Struggling with my limitations 🛑

navindra

It's painful to admit this, but after too long at Alfred's Adult All-In-One Adult Course, my music reading skills are shockingly non-existent. I've got nil fluency with it beyond familiarity with certain landmarks, FACE, and other useless mnemonic gimmicks.

Sometimes I can spend days or weeks struggling to learn a piece from sheet music, but I've discovered that the only time I truly make a breakthrough in my progress with the piece is when I've memorized the part I'm trying to play. Only then does the pace of progress pick up and I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere.

Due to circumstances, I need to memorize two pieces of music in less than two weeks for the Music Artistry Program. Dr Yuna Roh will be the Visiting Artist.

Why did I sign up for this?? 🤷‍♂️

Since I have so little time to prepare, I'm simplifying my life by playing pieces I'm already familiar with. I've got Bluebird just about under my fingers and, due to some earlier insight from Roger which I'm grateful for, I've decided to bring back Canon in D to my repertoire.

For the first day I could barely play anything from the Pachelbel piece. I could play a little from memory and could gradually reconstruct more and more of it, but looking at the sheet music didn't help me at all and ground me to a terrifying halt. Looking at sheet music has been a complete drag and completely stalled my progress on the piece.

Instead, what helped was trying to recall the piece from memory. The hardest parts were the easiest somehow! My fingers want to fly. Once this started coming back, it did wonders for my confidence. The easiest parts are the ones I do have to double check against the sheet music for subtle differences.

Eventually, once I'm more confident with my reconstruction from memory, I will have to check my recollection note by note against the sheet music for mistakes. Or let my teacher do it for me! 🙂

Needless to say, I'll be playing both pieces from memory and the Visiting Artist can have the sheet music to herself. 🤣

Oh, and the YouTube algorithm made me feel a little less bad today by surfacing this video on how Chris Martin from Coldplay (not the Kratt brothers) wrote Clocks:

That's one piece I certainly have to learn!

Update: I got an Honorable Mention!

rogerch

navindra Hey Navindra, I'm glad you're learning Canon in D again, that's a great piece and you play it very well!

I can relate to what you're going through. Historically, learning a piece for me involved several weeks playing not very fluently from sheet music. At some point I memorized what I was learning and from that point I made better progress with my interpretation, but still slowly. It took months to get a complex piece to anything near performance level.

For about a year and half I've been spending about 20 minutes a day sight reading. I've made gradual progress in that time and I'm much better at it than I was when I started. I'm hoping my new skills will speed up the learning process the next time I tackle a complex piece!

@Danieru I hope if you keep at your daily sight reading that you will make progress too!

Josephine

navindra

My music reading skills are the same. I did buy books with multiple easy pieces to practice sight reading, but only buying the books isn't enough..
If I can force myself to practice sight reading (which doesn't happen often) I always end up playing random notes and chords to see if it sounds nice, like the video you posted.

Good luck with the program!

pianoloverus

navindra It's painful to admit this, but after too long at Alfred's Adult All-In-One Adult Course, my music reading skills are shockingly non-existent. I've got nil fluency with it beyond familiarity with certain landmarks, FACE, and other useless mnemonic gimmicks.

Sometimes I can spend days or weeks struggling to learn a piece from sheet music, but I've discovered that the only time I truly make a breakthrough in my progress with the piece is when I've memorized the part I'm trying to play. Only then does the pace of progress pick up and I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere.

The trouble with memorizing all the time is that this prevents you from becoming a good reader since you're not practicing reading skills. There must be at least 1000 threads on piano world about improving one's reading skills, and it's extremely common that that person wanting to improve their skills has been memorizing music and as a result of this doesn't practice reading skills. Try to find a book devoted to sight reading where the examples are easy enough(Something like single melodies in just one hand) So you can have some success and proceed slowly.

PianoMonk

navindra This might seem an overly simple suggestion, but I have found that working on scales and modes, that is, reading those exercises, improved my sight reading. I think seeing the notes in the scale/mode context translates, maybe subconsciously, to other sheet music, perhaps solidifying the position of notes on the staff.
I play a lot from memory, probably because I've played those tunes for years, and I don't think the pieces I play are as complex as the material you are playing. Keep at it, and good luck. Don't let it become a chore. It's supposed to be fun.

Danieru

I am in a similar situation. I have been playing for longer time than you and my reading skills are well below my technical skill. I memorize everything I play but continue sight reading everyday, although the progress is apparently non existent. I do not see anything wrong with memorization.

Player1

I'm another sight reading impaired learner, although I'm not all that awful at it.

Key signatures seem to be the "key" to learning to sight read. At least it seems that way to me. I can sight read the easier keys (CM, GM, etc) at a reasonable tempo for learning/playing/picking out the notes, but the more "advanced" keys are harder. It's the same notes on the same staff, but for some reason they're harder to read fluently. I don't know why, maybe that's just me.

Even with that I still have to write in sharps/flats/naturals on the score or I miss them when playing. I sometimes miss them anyway and it takes several days/weeks/months before I realize it and have to go back and correct myself.

One thing I know is that practicing at the Sight Reading Factory (NOT a plug) has helped in reinforcing what I know and I'm pushing the boundaries of where I'm weak. It's slow, but I am improving. Read the score, hum or sing the score, play the score, play to tempo, then play along with the MIDI as it plays the score to reinforce the lesson. Each one you do shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to complete.

Another thing: I used to scoff at it, but I now think the RCM requirement of sight reading is invaluable if you're going to learn higher skill pieces. If you can't read the score fluently, then you're not going to put the music together as well. This takes years as you go from beginner to advanced so I'd expect it to take awhile even if you're an advanced player but a horrible sight reader. Older beginners will probably take a bit longer but, as we all know, it's not impossible to learn how to play better.

In the end, the only thing I can say is to start with easy stuff. Any score will work. The steps are: Speak the notes one by one, speak and play the notes one by one, put it together to play the notes, play fluently at tempo, and work upward and outward from there. It only takes 1 or 2 lines of sheet music (8 measures) and you should be working in keys signatures you're readily familiar with to start and then go on to the rest.

For Cannon and a time crunch, I'd make sure I had a bunch of easy pieces in DM and practice sight reading with them before every session working on the performance piece. 10 minutes sight reading daily until you don't need it to read Cannon at tempo or are playing strictly from memory.

twocats

Are you a better aural learner than a visual learner? I am totally a visual learner and (for example) I find it very hard to learn people's names if they're not wearing a name tag. I wonder if finding some kind of software that reads out the letter names of the notes would help you to read better (as a long term goal, not for this event).

It sounds like you really dislike reading music and unfortunately the reality is that the more you do it, the easier it will get!

navindra

Thanks so much everyone for all the recommendations! There's a ton of material here for me to go through and I'm bookmarking it all!

Stub You don't have to be able to look at a note and say, ah, D#. You do need to be able to look at that note and have your finger go to the correct spot on the keyboard. Also, whenever possible, read intervals rather than individual notes. This applies to block chords and broken chords.

THANK YOU! This is the one thing I've been trying out this week and it's lifted a load off of me.

I just STOPPED trying to figure out all the note names before finding my place on the keyboard and it has helped tremendously. This is something I should have known already but for whatever reason I regressed back to trying to figure out the note names. The truth is the note names don't matter here.

It's like now I have more CPU available to make it work. While I'm not yet a sight reading machine, it's suddenly a more intuitive process.

twocats It sounds like you really dislike reading music and unfortunately the reality is that the more you do it, the easier it will get!

It's not that I dislike it. I've been trying to stick to it out of principle, because that's what everyone recommends, including my teacher. Lately I have been finding it counter-productive in practice because it has made my progress crawl to a halt.

Nightowl I struggle with sight reading too, but whenever I've seen you play you look very relaxed and confident, so I would never have guessed that you struggle much with any aspect of playing piano.

Thanks a lot for that boost of confidence! 🙂

There's some awesome material in this thread that I'm planning to study and follow up on more closely. Thanks all!

Nightowl

navindra I struggle with sight reading too, but whenever I've seen you play you look very relaxed and confident, so I would never have guessed that you struggle much with any aspect of playing piano. So, although I understand why you want to improve your sight reading, I think you have built some solid skills so far.
Other people will no doubt offer suggestions to help, and I'll be reading them too - my sight reading is painfully slow and all tips are welcome on this point.

Stub

There is no shortcut to reading. Progress can feel glacial, but the more you do it, the better you'll get. I wouldn't do just sight reading (playing things you've never seen before), but just read anything and everything. You don't have to be able to look at a note and say, ah, D#. You do need to be able to look at that note and have your finger go to the correct spot on the keyboard. Also, whenever possible, read intervals rather than individual notes. This applies to block chords and broken chords. It might help to work on cadences to train your hands for the shape of chords. For whatever scale I'm working on, I also do a I-IV-V-V7-I series. Other people do others.

I went through the memorize-because-I-can't read well stage, but slowly morphed to reading as my main mode. You can do it, too!

iternabe

According to Dr. John Mortensen, this is not a limitation of innate ability, but rather a limitation of experience. His YT video encouraged me to take sight reading seriously and begin working on it early. I took @BartK's advice and bought the RCM Four Star Series Book for sight reading. I also subscribed to RCM's online ear training course. I made a thread here. I've been using the book and the online course for about 3 months now, about 15-20 minutes per day.

pianoloverus

iternabe According to Dr. John Mortensen, this is not a limitation of innate ability, but rather a limitation of experience.

I think what mortensen says is only partly true. Experience plays a big part in sight reading ability, but innate ability or talent also plays some part as it does In every aspect of piano playing. Just because he began as a memorizer but later became, I would assume, an excellent sight reader by practicing that skill, doesn't mean everyone can improve as much as he did. He's trying to be encouraging about the chance for poor sight readers To become good sight readers which is good, but his claim that experience is the only factor is incorrect. Probably everyone can improve a lot with practice but I'm quite sure the degree of improvement is partially determined by talent.

Nightowl

iternabe Thanks for posting the link, that video was very helpful. Dr Mortensen seems to really know what he's talking about and he was very firmly of the belief that there are no short cuts, people just need to put in the work. I also watched his video giving advice to parents of young adults who are aiming to make a career in music, via gaining a music diploma. That video was quite an eye opener and gave good advice about how to prepare students to pass the entrance audition and the need to manage expectations about the realities of a career in music. It seems that only the most elite students are able to carve out a career as concert pianists, while the vast majority will end up teaching music, perhaps alongside doing some performances/accompaniment work/writing music. This video contains very useful information for anyone dreaming of a career on stage.

thepianoplayer416 Thanks for the link - I might use that to work on basic staff reading - especially the bass notes.

FrankCox

I play a bunch of stuff, none of it particularly well I suppose, and I always read it. I can't play anything without the sheet music in front of me, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit.

I guess it's because I'm kind of a grazer when it comes to music. I play something or part of that something, then move on to play something else. So I probably have a few hundred things that I bounce around between as the notion strikes me.

I just do this to amuse myself and my bird, I'm not playing any concerts or competitions, so this works well enough for me.

I have played a few "accidental concerts" over the course of time, amusing the folks at the dementia home where my mother lived and such (won't be doing that any more I guess since she died last year) but generally speaking I'm not trying to impress anyone other than my bird.

And she's easily impressed. 🙂

thepianoplayer416

In my younger days I learned violin. I already had some proficiency reading the treble clef. Took a few years to get good at reading the bass clef. The notes on the staff are arranged in order from the lowest to the highest. You read a C on the staff, the next C would be on the same spot so shouldn't be an issue. The only issue is playing while reading. The first few times when you're not familiar with the notes you hesitate. Once you learned the notes, you'd rely on the sheet to avoid memory slips. Someone like myself used to memorize entire pieces to avoid reading and I still do to some extent. My reading improved a lot over the years.

You should't rely on mneumonics like "Every Good Boy Does Fine" or "All Cow Eat Grass". Thinking about phrases would slow you down. Everybody can recognize the Middle C on the staff. Notes of the staff are arranged in order (line-space-line-space). Needs practice to instantly recognize notes. When notes appear to be in order going up or down you know it's a note run. All you need to read is the first note and you can play other notes after without thinking too much.

You can sign up to the Sight Reading Factory. Practice reading at your own pace. Go through the simple reading exercises and do a playback and see how close you get.
https://www.sightreadingfactory.com/

When it comes pieces for a performance, I'd choose pieces that are repetitive when I have little time to prepare. A few months ago I found an arrangement of Simon Garfunkel "Sound of Silence" with 5 verses. The verses are similar with slight variations between them. The way the piece is arranged with chord arpeggios DFA (D minor) & CEG (C major) are easy to remember. It's a piece I know well so don't need much effort to memorize.

Player1

thepianoplayer416 You should't rely on mneumonics like "Every Good Boy Does Fine" or "All Cow Eat Grass". Thinking about phrases would slow you down. Everybody can recognize the Middle C on the staff. Notes of the staff are arranged in order (line-space-line-space). Needs practice to instantly recognize notes. When notes appear to be in order going up or down you know it's a note run. All you need to read is the first note and you can play other notes after without thinking too much.

Mnemonics don't work. All they do it teach you to memorize the mnemonic. You sound smart but you still can't do much except be a parrot.

On the other hand, the "Landmark System" seems to be a workable method of learning the staff because we all sort of do it that way anyway as we learn. Basically, we all know where middle C is. All of us should also know where C is on the treble clef. Learn where C is on the bass clef. Then "landmark" G and A on the bass clef. With those positions locked in every other note can be located without too much slowing down. That goes away (supposedly) as you gain proficiency.

I still have to count ledger lines and write the note value on the sheet. There's no help for doing it any other way that I've found, but that's why you look over the score before playing in the first place.

pianoloverus

Player1 I still have to count ledger lines and write the note value on the sheet. There's no help for doing it any other way that I've found, but that's why you look over the score before playing in the first place.

Learning to read notes on ledger lines is no different from learning to read other kinds of notes. It's a question of practice. The reason some people are not so good at reading notes on ledger lines is because they tend to occur less frequently so there is less practice doing it. That's also the reason it's harder for most people to read notes using a large number of ledger lines. For example, I'm quite good at reading up to four ledger lines above the treble or 4 ledger lines below the bass clef, but beyond that I would have to start counting since I've had so little experience with more than 4 ledger lines.

BartK

The landmark system is good at the beginning but eventually you want to be able to instantly recognize any note and play it.

If you think about it, learning all lines and spaces of the grand staff plus the middle C line and two ledger lines above and below the grand staff, all that combined is only 29 distinct notes. That's about as much as learning the alphabet. Is it really so much work to memorize a new alphabet? It really doesn't take very long to learn to instantly recognize any note and play it. Everyone should do it as soon as possible.

The hard part which takes years is doing the mental chunking, coordination when playing multiple notes at the same time, and reading ahead. I mentioned some of my experiences on another thread, which you might want to check out.

Josephine

navindra It's not that I dislike it. I've been trying to stick to it out of principle, because that's what everyone recommends, including my teacher. Lately I have been finding it counter-productive in practice because it has made my progress crawl to a halt.

It's the same for me because there's such a big gap now in what I can play when I slowly read and memorize, and what I can play directly from sheetmusic. I think the difference is 5 grades or something like that.

thepianoplayer416

In the beginning some people would label the keys with stickers and put ABCs on every note on the page. A few months ago came across an old piano on display. Many of the keys still have stickers on them. Matching letters of the alphabet doesn't require much effort... see an A, play an A.

A number of years ago I was at a gathering. 3 kids tried to decipher a piece with 4 lines their teacher assigned as appropriate for the level. For an hour they couldn't come up with anything that sounded like the song. If I was at a similar situation, I'd rather spend a few minutes to write letters on the page and put labels on the keys. Within an hour I would be able to play something (with some wrong notes) than trying to figure out most of the notes like hit & miss. Before we get good at reading, we still want to be able to play a few songs by taking the easy way out. Otherwise we'd quit early.

Think of each "note" on a page as a letter of the alphabet. You learn to recall each letter based on which line or space it is on the staff. Instead of thinking of letters of the alphabet as distinct symbols, you think of notes as looking similar except the circle is on a specific line or space.

People with perfect pitch can hear an A and know it's an A automatically. Other people who have the ability for relative pitch need to hear other reference notes before & after to determine what a note is. There are online links & apps to help you recognize notes by displaying & playing individual notes on the screen and you name the notes. Being able to recognize notes quickly would improve your reading ability.

When looking at the page, we're not just seeing random notes. We recognize beat patterns, note runs (up & down the scale), intervals & chords. The last piece I worked on was a tradition tune "House of the Rising Sun". Looking at the key signature with nothing I know the piece is in the key of C or A minor. The left hand notes A-C-E comes up I know I'm playing an A minor arpeggio. Before that I worked on an arrangement of Simon & Garfunkel "Sound of Silence". The song has a lot of repeated chord arpeggios like D-F-A (D minor) "Hello darkness my old friend" & C-E-G (C major) "I've come to talk to you again", F-A-C (F major) "Because a vision softly creeping".

The past 2 years my teacher made her students do a lot of scale & arpeggio exercises. They really help to recognize notes quickly.

The link to online note reading exercises:
https://www.musictheory.net/exercises

rsl12

navindra are you doing the 40 pieces a year challenge? It might be a good way to get your reading practice in.