Sightreading drills and techniques advice

[LeoBen207]

Hello, I'm teaching myself piano (I know I know I need to get a teacher, I'm robbing myself of learning, progress will be slow..... ) I've made some progress in the last year or so, however I totally suck at reading music. I want to get to the point where I can instantly read a piece instead of memorizing them. Any advice?

I was thinking that perhaps I can start reading easy pieces like children's songs and gradually work my way up to more difficult pieces- and then finally I can say goodbye to "every good boy..." lol.

Here are my questions:
1. Can you please give examples of pieces to practice sightreading in lets say these 3 levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced.
2. What techniques or drills can you please tell me are or have been effective in your sightreading experience?
3. How much time a day should one dedicate to practicing sightreading a day.
4 Any other advice would be greatly appreciate it.

Thank you

[abell88]

Bernhard has highly recommended a book by Richman (I think...you can do a search).

What helped me most was having to accompany a church congregation...it didn't matter if I didn't know the song, I had to keep going.

The other thing is to learn to recognize intervals and chords. If you really know a few "landmark" notes -- say Treble G and C, Bass C and F, and middle C and can recognize intervals and patterns, you don't have to read notes individually (in fact, you shouldn't).

The "other" other thing is a matter of training your eyes to be ahead of your fingers...imagine you have to read a book out loud; your eyes will be slightly ahead of your mouth so you can inflect your speech properly. In the same way, your eyes need to be ahead of your fingers. If you can get some really, really easy music, you can ask someone to hold a piece of cardboard in front of it as you play (that is, they move the cardboard so that you can only see the note *after* the note you are currently playing.

I will also say that I used to be a horrendous sight reader and now I'm ... adequate...so there is hope!

[Floristan]

Hymnals are an easy way to practice beginning sightreading.  Four voices with almost no harmonic surprises, all written on the two staves.  When you play a wrong note it's obvious because the harmonies are so basic.  No unusual notation to worry about.  It's how I learned initially, the old Methodist Hymnal!

[rohansahai]

The "other" other thing is a matter of training your eyes to be ahead of your fingers...imagine you have to read a book out loud; your eyes will be slightly ahead of your mouth so you can inflect your speech properly. In the same way, your eyes need to be ahead of your fingers. If you can get some really, really easy music, you can ask someone to hold a piece of cardboard in front of it as you play (that is, they move the cardboard so that you can only see the note *after* the note you are currently playing.

I'd like to expand on that , as it is perhaps the most important thing after you learn to get the rhythm and the notes right, and a necessary key to good sight-reading ! Liszt is said to have been almost 6 bars ahead of the actual position he was playing !!
A very good way to do something like this is to take the music, look at it away from the piano and try to memorise one bar (pictorial memorisation). Then turn to the piano and play it from memory. Continue doing this, till you can get the pictoral memory (which, mind you, usually lasts only for a few seconds) in just one glance. That's how when you actually sight read (especially a difficult piece), you can read a bar ahead....get it in your head, then play it, while in the meantime you are on the next bar. Then try to do the same with two bars and proceed similarly as much as you can. The more bars you can memorise ( i repeat , PICTORIALLY !!) , the better sight-reader you will become.....even to get to being one bar (or even half a bar) ahead gives very impressive results !!

[gerry]

As quickly as possible learn your way around the circle of 5ths--the basic harmonic structures around each key. I found that my sight reading improved significantly when I involved myself in accompanying theatrical, opera or ballet rehearsals where the music is somewhat predictable but where the group wouldn't stop for you - they would just keep going and you had to scramble, fake it, etc. until you got back on track. It forced me to read ahead and the knowledge of the key structure helped me have my hands in the right place when needed. I know that isn't a very technical answer for you but it does work. Incidentally, this is where basic knowldege of scales, arpegios, etc. comes in handy - it's amazing how having those "automatic" patterns in your hands helps with sight reading.

[anna_crusis]

2. What techniques or drills can you please tell me are or have been effective in your sightreading experience?
3. How much time a day should one dedicate to practicing sightreading a day

You should use dedicated sight reading drill books to start with. They have short one line exercises and lots of tips.

I've used them for 30 min a day for a year and have seen a huge improvement in my sight reading.