Never again learning a wrong note!

Animisha

Okay, I am a bit overenthusiastic right now. But I have bought the Synthesia app and after a bit of a hassle it works like a dream!

iternabe This also beg the question: what is the trick to avoid reading notes wrong in the first place when learning a new piece?

The answer to your question is: Synthesia!

It works like this: I upload a midi file to my laptop, open it with Synthesia, and choose, for instance, to play hands together. I open my iPad with the score.
Synthesia waits for me to start, waits also for me when I hesitate, and as long as I play the correct notes, Synthesia's bars descend at a leasurely pace. When I make a mistake, the bars stop moving until I have played the correct note.

It is so good!
In one of the pieces I am learning, there are subtle changes in the harmonies. C# is played together with E, or with D, or with F#, or even with F. When practising, I cannot hear my mistake when I play C#-E when I need to play C#-D, because I am not yet familiar with the piece. But if I play a wrong note, Synthesia stops until I play the correct note, so I no longer need to check and double-check that I really learn the correct notes!

And it is also great fun. Another piece that I am working on is a typical melody-accompaniment piece, and neither melody nor accompaniment is easy, and it is just so much fun to practise each hand with Synthesia, because Synthesia not only checks that I play the correct notes, it also plays the hand that I don't play. So I hear the melody when I play the accompaniment and I hear the accompaniment when I play the melody. And when I hesitate, which of course I do a lot, it waits for me. So, so nice!

Now, for this solution to work, you need to have a digital piano, your score as midi files, a laptop connected to your dp, and your score (I haven't figured out yet if Synthesia also can show the score simultaneously with the descending bars). So that is quite a setup. But if you have all this, no more learning wrong notes from the start!

Synthesia for the win!!

BartK

Are you still reading the music notation or relying entirely on the falling bars? If the latter then that's a sure way to not improve your reading ability.

Also, hearing mistakes is a skill worth learning too.

Animisha

BartK Are you still reading the music notation or relying entirely on the falling bars?

I hardly look at the bars, just enough to see that they are still moving. I have my eyes on the score and the piano.

BartK Also, hearing mistakes is a skill worth learning too.

Absolutely! Once I am more familiar with the piece, I trust that I will hear my mistakes.
However, amongst notes that I have learned incorrectly is for instance a little variation on a theme, and I simply repeat the original theme. In another thread, you mentioned a teacher who didn't hear their mistake because it was still harmonically correct.

iternabe

In my original post, the note played differently between a YouTube teacher demo and mine was in a chord. But I only noticed it not by hearing the difference, but by looking at the YT teacher’s fingering.

So, hearing a single wrong note buried within other notes is some ability I am not born with. However, since I’ve started doing ear training a few weeks ago, I begin to see a glimmer of hope. The training showed I am stronger in rhythm, but weaker in chord recognition. Even things as simple as telling between major triad and minor triad I could not get it 100% correct in the beginning. But with practice, I am seeing improvement. It will be a long, though.

Player1

iternabe In my original post, the note played differently between a YouTube teacher demo and mine was in a chord. But I only noticed it not by hearing the difference, but by looking at the YT teacher’s fingering.

You have to be careful doing that because a lot of videos have wrong stuff in them. For instance, when I was learning Energico I watched a video from someone trying to start off being a 'teacher.' Energico has an SMZ at the end and the final 2 notes are on both the treble and the bass staff (one each, lots of ledger lines for the treble note). The video I watched (and a couple of others) omitted the SMZ and just spread the LH for the final 2 notes since they're both down in the lower bass. This is incorrect and had I done the same I would have been incorrect because the score specifically notes to use both hands, not just the LH. Lesson: never rely on only 1 video because it could be wrong.

On the other hand, I've caught myself many times playing a wrong note (or three) by watching a video and realizing that it's an F instead of a G because I misread the ledger lines. I did it even though when playing it didn't sound right, but it wasn't until I watched a video that I caught it.

More staff training required in my case and remembering to trust my ears when they tell me something's not right. And maybe better glasses, them micro size staccato dots are killing me.

ShiroKuro

I don't recommend relying on Synthesia as a learning tool. I think it may seem helpful initially, but ultimately, it will be very limited, esp. as you start playing music that is more complex. I see that @Animisha is still reading the score, but using Synthesia to alert you to wrong notes. I suppose that's ok, but you will probably benefit more in the long run by learning how to find those trouble spots yourself. For example, even with music you don't know (i.e., you won't "hear" the mistake), you can probably guess which spots will be easy to make this kind of mistake. Look through the music, identify those spots. Then play the tricky part, listen to it, note how it's different from another passage (like your example of the chords), play them HS etc. so you can hear it.

And spend time drilling that into your fingers -- and your ears.

In the long run, by doing this, you'll continue to get better at score reading and at hearing.

If you use Synthesia, you will just continue to be dependent upon the app.

This is just my opinion of course, I know a lot of people like Synthesia, and that's fine. But if you want to improve your score-reading ability and improve at playing from a score, Synthesia will be counterproductive.

MandM

ShiroKuro
I used Playground Sessions for a couple of months so that I would get instant feedback when an incorrect note is pressed. Playground Sessions takes the MIDI from the keyboard as input and displays incorrect notes in different color on the screen. It helped me some, but eventually I made a better association between the sheet music and the notes that I played. I also learned to hear incorrect notes meanwhile. Thus I do not use Playground Session any longer, except once in a while I check if new music scores have been released that I like.

iternabe
I do not turn/rotate the staffs in my mind to match the keyboard. Instead when I read music, I generally recognize in which octave range the note/chord is located, e.g. C2-C3, C3-C4, etc. while also recognizing the note(s) themselves. There is also some pattern recognition involved, e.g., recognizing chords, playing octaves. When playing octaves, I have a particular finger spread so that I only need to find the bottom note (or the top note) on the keyboard. The other note of the octave is determined by the spread of my fingers. Similar for playing an octave with a fifth in between. If I just find the root note, then the fifth and the upper note of the octave is "known" by a given distance of my hand, so there is no need to look at it.

Animisha

ShiroKuro I see that @Animisha is still reading the score, but using Synthesia to alert you to wrong notes. I suppose that's ok, but you will probably benefit more in the long run by learning how to find those trouble spots yourself.

Actually, I find the immediate feedback on mistakes (I see that Synthesia stopped moving) very beneficiary.
Also, not having a good memory, I see this strange chord, I figure it out, I try to remember it, next day, I need to figure it out again - it is so, so wonderful to immediately get feedback if I figured it out correctly.
Also, big advantage, I am more relaxed when figuring out difficult passages. No more worry I learn incorrectly.

ShiroKuro But if you want to improve your score-reading ability and improve at playing from a score, Synthesia will be counterproductive.
Personally, I think immediate feedback the moment I play an incorrect note, will help. 😊

iternabe

I suspect the falling notes appear more intuitive because the music follows the orientation of the keyboard. Whereas the sheet music is more like the keyboard turned 90 degrees counterclockwise.

So I have a follow-up question. For people who eventually developed fluent score reading ability, do they somehow mentally turning the staffs to match the keyboard, or form some other kind of positional association that makes the link between notes on paper and keys under finger more direct?

ShiroKuro

iternabe For people who eventually developed fluent score reading ability, do they somehow mentally turning the staffs to match the keyboard, or form some other kind of positional association that makes the link between notes on paper and keys under finger more direct?

I am a very confident score-reader, and a pretty good (relatively speaking) sightreader.

I do not mentally turn the staff, I never did.

I'm trying to think if I have anything helpful to say in terms of how I got so comfortable reading....

Read a lot? Also maybe do some HS practice while reading, to reinforce the notes on the page with the place on the keyboard, without having to be overwhelmed by the two staves?

MRC

iternabe For people who eventually developed fluent score reading ability, do they somehow mentally turning the staffs to match the keyboard, or form some other kind of positional association that makes the link between notes on paper and keys under finger more direct?

I definitely have a positional association. If I see a chord on a grand staff, I will automatically feel in my hands how I'd play it, and I visualise where it would be on the keyboard. I don't consciously rotate the score in my mind, but I think this idea can help when learning to read piano music.

Animisha

iternabe For people who eventually developed fluent score reading ability, do they somehow mentally turning the staffs to match the keyboard, or form some other kind of positional association that makes the link between notes on paper and keys under finger more direct?

I am far, far away from fluent score reading ability, but when I sit at my desk and see a score without a title, I move my fingers and hum, and if I know the piece (also pieces I have never played, for instance pop songs), I can often "hear" which piece it is. This was something I absolutely could not do before I played the piano.
Now that I think of it, I am maybe better when I do this at my desk instead of at the piano, because at my desk I don't make mistakes! 😃

PS I don't know if this some kind of answer to your question iternabe... But I don't make a mental rotation for this to work.

BartK

ShiroKuro I'm trying to think if I have anything helpful to say in terms of how I got so comfortable reading....

Read a lot?

That's pretty much it. I know this answer is not satisfying for us adult overthinkers but there isn't really a better one. Just read a lot of music and over the long term your reading skills will improve.

Animisha

ShiroKuro This last part may be where @Animisha is feeling challenged, because if you’re not actively reading the LH part, it can be easy to miss subtle changes, like a pattern that’s repeated but only one note in a chord is changed.

Actually, the subtle changes in the piece that I talked about ("C# is played together with E, or with D, or with F#, or even with F") were in the alto voice. Still, it is quite true that most of my attention goes to the voice that is the most important one, which often is the soprano voice.

I have never heard of your recommendation "Read from the bottom staff up, rather than from the top staff down" and I never sight read like that. In the easier sight-reading pieces that I do, I focus on getting the melody right, both the notes and the rhythm, and I hope that the single notes or chords in the bass clef somehow tag along.

By the way...

ShiroKuro I'm trying to think if I have anything helpful to say in terms of how I got so comfortable reading....
Read a lot?

BartK That's pretty much it.

I did not recommend Synthesia for sight reading practice. In sight reading you need to play through your mistakes, so after one mistake, Synthesia would stop moving. So it is useless.
I do - still 😉 - recommend Synthesia (or a similar app) for the early stages of learning a new piece, when you want to make sure that you are not learning the wrong notes.

ShiroKuro

@BartK although I guess we could add to the recommendations a bit, to specify what kind of reading and what to do while reading.

If I were making a “how to” list for improving wading, this is what I would put on it:

Read a lot
Read music that’s below your current playing level
Practice keeping your eyes on the score rather than looking down as you play
Practice looking ahead in the music
Read music in different keys
Read music that’s unfamiliar to you as often as possible
After you’ve worked on a piece and may have already started memorizing it, force yourself to actively read along while playing it

ShiroKuro

Oh, and here’s something I’ve seen mentioned but that I am pretty sure I do not do:
Read from the bottom staff up, rather than from the top staff down.

Does anyone here actively do that?

I am almost positive that this is not how I read, but I can’t figure out why, although I have some ideas.

For example, I wonder if it’s because I learned to read the treble clef first, so that was easier. Another possibility might be because it seems intuitive to read from top to bottom.

Lastly, I wonder if it’s because most music is melody driven and it’s more likely that there are repeating patterns in the LH, which makes it easier to put the LH on autopilot such that, once you’ve mostly learned the piece, you don’t have to actively read the LH part as much as you do the RH part.

This last part may be where @Animisha is feeling challenged, because if you’re not actively reading the LH part, it can be easy to miss subtle changes, like a pattern that’s repeated but only one note in a chord is changed. I’m pretty sure I make that mistake a lot, missing something in the LH because I’m not reading it closely. IMO, that’s what red pens are for! 😃

I eventually get it corrected.

Which is to say, I’m not that worried about initially learning a wrong note.

ShiroKuro

Animisha "Read from the bottom staff up, rather than from the top staff down" and I never sight read like that.

Yeah, I don't either. I would love to know how many people actually read like this....

Also, I'd like to know where I read it... but I have forgotten! 😅

MRC

Animisha I have never heard of your recommendation "Read from the bottom staff up, rather than from the top staff down" and I never sight read like that.

Nor do I. I think I read more from the outsides inwards: if I'm sight-reading a tricky piece, it is usually most important to get the melody and the bass notes right. When things are flying by too fast, I fake what's happening in the middle.

iternabe

@Animisha I feel sorry for nudging the topic of this discussion from note/chord/error recognition to sight reading. They are different, and we already have a sight reading thread. But I am glad, as always, I elicited some very helpful insights on sight-reading from forum members. 🙂

One thing @ShiroKuro mentioned strikes me as so true is the need to consciously read the notes on the sheet after the piece is already mostly memorized by hand. The reason I worry about committing wrong notes into subconscious memory is exactly because I only read them closely during the very early part of learning a piece. Pretty soon after there become a point where the fingers retained enough muscle memory (not by intention) that my brain no longer fully register and scrutinize those notes on the sheet even when my eyes are alway looking at them. It's like a "fake" state of reading while playing.

So, maybe add to her great advice: "Read a lot of new music"?

BartK

iternabe One thing @ShiroKuro mentioned strikes me as so true is the need to consciously read the notes on the sheet after the piece is already mostly memorized by hand. The reason I worry about committing wrong notes into subconscious memory is exactly because I only read them closely during the very early part of learning a piece. Pretty soon after there become a point where the fingers retained enough muscle memory (not by intention) that my brain no longer fully register and scrutinize those notes on the sheet even when my eyes are alway looking at them. It's like a "fake" state of reading while playing.

I know many beginners learn like that (including myself several years ago) but muscle memory is very weak and very unreliable. A good way to practice is to go so slow that you disengage the auto pilot. Try to read the notes conciously and be aware of everything while going glacially slow. If you know some theory you can also play in blocked chords and say the chord you are on at the same time. All of that makes you rely less on muscle memory and makes it more likely that you will notice if you missed something.

Animisha

iternabe The reason I worry about committing wrong notes into subconscious memory is exactly because I only read them closely during the very early part of learning a piece. Pretty soon after there become a point where the fingers retained enough muscle memory (not by intention) that my brain no longer fully register and scrutinize those notes on the sheet even when my eyes are alway looking at them.

This is exactly what I also do! And that is also a reason why I want to get external feedback on the correctness of my playing, so I don't learn the wrong notes and the wrong sounds!

ShiroKuro

MRC When things are flying by too fast, I fake what's happening in the middle.

That is probably a very good skill, esp. for sightreading truly new music!

When reading a new piece, I have a hard time leaving out notes or, for example, an inner voice. If I'm learning something and decide not to play one chord note (say because it's beyond my reach) that's one thing, but I usually can't make that decision in the middle of prima vista sightreading.

ShiroKuro

BartK disengage the auto pilot.

This is very important!! And something I tried to do in the weeks leading up to the concert I played in last week, because, as you say, muscle memory is very unreliable. But auto pilot is very... insistent. It's like the brain wants to go into auto pilot, that's the default mode.