Monviso
That's great advice! I forgot about the 40 piece challenge but I did it for several years, doing about 50 pieces a year, or about one per week, and it really improved my reading ability and my ability to quickly understand the music. I call it "quick studies". Maybe we should create a thread for that here too. When I did this I treated quick studies as separate from sight reading practice.

As for reading a piece multiple times, of course you should read it multiples times. Yes, it's no longer technically sight reading but your brain makes better connections between the music and your fingers by repeating multiple times. You will better assimilate the skills by playing it through a couple of times until you get a relatively fluent attempt.

      BartK

      My most important breakthrough was when I started doing strict in-time sight reading with the metronome

      Thank you for posting that. It's not something I do, but as I have learned to trust your advice since the other forum, I tried today. The piece was one I read quite easily, the rhythm is uncomplicated, and I thought I was keeping good time. The metronome told me how wrong I was... Ouch.
      I now face some challenging learning, but hopefully it will be beneficial in the long run...
      Thank you!

        BartK Maybe we should create a thread for that here too.

        I found the thread in the other forum extremely useful. It was motivating, and a great source of material.

        • and I like your name "quick studies".

            Monviso Yeah. I was already wondering why nobody started a "40 pieces a year" thread so far. If I look at the YouTube channel of @iternabe ...

                WieWaldi LOL I never thought of it. You made me count how many I have uploaded. At my level, 40 seems doable, but I also feel that’s quite unfair to more advanced players.

                    iternabe No, it is not unfair to more advanced players. 40 pieces mean 40 pieces, and it is assumed that they are easy. With easy, I mean easy for your level. Whatever your level is. I think the difficulty should be between your playing level and your sight-reading level. Basically something you can learn within a week or maybe 10 days. This 40 pieces club works exactly the way you do are doing it right now.
                    If an advanced player insists, that every single section of a long piece counts as a piece for itself, then let it be that way. Actually I would encourage to do so.

                      6 days later

                      I downloaded all pieces from Beginner Level 2+3 from this site:

                      ranjit I found these pieces useful for initial sight reading progress.
                      https://gmajormusictheory.org/

                      Big thanks to ranjit for the link!🤩👍

                      Then I added each collection into a single pdf-anthology with index and page numbers. The first two have about 130 pages. This is way more material than the books I bought at Amazon. I also changed the order of the pieces here and there to avoid page turns of longer pieces. (Odd = left page, Even = right page)

                      If everything is done, it will be 8 books in total: Beginner 2+3+4+Classics and Intermediate 1+2+3+4
                      For now, this is by far the most fun resource to practice sight-reading. But I must admit the "Improve Your Sight-reading" by Paul Harris books are still very useful because they follow a didactic method. Introducing more complex keys, then enhancing the rythm and whatdoIknowwhatcomesnext. The problem with Paul Harris is to have not enough stuff to play before he ramps up the difficulty. And his "One piece a week" series sucks so far. Those pieces are no fun at all, maybe they follow a didactic scheme.

                      If someone is interested in the pdf (~130 pages, >20 MB), please write a PM.

                        Here is some more sight reading from me:

                        I've been reading pieces from 150 More of the Most Beautiful Songs Ever (Easy Piano). The arrangements here tend to be easier than the Dan Coates arrangements I was playing before. They are easy enough that sometimes I can play somewhat smoothly, like this one. I recorded three pieces today and this was by far the best. And yes, @WieWaldi I took the repeat! 🙂

                        I'm still getting used to the AirTurn. I sped up, and I stumbled in a few places even without the AirTurn. It's great to record sight reading once in a while to catch issues that I don't notice when I'm playing!

                        Still not your regular playing level, Roger. But this is sight-reading, meaning you act as a human CD-player. And having this in mind, I find it very impressive.
                        Looks like you accommodated with pad n pedal, congrats. Only thing, I am missing the iconic swooosh sound.

                          WieWaldi Looks like you accommodated with pad n pedal, congrats. Only thing, I am missing the iconic swooosh sound.

                          This is a good point. It’s probably possible to get the iPad to make a swoosh sound when changing pages. Or I could add it to the video… 😄

                            BartK The Four Star series is absolutely amazing. I thought RCM discontinued this series and only has the online app, which is embarassingly bad, but maybe they are still available. These books show you how to sight read with short exercises in rhythm and note reading. Each book is appropriate to the sight reading skills expected at that level, so for example the exercises in level 3 are much easier than repertoire of level 3. The preparatory books start with reading one note at a time and finding all the As, Bs, etc., like you would as a total beginner, and the level 10 asks you to basically sight read a page from a Beethoven sonata or a Debussy prelude or similar stuff (that's just so you have an idea of the range of these books). I bought these books 8 years ago and am still using them to this day (I'm on level 10 if anyone is curious 😉). If you can get those books then definitely do so.

                            The full set I ordered from eBay just landed on my front porch! Now I need to figure out how to slot sight reading into my daily practice routine.

                              11 days later

                              I was sight reading just now and I noticed that I'm applying accidentals subconsciously. I used to have to mentally keep track of them but now I noticed I played a passage and wasn't even thinking about the accidentals and I played the passage correctly.

                              I suppose that is why when you ask advanced sight readers how they do it they mostly don't have a precise answer other than "practice". I think if someone asked me just now how I did that I would have no clue. I read the accidentals on the page and my hands figured out where to go and my brain somehow kept track of which ones to apply when. There were even some naturals to cancel them and somehow it came out fine.

                              So yeah, now I get the people who say it's "practice" and don't offer any more help. If you do a lot of it your brain starts picking up the details subconsciously.

                                7 days later

                                BartK I was sight reading just now and I noticed that I'm applying accidentals subconsciously.

                                I must concentrate on the accidentals. And to the accidentals of the key, of course. But if I played a black note (e.g. F#) and I re-visit the same note shortly after, it is automated. Similar, like starting with a scale on a new key. The first runs are brain-work, but then the fingers can remember what they did a few seconds ago.

                                About keys and accidentals:
                                In the beginning I had a kind of a cheat-sheet to know what black keys to press at what amount of accidentals for flats and sharps. The only one I didn't need to look up something was the single F# and the single Bb. Maybe because I remembered this from my childhood playing accordion. I seldom played in a key with more than one accidental.

                                But during my sight-reading practice I figured out a very easy rule:
                                The black keys are always alternating between the 3-black-block and the 2-black-block. Of course starting on the 3-black block, otherwise the 2-black-block runs out of black keys.
                                And within each black block it is the same left/right order:

                                • # sharps from left to right
                                • b flats from right to left

                                And if I forget, I look to the keyboard and see with F# / Bb my first black key and know where to begin with.

                                Maybe I babble too much, this picture should illustrate what happens in my brain:

                                I know this might be trivial for those who are playing piano a bit longer or have had a good teacher or a good understanding in music theory. But for me this was very helpful.

                                Btw: if you press the keys in this order, it makes a nice sound. I assume this is related to the circle of fifths.

                                    WieWaldi
                                    Yes, that's the same order as that in which the sharps and flat are written in the key signature. I suppose you don't notice that until you have to write key signatures by hand. 😉

                                    Such tricks are good at the beginning but the goal should be to know which sharps/flats are in the key signature automatically. You do that by practicing your scales inside out until you can play any scale in your sleep. In a way that's similar to what you wrote about your fingers remembering the sharp/flat after you played it except it's permanent.

                                    But all of that is not really what I was talking about. I can already automatically play sharps/flats in every key signature. However, if there are accidentals that modify the key signature this is where things get more complicated. There are often chromatic notes that are not within the diatonic scale and then the automatism of the scale notes doesn't work and you have to consciously keep track of which notes are changed. That is until you get to the stage where this is also automatic. 😉

                                    So, I'm just giving my perspective from someone who has gone a little bit further down the road to sight reading mastery. 😉

                                        BartK I suppose you don't notice that until you have to write key signatures by hand. 😉

                                        Lol! This I actually knew from the beginning. But if I look at the F#, it is the top line of the treble staff. As a beginner, this isn't the F you begin to read. The first F you encounter is the one above middle C. On top of that, a note-head is a ball. A ball in the size of two lines on the staff, very easy to read in value. The symbols # and b are bigger and do overlap a lot more with the lines. For instance, on the b-symbol, not the center of the symbol is the location. It is the center of the o-ring of the b-symbol. My brain doesn't connect accidentals to a note-name, like a note-head does.

                                        If I see something like this, it is always a little bit of a guess work, what note-head is meant by the accidental:

                                        Edit: But as you mention it: This explains why the accidentals are always ordered in a zig-zag shape, and not just randomly placed: (Before that, I always had the impression, this zig-zag ordering is used to save space on the paper, haha)

                                        BartK Such tricks are good at the beginning but the goal should be to know which sharps/flats are in the key signature automatically.

                                        Yep - but it is still more helpful than learn to read notes with tricks like the "landmark system". Know your Cs and Gs in treble clef. Know your Cs and Fs in bass clef. Then you can count the missing lines. Or the "GBD FACE" trick. Not any helpful for sight-reading. It just replaces a lookup-table. But I feel more than 50% of all YouTube videos sell those tricks as the holy grail to beginner sight-readers.

                                        BartK However, if there are accidentals that modify the key signature this is where things get more complicated. There are often chromatic notes that are not within the diatonic scale and then the automatism of the scale notes doesn't work and you have to consciously keep track of which notes are changed.

                                        Haha, tell me something new! 😁

                                              17 days later

                                              Trying to upload here regularly to keep track of my progress. I realized it's actually a nice challenge, because you try to keep your sight reading as musical as possible when you know that people will listen to it.

                                              11 days later

                                              Digging this post up once again from the grave. I was looking through Heller Etudes and realized that the first two were quite sight readable. I apologize for the random AC noises, didn't realize it would be that loud when I was recording.

                                                ranjit I really like Heller's music.

                                                  BartK Claire Huangci is a scary good sight reader.