces of music for the first time, regularly.  I am an incredibly good typist, and I can type about 130 wpm without every having to look at my hands.  I attribute this in large part to typing tutorials I was forced to take in grade school, and also the incredible amount of time I spend at the computer, using my hands to communicate.  I see sight-reading as similar to typing (in a purely cognitive sense.)  It's about seeing information and interpreting it.  Though there is also an emotional element in reading, I think most people will be lucky to sightread a piece at a reasonable pace while getting most of the notes right and letting the piece flow well. 

I heard from other pianists that it was most important not to look at your hands when sight-reading.  At first, I was quite discouraged by this, because my ear was not even trained well enough to tell when I was playing the right note, let alone my hand to know where to go on the keyboard.  After more regular practice of sight-reading, I was able to get to the point where I could look mostly at the page and only glance down at my hands during large jumps, etc.  I am presently not too bad at sight-reading pieces largely made up of single-notes, such as Chopin's Etude in F Minor, Opus 25 no. 2.  I can play most of this piece off the page without looking at my hands.  However, pieces with many chords in them are harder for me to sightread, and I plan on practicing more of such pieces.  Also, I have a lot of trouble with sight-reading rhythm, partly because I have never been especially good at understanding and keeping rhythm. 

Basically, I will continue to practice sight reading on a regular basis, and I will hopefully become quite proficient (by others' standards as well as my own) before too long.  I feel that I am improving, and for once, it is not such a daunting task.  I just think of it as copying something onto a computer screen that has been written on paper...only the piano is a much larger, more musical keyboard, and the information I'm copying is scored rather than in words.  If I'm such a great typer, and also such a fast reader (of words), I should have the cognitive capacity to sight-read with similar precision and speed. 

[i_m_robot]

theoretically it's true... but it takes years of relentless training and practicing in order to achieve, and it also depends on what kind of music we're talking about, i mean someone can pick up an easy piece of music and play it from scratch right away and the whole nine yards, but he probably cant play Chopin's Prelude Op. 28 #16 the same fashion.

Anyway, there are books where you can get to practice that, try getting some Sight Reading (they should be specifically marked as a sight reading book) book. A good sight reading training book should have enough little music parts for you to play every day, (yes, it's only effective if you practice everyday... even 10 minutes counts) along with the music it should also include rhythm for you to practice daily as well. (whats a good sight reader who can't count rhythm properly?)

Here's a good series of sight reading training books that i've been using, try getting a copy of RCM sight/ear training books from your local music store.

While you're at it, i agree with pianonut, a good sight reader is to be able to read the music further than you play it. It takes some training, but its doable.

any specific title recommendations?

[Siberian Husky]

whats with you and sightreading robot?

[i_m_robot]

been practicin it a lot lately

[BoliverAllmon]

I may have asked this before, but here it is again. How much per day ( I know consistency is the key) should one practice sight-reading. I have been improving with 15 min. a day, but was curious if I was to up the anty if I would see added benefits, or just wasted effort.

boliver

[Siberian Husky]

your mind is like a stomach..you cant overload it and expect it to digest properly..i say one could go for about half an hour to perhaps 45 minutes sight reading although even some of this time maybe wasted...but for instance..if one were to dedicate an hour or two to pure sightreading..this i imagine would be a waste of time..15 minutes is perfect because its about as long as the attention span is at its peak while doing mental work....but personally i'd say just do it till you start to lose focus even in the slightest degree..

[omnisis]

I hate to disagree with a previous poster, but I don't think you need to buy "sight-reading" practice books.  After all, the whole point is to sight-read real music right?  The hard part with sight-reading is learning to be *humble* and not sight-read music that is too hard for you (if you can't play all the notes easily at a slower tempo then you shouldn't be trying to sight-read it hands together). 

This isn't to say that you can't gain valuable sight-reading experience from harder pieces: you can.  Perhaps you just need to practice the rhythms alone (don't worry about the notes) or sight-read the piece hands seperate.  This seems like common sense, but I honestly believe the easiest way to improve your sight-reading is to play NEW music EVERYDAY.  Don't just play pieces from your favorite composer either, play EVERYTHING you can find piano arrangements of orchestral scores, jazz tunes, choral works, classical pieces below your level, and popular music.  The more music you expose your eyes and ears to the better you will become at sight-reading.  I think a lot of pianists are poor sight-readers because they are greedy and only like to work on their repetoire or pieces they like to play.  Also because of the nature of solo piano, pianists who don't play with a human accompaintment can get away with murder w/r/t to timing.  If you work on sight-reading as a skill, playing a diverse mix of music, you can become a better sight-reader in no time. 

Of course you are  not just "playing" when you sight-reading, you are absorbing music at a speed fast enough to let you play in real time and this means you need to be able to recognize musical idioms at sight these include:

    -Scale Runs
    -Arpeggios
    -Common bass patterns (alberti, stride, etc)
    -Chords and their inversions
    -Common chord progressions

When you ingrain these patterns into your mind-muscle memory such that you can execute them w/o looking at your hands you are well on your way to being a n awesome sightreader.


~omnisis

[bernhard]

Yes, I agree. Sight -reading repertory is far better than using sight-reding exercises (you get the same benfits and you get to explore future repertory you may wish to learn).

Have a look here:

https://www.pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,9786.msg99290.html#msg99290
(collections of repertory for sight-reading practice)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[galonia]

This is very interesting. Could you expand on it?

1. Any good tips from this teacher?
2. Any metod that is clearly superior to others?
3. How exactly did the demonstrations worked? I assume you could already sight-read, so what exaclty were you demonstrating? (that is, how coud the audience tell the difference)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

Hi Bernhard,

Sorry, I didn't see your questions until now; I would never intentionally ignore you!

This teacher's philosophy was that sight-reading is a skill which is absolutely necessary for learning music.  She didn't think it was something you teach just to pass the sight-reading component of exams.  She likened it to trying to read a novel if your language skills are not fluent - how can you enjoy a classic English novel if you're stumbling over every second word?  In the same way, you can't enjoy playing a piece of music if you have to work out each note and each chord.

The workshop went for several hours, and she started at the beginning, as in, what to do with beginner students, and all the way to "advanced" sight-reading, I guess you could call it.  She had students at each level being the guinea pigs - I was the only "advanced" level student willing to be volunteered.

For beginners, she said reading both rhythm and melody together is too much to think about.  She covered fairly much the basics of what most teachers teach to their beginner students - counting and reading by intervals.  She thinks it's important not to separate teaching sight-reading from teaching playing piano at this stage - fairly much the same as what your philosophy seems to be, Bernhard: learn the skill as you learn repertoire.

As they get on, she encourages students not to look at the keys as they read.  She teaches them to identify their position on the keyboard by feeling for the groups of black keys.

For advanced students, she expected us to be able to read chord progressions and complex rhythms quite fluently - I think this is where many students fall down, because chords (whether harmonic or broken) seem to scare people a bit!  First, she asked me to play chords as quickly as possible - she would verbally name a chord, and I'd play it straight away - didn't matter where on the keyboard.  e.g. C major 1st inversion.  That's an easy one, but she named quite tricky ones as she went on.

Then she placed music in front of me, just heaps of chords, and I played through them as quickly as possible, not allowed to hesitate or stop to correct any mistakes.

Then she placed real music in front of me.

When I was doing the demonstration, yes, I could already sight-read, but it was interesting because I had never thought about it very much; it was just something I did (usually coz I had to learn a lot of music very soon).

I think the important thing I took away from it was - all aspects of understanding music helps in sight reading.  Understanding the way music gets structured and all that really assists in anticipating what could or should come next, and that can only help in fluent sight reading.  And that sight reading in turn helps in understanding music, because if you can sight read well, then you can learn music more quickly, and thus learn more of it, expanding your experience and understanding of music.

[galonia]

I've thought about this a bit more (typing that really long post in answer to Bernhard's questions made me think) - and I think there are several things which really help my sight-reading:

1. I learnt to read music by intervals - I have no interest in arbitrary letter names, they have no meaning for me.

2. I am a very good sight-singer.  I spent three or four years learning double bass, the standard way to teach string instruments is by position - string players know how far they are along the fingerboard by saying things like 1st position, 2nd position, etc.  I couldn't do it - so my double bass teacher said, if you can sing a note, you can play a note.  After that, I would sight-sing each phrase, then play it.  My fingers came down on the fingerboard in exactly the right place each time, my intonation was perfect.  I started applying it to the piano, and it works.

3. I did a lot of music theory / harmony / composition studies - and I think this was the thing that surprised me most from the sight reading workshop thing I went to - this knowledge is really useful when sightreading!

[bernhard]

Thank you for a most thorough  and interesting answer.

Yes, I agree with just about everything you said.

Perhaps the single most important element in sight reading improvement is knowledge of chords/scales.

I would not be surprised either if ultimately exquisite sight reading was "playing by ear". That is, you look at the score, you "hear" in your mind what is on the score, and then you "play by ear" what you hear in your mind.

This would be quite ironic, since a lot of the orthodox approach in sight-reading seems to be to repress and demean "playing by ear" and force the students to look at the score instead.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[galonia]

I would not be surprised either if ultimately exquisite sight reading was "playing by ear". That is, you look at the score, you "hear" in your mind what is on the score, and then you "play by ear" what you hear in your mind.

I think this is totally correct - if I need to learn a piece real fast (usually because some stupid soloist wants me to be their 'emergency' and last-minute accompanist) - then I will listen to a recording and watch the score at the same time, before sitting down and playing.  That way, the score is just a memory-jogger for the sounds I've already embedded into my mind.

Question for you, now, Bernhard: It's all well and good to start off with a brand new beginner, so you can prevent them from developing bad habits early on, and teach them along the methods you like.  What happens if you get a student who is about to do, say a grade 6 ABRSM type level exam, and they have all these nasty habits, such as working out the letter-name of each note, deeply ingrained?  You have written before about taking as much time to learn new habits as it did to learn old ones (I remember your high-jump technique analogy somewhere) - but surely it's hard for someone who could have been learning already for 5 or 6 years to now spend that same amount of time developing the new skill to the same level?

What do you do with such a student?  And the other side of the coin - what would you recommend such a student to do?  (Of course, the answer is, spend the time to learn the new skill, but if they have their exam looming, there's only so much that can be done).

[bernhard]

Question for you, now, Bernhard: It's all well and good to start off with a brand new beginner, so you can prevent them from developing bad habits early on, and teach them along the methods you like.  What happens if you get a student who is about to do, say a grade 6 ABRSM type level exam, and they have all these nasty habits, such as working out the letter-name of each note, deeply ingrained?  You have written before about taking as much time to learn new habits as it did to learn old ones (I remember your high-jump technique analogy somewhere) - but surely it's hard for someone who could have been learning already for 5 or 6 years to now spend that same amount of time developing the new skill to the same level?

What do you do with such a student?  And the other side of the coin - what would you recommend such a student to do?  (Of course, the answer is, spend the time to learn the new skill, but if they have their exam looming, there's only so much that can be done).

Ah, yes, the nightmare scenario.

Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned over my years of teaching is to never put myself into a pressure situation.  I would strongly advise such a student not to do the exam until s/he feels confident and prepared. There are exams here in the UK every six months. So I would just postpone it for 6 months and work hard during this period. If the student is ready, then we do it, and if not we postpone it again. Usually I only put a student for an exam if the student is already dealing with stuff pertaining to the next grade (that is, if a student is already playing grade 5 pieces and scales, and already has grade 5 aural and sight-reading skills, then s/he is ready to take his/her grade 4 exam). Sticking to this policy (which, by the way you do not need to reveal to the student) guarantees success on any exam.

Then again, sight reading is only one component of the exam. Even if a student totally flunks it, s/he may still pass on the strength of pieces, scales and aural tests. So depending how good confident the student is in the other areas, it may still be Ok to do the exam.

Finally (and I have done that on occasion), failing an exam may be a good jolt to a student who is over-confident for no reason. You can then tell him/her later: “Told you so”.

What happens if you get a student who is about to do, say a grade 6 ABRSM type level exam, and they have all these nasty habits, such as working out the letter-name of each note, deeply ingrained?  You have written before about taking as much time to learn new habits as it did to learn old ones

A student who has this sort of habit, usually does not do any sight reading at all (it would be too excruciating), so such habits – although it may appear not to be the case – are usually not deeply ingrained at all. Because good sight-reading habits (interval recognition, reading ahead of what you are playing, not looking at the keys, using the score as a positional map, etc.) are so powerful and give incredible results with little time and effort, they quickly replace the bad habits, so it is not such a major problem as it might appear.

But all this relies on a very flimsy assumption: That the student is actually interested to learn . I am sure you have come across students (usually under 12 year-old) that are determined not to learn. In such cases, it is not even a case of Sisyphus rolling the boulder all the way to the tp of the mountain, just to see it roll back to the bottom again. No, in such cases, Sisyphus cannot even move the boulder!

So, you see, the time factor here (time spent ingraining a bad habit X time spent ingraining a good habit) can be misleading. Just because someone has been using bad sight reading habits since they were 6, and now they are 12, it does not mean that they have been practisingthe bad habit for 6 years and now need 6 years of good habit ingraining. You see, in these 6 years, most likely they bother to practise sight-reading for maybe 20 minutes. So really all you have to counter are 20 minutes of bad habit ingraining!

Unfortunately, sight –reading is one of these skills that (like reading) ins learned instantly, but it takes time for that instant learning to take place, so not the best candidate for day-before-the exam work.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[jeremyjchilds]

theoretically it's true... but it takes years of relentless training and practicing in order to achieve,

Not true...I sight read at about a gr. two level (Not Gr. 2 rep, but gr.2 sight reading requirements... )  Over the last 8 months, I have been practicing (a lot) on sight as a skill. I recently did very well on a Gr. 10 sight supplemental exam.

So how did I get my sight level from gr 2 to gr 10?

I did not sit down and read through everything that I could

I did take a step back and think about what was making me so bad, and try to develop solutions for them.

1) I needed to have a relative tactile keyboard facility. For someone as bad as I was, I had to literally close my eyes, press a "C" and then call out another note...A#...and then play it. I progressed to playing two, three, and four note chords with my eyes closed.

2) My next step was to read through all kinds of scores away from the piano sing them to myself, while tapping as much of the rythm as an accompaniement as possible. Visualize the notes being pushed on an imaginary keyboard. For me, a little black dot on the page was trnasformed into a Key on the piano that I could actually see.

3) My next step was to be sure that my formula patterns were memorized, this is the best way to be comfortable in any key.

4)My next step was to listen to all kinds of music with a score in hand, or on screen

5) my next step was to actually play the material, slowly, with a sheet over my hands, (this really strengthens your ear as well) I did not even let myself look at the keys at the beginning, (just run your hands over the black notes)

I believe that once you are at step 4, then you are ready to get all of the pointers you normally get when asking for reading advice...Tell someone at step one to "make sure to read ahead when playing" YEAH RIGHT

All of my teachers just fed me little pointers..."look at the outlines of the chords" "go slow" "use pedal so you can move your hands quickly" without adressing my root problem...a deficiency in basic prepatory reading skills.

I liked everything taht Bernard said too.

[fiasco]

I don't think that sight-reading ability is really imortant at all.  All that matters is what it sounds like when you sit down to play.  You can take, I don't know, Hungarian Rhapsody #2 say, and every-good-boy-does-fine your way through it, and write all the notes out on the page and listen to recordings and, with enough practice, and technical skill, which is all that really matters, be able to play it how it should be done just fine.  How you get there doesn't matter, only the end product does.  It will take a poor-sight reader longer to learn a piece, but these difficult pieces are going to take a looooong time to master anyway, so what's a few extra hours spent memorizing?  Me?  I can't sight read to save my life, so I plod through it slowly, memorizing as I go, practicing what I memorized, and after however long it takes, I have it down.  Learned some hard stuff this way.

Say you're a carpenter building a house.  Some guys can look at a wall and just tell where the two-feet intervals are to put the studs in.  Studs go up faster.  You can't do this.  You have to meticulously measure every inch of the house in order to do anything.  It'll take you longer, but it the end both houses stand just fine.

[bernhard]

Not true...I sight read at about a gr. two level (Not Gr. 2 rep, but gr.2 sight reading requirements... )  Over the last 8 months, I have been practicing (a lot) on sight as a skill. I recently did very well on a Gr. 10 sight supplemental exam.

So how did I get my sight level from gr 2 to gr 10?

I did not sit down and read through everything that I could

I did take a step back and think about what was making me so bad, and try to develop solutions for them.

1) I needed to have a relative tactile keyboard facility. For someone as bad as I was, I had to literally close my eyes, press a "C" and then call out another note...A#...and then play it. I progressed to playing two, three, and four note chords with my eyes closed.

2) My next step was to read through all kinds of scores away from the piano sing them to myself, while tapping as much of the rythm as an accompaniement as possible. Visualize the notes being pushed on an imaginary keyboard. For me, a little black dot on the page was trnasformed into a Key on the piano that I could actually see.

3) My next step was to be sure that my formula patterns were memorized, this is the best way to be comfortable in any key.

4)My next step was to listen to all kinds of music with a score in hand, or on screen

5) my next step was to actually play the material, slowly, with a sheet over my hands, (this really strengthens your ear as well) I did not even let myself look at the keys at the beginning, (just run your hands over the black notes)

I believe that once you are at step 4, then you are ready to get all of the pointers you normally get when asking for reading advice...Tell someone at step one to "make sure to read ahead when playing" YEAH RIGHT

All of my teachers just fed me little pointers..."look at the outlines of the chords" "go slow" "use pedal so you can move your hands quickly" without adressing my root problem...a deficiency in basic prepatory reading skills.

I liked everything taht Bernard said too.

Excellent points, Jeremy.

[bernhard]

I don't think that sight-reading ability is really imortant at all.  All that matters is what it sounds like when you sit down to play.  You can take, I don't know, Hungarian Rhapsody #2 say, and every-good-boy-does-fine your way through it, and write all the notes out on the page and listen to recordings and, with enough practice, and technical skill, which is all that really matters, be able to play it how it should be done just fine.  How you get there doesn't matter, only the end product does.  It will take a poor-sight reader longer to learn a piece, but these difficult pieces are going to take a looooong time to master anyway, so what's a few extra hours spent memorizing?  Me?  I can't sight read to save my life, so I plod through it slowly, memorizing as I go, practicing what I memorized, and after however long it takes, I have it down.  Learned some hard stuff this way.

Say you're a carpenter building a house.  Some guys can look at a wall and just tell where the two-feet intervals are to put the studs in.  Studs go up faster.  You can't do this.  You have to meticulously measure every inch of the house in order to do anything.  It'll take you longer, but it the end both houses stand just fine.

I do agree with you. Sight-reading is not essential. One can get by without it. In fact, why bother notating music at all? After all music notation is pretty recent (1200 AD or so), and music certainly existed and was enjoyed before the advent of notation.

The same argument can be applied to reading and writing. Writing systems are very recent, and mankind survived without them for a long time. It could even be argued that writing systems contributed to the demise of certain cultural traditions such as the oral transmission of knowledge and story telling (which still go on in certain contemporary “primitive” societies like the Australian aborigines and Brazilian Indians).

At the same time, music of any complexity cannot be created without a notational system (in  particular polyphony is unfeasible without notation and literate musicians – and European interest in polyphony is pretty much what motivated the creation of musical notation), and certainly music cannot be preserved without it (Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman music and their traditions are unrecoverable).

I would also like to reverse your analogy. The carpenter is actually the guy who cannot sight read. Yes, he will be able to put up a wall quickly by “sight”, just as an illiterate musician will be able to convey music quickly by ear. But there is a price to pay. The carpenter will not be able to project anything but the simplest hut. While the literate person who is conversant with Maths and Physics, will be able to project a complex building.

So, the ability to sight-read (and even simply read music) may not be neither essential nor important, but its benefits in terms of fast learning and repertory exploration are so staggering, and the skill is so easily acquired, that it would be silly to disregard it. And because most of the music that was composed after 1200 AD took advantage of it, it makes life much easier, in the same way that reading and writing make life much easier since most of our modern society was created as a consequence of having this tool available. Sure you can go through life without ever learning how to read or write (and even in so called “advanced countries” you can have a surprisingly high level of illiteracy), but why deprive yourself of a skill that is  - let us face it – easily acquired and that will allow you access to untold riches?

You can also make the same analogy with computers. Sure you can live without them, and you can even argue that a society without them will be far better. However, the way things are going, soon we will be completely dependent on them.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[mass]

I've been reading this thread and the related ones. I have a question.

I'm currently trying to focus a little more on sightreading (grade 4ish performance level) and have started with  a classical book a couple of levels below.  I'm wondering if I am approaching it properly.  I look at the music, analyse it (at a basic level), identify the repeated measures, tap the rhythm for both hands........then attempt to sightread without looking and without stopping.....well I really suck at this....... Is it necessary to sightread both hands at the same time?  Is it ok to start hands separately?  That seems to go better......or should I plod through my mistakes with both hands and be assured that perserverance will pay off??  sigh sigh.....

[jeremyjchilds]

I don't think that sight-reading ability is really imortant at all.  All that matters is what it sounds like when you sit down to play.  You can take, I don't know, Hungarian Rhapsody #2 say, and every-good-boy-does-fine your way through it, and write all the notes out on the page and listen to recordings and, with enough practice, and technical skill, which is all that really matters, be able to play it how it should be done just fine.  How you get there doesn't matter, only the end product does.  It will take a poor-sight reader longer to learn a piece, but these difficult pieces are going to take a looooong time to master anyway, so what's a few extra hours spent memorizing?  Me?  I can't sight read to save my life, so I plod through it slowly, memorizing as I go, practicing what I memorized, and after however long it takes, I have it down.  Learned some hard stuff this way.

Say you're a carpenter building a house.  Some guys can look at a wall and just tell where the two-feet intervals are to put the studs in.  Studs go up faster.  You can't do this.  You have to meticulously measure every inch of the house in order to do anything.  It'll take you longer, but it the end both houses stand just fine.

I agree that you dont need sight reading ability toplay well

But I disagree with you saying that it is not important.

As I say this, keep in mind that I am a teacher, not a performer.

What is the #1 difference between a person who keeps playing the classics or stops after "quitting" lessons? It's reading ability...

Without reading ability, the player is left to play a number of excruciatingly memorized pieces, over and over. (unless he can learn by ear or improvise well)  How can I say this? I was there 8 months ago. I could play very well, but It took a long time to learn songs. It was a head bobbing, neck craning, eye dashing, finger twitching mess. (I actually played like this for 18 years...)

Now that I can read well, I am learning songs in about half the time. When simply memorizing, I found that there was a long stretch before I actually got the "fluidity" you know...the point where you could play with no stops. That stretch is the least gratifying position I have wver been in, in all of piano practice.

Now I start in the "fluidity" mode (albeit slower) and my love for new rep has gone through the roof. I know I sound like an evangelist...but I see the light, and I love it.

Mind you, I am not a better player necessarilly, when it comes to strict performance...but the investment is worth it.

[pianistimo]

plus (to add to jeremy's post) you can make just as good of money with accompaniment as with teaching.  i was making $18. per hour a couple of years ago playing for a master chorale as a parts accompanist.  if you are accurate and can read quickly - you can get paid for it - with joining ballet groups, musicals, opera, vocalists, instrumentalists, chamber groups, etc. 

also, i've never seen anyone accomplished in music (choir directors especially) that didn't know how to sightread pretty well.  in fact, usually they are such excellent sightreaders that they don't just take in the notes, but also the tempos, dynamics, words (languages), accidentals, etc. all at once and know what they want to hear before it's played.  this is a huge skill and highly pays off in terms of how much you can accomplish in a very little time.

one thing i learned from one choir director is that anyone can do a half-baked job sightreading, but practicing at home with the score (as jeremy said) away from the piano testing your ability to know what to expect from intervals helps you to realize when at the piano if you've made a mistake.  same for rhythms.  the more you can 'hear in your head' the more you can teach others (catching things).

[bernhard]

I've been reading this thread and the related ones. I have a question.

I'm currently trying to focus a little more on sightreading (grade 4ish performance level) and have started with  a classical book a couple of levels below.  I'm wondering if I am approaching it properly.  I look at the music, analyse it (at a basic level), identify the repeated measures, tap the rhythm for both hands........then attempt to sightread without looking and without stopping.....well I really suck at this....... Is it necessary to sightread both hands at the same time?  Is it ok to start hands separately?  That seems to go better......or should I plod through my mistakes with both hands and be assured that perserverance will pay off??  sigh sigh.....

Yes, it is Ok to start hands separate, and in general to simplify your task as much as you need (to the point of reading rhythm only , or pitches only, or excruciatingly slow speeds).

Sight reading being a complex activity (that is, made up of numberless simpler tasks) it makes sense to isolate the simpler tasks and master them before starting putting it all together. Just make sure you have a plan to that effect. (If you don't, use Richmann's plan - see the threads I mentioned above, several of them deal with Richmann's book).

Besides that I would like to suggest to you a multi-level approach.

1. Start with Edna Mae-Burnam's "A dozen a day". These are so simple that you should be able to sight-read through them (do 3 - 4 every day) hands together, perfectly. This will give you a taste for real sight-reading and be a boost to your confidence. Aim to sight read those at the proper speed and with no mistakes.

2. Use repertory a couple of grades below your own - you are already doing that. If necessary simplify it by doing hands separate, or just rhythm. or just pitch. Mistakes are Ok, but stopping, stuttering and getting the wrong rhythm is not.

3. Drop at the deep end of the swiimming pool, and accompany someone playing another instrument (or piano 4-hands). This will teach you never to stop and to read ahead of time (you will also have to read the other person's line, which makes it more complex). In fact, this will teach you to cheat, like stopping in the middle and catching up later on, or ignoring notes - like playing only the bass line when the going gets tough, and so on.

Do all three approachs concurrently. Imprvement in one area will result in improvement in the others.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[maryruth]

I sightread a lot of things as I'm a church pianist--I have 13 songs each week to play--usually different.  Here's how I go about sightreading these--also works with new repertoire.

Most important thing about sight-reading and accompanying--rhythmn.  You think people want to hear the right notes, but really they want to hear the right rhythm.

Get a metronome.  Set the metronome at about half speed (maybe slower).  If there are a lot of 8th notes or 16th notes just set the tick to the 8th note as it's much easier to count that way.  No matter what--keep going.  If you get off at the middle or end of a measure get back on at the first beat of the next.  The first beat of each measure is the most important.  Actually try practicing just playing the first beat of each measure with the metronome--that'll force you to follow the notes with your eyes, etc...

For accompanying this works great because the most important thing is to keep going.  I always practice with the metronome and each go through I can add more notes.  Of course, the music I play at church isn't rocket science--I rarely get anything I can't perfect in a few hours...but still...the metronome is a fantastic device for sightreading.  It keeps you feeling the pulse.

[omnisis]

I asked my teacher about tips for sight-reading and she said it was important to be able to "feel intervals" without looking.  That is be able to play 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, etc without groping for the key and obviously knowing what keys are a 4th, 5th, 6th away etc.  I am a little shaky on how to go about practicing this.  I think it will probably start to come naturally but I'd like to work at proactively.  Any hints guys?


Also, JeremyChilds said:

1) I needed to have a relative tactile keyboard facility. For someone as bad as I was, I had to literally close my eyes, press a "C" and then call out another note...A#...and then play it. I progressed to playing two, three, and four note chords with my eyes closed.

Can you expound on this at all?  Maybe explaining your method a little better.  I already practice chords in all inversions and I can pretty much play them without looking.  Did yoy practice this skill HS or HT?  What specific chords did you drill and in what order?  I can play an augmented chord easily right after playing a major (just raise the 5th) but I don't know if I could hit an augmented chord straight away w/o feeling for the major first...


~omnisis

[bernhard]

I asked my teacher about tips for sight-reading and she said it was important to be able to "feel intervals" without looking.  That is be able to play 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, etc without groping for the key and obviously knowing what keys are a 4th, 5th, 6th away etc.  I am a little shaky on how to go about practicing this.  I think it will probably start to come naturally but I'd like to work at proactively.  Any hints guys?


Also, JeremyChilds said:

Can you expound on this at all?  Maybe explaining your method a little better.  I already practice chords in all inversions and I can pretty much play them without looking.  Did yoy practice this skill HS or HT?  What specific chords did you drill and in what order?  I can play an augmented chord easily right after playing a major (just raise the 5th) but I don't know if I could hit an augmented chord straight away w/o feeling for the major first...


~omnisis

Playing triads takes care of thirds and fifths

Playing their inversions takes care of thirds, fourths and sixths.

Playing dominant sevenths and their inversions takes care of the seconds and sevenths.

So it seems to me you have it already covered!

You can also do free improvisation (play a chord progression on the eft hand, e.g. I -  vi - IV -  V - I)
and whatever you want on the right hand (as long as it uses only the notes of the key you are improvising in), but limit yourself to a specific interval, say, fourths.

Finally on the augmented triads. Instead of referring to the major triad, just learn them by themselves. Just like you did the major triads. You just learned them without referring to anything else, right? Follow the same procedure, but with the augmented instead of major triads.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[jeremyjchilds]

Can you expound on this at all?  Maybe explaining your method a little better.  I already practice chords in all inversions and I can pretty much play them without looking.  Did yoy practice this skill HS or HT?  What specific chords did you drill and in what order?  I can play an augmented chord easily right after playing a major (just raise the 5th) but I don't know if I could hit an augmented chord straight away w/o feeling for the major first...

~omnisis

Start with your finger on "c" for instance and make sure you cover your hands to take away your peripheral advantage. I did hands seperately

1) call out random notes "A#" and play them after the C. Don't just play notes untill you have it. Go slow, and visualize the notes in your mind, think of where you are and where you are going.  "I am on a white note below the group of two, and am going to the highest note in the group of three..." Aim for NO MISTAKES take your time as though you onlly have one chance.

2) This may or may not take a lot of time to master.  Once you are comfortable inside the octave, feel the stretch of the octave, and then move outside of it. Large leaps are not as difficult as one might intuitively expect. You may also now move away from the middle C. Go back and forth, up and down the keys, using only tactile stimulation.

3) Start playing combinations of notes to feel the spread of your fingers. call them out, think, and then play

4) Make sure you do both hands

5) Grab a SATB hymn book (or Bach's chorales) and play one hand at a time with something covering your hands.

Remember...right now we are not sight reading...we are practicing tactile accuracy. Do not play notes in time, but play them as if your life depended on you getting those notes perfect...Sight reading comes later.

Follow the rest of my steps, and listen to Bernard...well naturally

If you have any other questions, I'd be glad to help...I am probably the most excited reading proponent here. Evangelistic perhaps...

[meli]

Wow, this is an amazing thread with great tips on sight-reading. I agree with most people here that recognizing chords, intervals, and scales will improve your sight-reading, and the practices on the keyboard to help you in attaining that accuracy. Yes do that! However, once your 'fingers know where to go', what about musical sight-reading? I know all this sounds very obvious, but I just can’t help to remind you that even if you do make a slip, the audience will forgive you or barely notice it if its musically shaped! I think the most important thing for me was rhythm and flow,attention to phrasing, tempo, articulation, and an intuitive ability to set or change the dynamics for certain passages or chords. Sure, I also visually 'scan' the piece, and then just play it according to my topography of the keyboard. I like to see it as different patterns - chords, scales, jumps, etc..  and only look at my fingers for awkward jumps, or cross overs etc..

Lastly sight-reading is important but being a good sight-reader is not very important skill to play a piece very well.  Trust me, I know. I guess it only means you can learn it faster.   Its also a disadvantage if you become really good and just love sight-reading and dislike polishing pieces. Come to think of it, I'd rather be a good memorizer than sight-reader.

[lostinidlewonder]

I personally found that sight reading needs to be practiced as a disipline itself. I was about 20 when I started seriously targeting my sight reading. I could play Etudes from Liszt and Chopin, but my reading skills where ridiculously slow. I relied on my memory completely, after reading the notes it was commited to memory.

You must practice sight reading and I have found a good way is to target your accuracy and speed seperately. When I did a speed reading course I was told you should simply absorb the text without reading every single word. Simply brush your hand over the text and read 3 lines simultaneously backwards and forwards! This was totaly bizzare for me but absolutely worked.

The same idea works with improving the speed of reading music. When you read to improve speed you have to read at tempo and play wrong. You might play 5% of the right notes, but that is fine, so long you are correct at the beginning of each bar. Take out easy sheet music(for you), neglect Rhythm, neglect dynamics, try to maintain fingering, dont stop if you make mistakes, avoid looking at your hands.

When you target accuracy you simply slow everything right down to a super slow tempo. Take out difficult music, neglect rhythm, neglect dynamics, maintain fingering all the time, 100% note accuracy, avoid looking at hands.

why do I say neglect rhythm and dynamics, simply because these things are sense from within. Ideally you have heard a peice before you try to start playing it, of course if you have never heard the piece before then you ahve to be able to sense rhythm in the music you read but most of the times we have music we have listen to at least a few times so trying to strive to read note values is pretty useless. It becomes more logical and natural how the rhythm works the more music you read.

[jeremyjchilds]

Its also a disadvantage if you become really good and just love sight-reading and dislike polishing pieces. Come to think of it, I'd rather be a good memorizer than sight-reader.

This is a common misconception that people make about strong sight-readers. I think that polishing pieces has much more to do with the patience and personality of the player than sight reading. I know a lot of people who are poor readers and never polish piecesIt is simply an assumption to say that a person who can get away with trying out pieces fairly well will choose to never perfect.

On the contrary, the reader who can read through a massive amount of material will be able to choose perfect repertiore that will be worth dying for, then go to the ends of the earth to master.

Your statement is similar to saying that a professor who reads broadly, would never be able to argue a specific position with effectiveness.

[maryruth]

I'm a good sightreader, but I still try perfecting the occasional "masterpiece"....I just am more choosy.  But, I can try a lot of things out before I decide to spend a lot of time on something....

I can sightread something like Mozart Sonata K570 pretty near perfect with the metronome set at about 140 to the 8th note.  From there I can get a good idea if I want to work on all those fast scale passages....I also can tell if I have a shot at any large chords.  I just reach an octave with my hand FULLY extended.  I can extend my thumb and 5th finger in a straight line and it's just barely an octave--not an accurate octave thumb side--can get a bit sloppy in fast octave passages---Beethoven Pathetique is a nightmare, though I did spend a year on it and played it in recital--those octaves are a killer!

I used to assume everyone could sightread like me---I had no idea that I could sightread better than people who regularly play more difficult music than I do.  Strange.

But, I just started teaching a highschooler some theory...she's also a good sightreader--particularly contemporary pop type music.  She wants to learn theory so she can improvise off lead sheets....I quickly realized that she could sightread great but she can't even play a one octave scale hands together--nor could she tell me that a song with one flat was F major or D minor...or that you could tell the difference between F major and D minor by the starting and ending chord....I just couldn't believe she'd been playing piano for 10- years, could sightread well enough to play in church and for the highschool jazz choir yet couldn't say what key a song was in or play a one octave scale..Amazing....  So, she recognizes patterns but she doesn't have the vocabularly to tell you what she's looking at.

[galonia]

I agree that being a good sight-reader does not mean you are not good at memorising.  I have no troubles memorising or mastering the details of a piece.

The advantages of being good at sight-reading have been expounded often already.

The biggest disadvantage I find - and this is my confession - is that a good sight reader can be tempted not to practise new work as much or at all, in preparation for a piano lesson or a performance where the music may be used (e.g. when you accompany someone), because he/she can just turn up and sight read the piece at the lesson/performance.  That's what I have done in the past.  My teacher now asks me to play a piece from memory very early on, to prevent me from doing this.

[maryruth]

Ah, yes, good sight readers often don't memorize things mainly because they don't spend a lot of time on it...I'm guilty of that.  I like to play A LOT of different things.  I can't always be bogged down with focusing on the finer details.   The music goes in the eyes out the fingers and is gone forever.   I don't retain it. 

I think good sight readers need to be assigned pieces that are too difficult to sight read.  If you can sight read it adequately, the song's too easy.  Good sightreaders need to learn to practice, too.  A lot of times they've skated through the early years of lessons and haven't really had to learn to practice and so their repertoire is non existant past what they can sight-read.  If they learn how to practice efficiently then they can move on to the advanced repertoire. 

But sometimes, people are just happy being able to sight-read fun stuff and don't give a care if it's perfected or what have you.  It's just fun to play a bunch of music.