I know this subject has been beaten to death on the other forum but I haven't seen one here yet. I'm curious to know what are people's opinions on this topic. Now, I don't want this to be a hair-splitting debate about the definition of "sight reading" and wheather that means first time only or more general reading. To me that is an entirely boring and unimportant point that some people seem obsess about for some reason. For this discussion let's say I mean general music reading skills whether the first try or the 5th doesn't really make much difference because the same skill set is used.

Some questions for this topic:

  • Do you think sight reading is important? Why or why not?
  • Do you practice sight reading?
  • What methods do you use? What has worked or what hasn't?

So, I personally think this is the absolute most important skill to have and it's also one of the most neglected by amateurs. My dream is to be able to basically pick any piece at random from my sizeable collection of sheet music and just play it perfectly for pleasure without having to practice it for many weeks. I think it's much more interesting and also much more impressive to be able to play anything on the spot for hours on end than repeating the same repertoire of 3 pieces over and over no matter how virtuosic (yes, even if you play a Liszt TE I'll be less impressed 😉).

Of course, that's the dream and it's still a long way off but I have made progress towards that goal.

So, in my first few years of piano my teacher was pushing me quite fast towards more difficult pieces and I was making very quick progress through the levels - or at least my technical and musical skills advanced pretty quickly. Unfortunately, my reading was lagging behind and the fact that I was playing pieces much more difficult than I could read meant that I didn't develop my reading skills naturally and had to catch up ever since. Over the last two years but especiallly this last year I noticed a big jump in reading ability and comfort while reading. I attribute this in large part to the fact that I made this a priority but also to the way I approach sight reading now.

In my experience I think there are a couple of important things to keep in mind:

  • Sight reading develops extremely gradually and you practically cannot speed it up in any significant way. It just takes years. While you can definitely slow down your development by neglecting that skill there isn't much you can do to quickly catch up and be a great sight reader.
  • For best results it's good to have your sight reading lag by no more than 2-3 levels behind what you can play. If your technical skills develop far past that then you will be relying too much on muscle memory for learning pieces rather than following the music and that will cause your reading to lag further in a viscious circle.
  • Always following the music with your eyes while playing is an excellent habit. Some people object "but the pieces I'm playing are too hard and I can't possibly always look up". While that's true sometimes I think that's an excuse and actually there are advanced pianists that play even virtuosic music while looking at the sheet. I have found that as my reading skills developed I'm more aware of proprioception and can easily find chord jumps from the corner of my eye or even without looking. Even as I'm playing through fast pieces I am almost always looking at the sheet so I think it's definitely possible. You just need to re-assess your true sight reading level and pick pieces that you can play while reading.
  • While we're on the subject of difficulty levels I think many people just play music that's too hard for them. I'm guilty of this too. I used to push myself and always pick pieces at the edge of my abilities such as Chopin etudes and stuff. Nowadays I pick pieces that are much easier, which I can sight read through in one sitting and it's like a breath of fresh air. I can really focus on musicality from day one and my practice is much more enjoyable. I am 100% certain that picking pieces this way and always following the music with my eyes while playing it has contributed to improving my reading skills. I'm no longer interested in playing super virtuosic pieces (well, at least not until my reading catches up and I can sight read them 😉).
  • The best advice is still just do it. I know it's not very specific and actionable but it's the most important part. Just find some time every day to play new music. My current practice day starts with about 40 minutes of sight reading from various sources. You don't have to do that much but even 10 minutes a day is good enough to make progress.

I have some more specific and actionable tips too but this post is already getting big and I'm curious to know what others have to say. I can chime in later with some of my specific methods.

    Sight reading has always been my weakest skill on the piano. The fact that I can do it pretty well on the cello, better than even right-hand alone on the piano (I'm right-handed) indicates to me that there is ideally some sort of "pattern arranging" that goes on in the brain ahead of time. These pre-formulated hand positions and shapes (in terms of mental mapping before actually playing the notes) are pretty much second nature to me on the cello, but not so much on the piano. I'd be very surprised if there were not at least a few YouTube videos had illustrate how to work on this ability.
    On one thing virtually everyone agrees: start reading music that's fairly simple and very gradually increase the complexity. I'd be the first to admit that it's rather disheartening when my progress is so slow.

    Thanks Bart, that all makes sense to me and my overall take from your post is that there are no short cuts to becoming good at sight reading, it is a skill that takes patience and time to build gradually. I also agree about the wisdom of not attempting pieces that are way beyond our level of sight reading and/or acquired skill level - we need to stretch our skills, but the trick is not to overstretch ourselves, which could be counterproductive. For these reasons I am using Alfred's Broadway Hits book 1 for my additional material, while working through Alfred's course book 2. The book 1 hits are aligned with the book 1 level, so they are light relief to book 2. I might get hits book 2 at some point when I'm much further into course book 2. (That sounds like an ad for Alfred's books, but believe me, I'm not on commission! I just find those books work for me.)

    "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

    BartK Some questions for this topic:
    Do you think sight reading is important? Why or why not?

    Absolutely and for the same reasons as given in BartK's post; that is being able to open a score and play reasonably well. I'm unable to sight read every piece as I have limitations and will always make errors...so what. It is ok to slow down tempo. It is good fun and relaxing just to open a book of music that is not being intensively studied and just play through a few tunes.

    Do you practice sight reading?

    I just do it and no longer view it as practice anymore. It is enjoyment. Earlier on in my learning experience I did put aside time to practise this skill. Over thirty years ago I would ask my first teacher as a returning adult how to improve and the answer was"just practice".

    What methods do you use? What has worked or what hasn't?

    I would suggest songs (meaning those that are sung) and hymns are good because they tend not to jump about the keyboard. Playing some movements from the Bach French suites helped me greatly as I had to keep eyes glued to the music and wasn't able to keep looking down at hands. It is the ability to play without looking at hands that is the key to sight reading. I found three very brief books on sight reading extremely useful. Guided Sight Reading by Helen Lockhart, books 1 to 3.

      I too think that sight reading is a vital skill to develop. I think it would make the difference between reading a book by spelling out each word individually - and being able to sit back, relax and let the story wash over you. Not that I'm able to sight read like that just yet, I wish!

      That said I don't practise it per se. Like others here I like to go back to earlier/easier pieces and try to sight read them, rather than spelling out each note. I don't feel my reading skills are THAT far behind my physical skills. That's not because my reading is better than it should be, it's just that my dexterity is not what it used to be so my brain is almost able to keep up with my sluggish fingers ^_^

      Thanks for the detailed post. I'll have to come back and ready it more carefully. I just wanted to quickly say that I don't practice sight reading, but I do read a lot of pieces at a much easier level for enjoyment. I think that, above and beyond anything else, has contributed to being able read music more efficiently than when I started.

      I'll never be put into a position sight read something I've never seen before on the spot. So for me, reading efficiency is a very important skill. Helps to learn new pieces a lot faster and more efficiently.

      Keep reading new pieces, and read from the sheet when playing. If you want to memorize, then memorize it! But I don't memorize everything I learn and if I do, I'll forget it eventually when I stop playing the piece, so I'll have to go back to the sheet.

      BartK I don't want this to be a hair-splitting debate about the definition of "sight reading" and wheather that means first time only or more general reading.

      I think it was two or three people who were particularly pedantic about this on the other forum!

      About reading, my sight reading is fine but not outstanding. My philosophy about this is that it’s good enough for me to work on the things that I want to work on. I wish it were better, but for myself, I’d rather spend time on ‘stretch’ pieces that I can chew over for long periods of time rather than feeling like I can just pull something out and read it easily. It’s what I find satisfying at this stage of my piano journey and what keeps me motivated, so I don’t spend lots of time sight reading. I have gone through short phases where I do more of this, but it just doesn’t stick as something I want to do.

      There was a short period of time in college when I did a little bit of accompanying at church. I think if I got into something like that again, I’d feel the need to really work on this as a skill. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

      I will also add, I played flute for a little while in school. I was overall much more invested in piano, but sight reading flute music always felt quite trivial, whereas sight reading piano music was always more of an endeavor.

      I agree that to get better at it, you just have to do it, and do it consistently. Like everything else, if you want to feel comfortable with a wide variety of styles, you need to sight read a wide variety of styles (doing lots of Bach chorales is not going to really help you sight read Chopin or Mozart or pop music).

      For those taking lessons, I had a piano teacher who would spend some time during lessons playing duets with me, and I think this was primarily to work on sight reading — and also to start working on aspects that are important to collaborative playing, such as togetherness. I really enjoyed this part of lessons — the music with 4 hands was much more interesting-sounding than what I could sight read on my own.

          Sight reading also depends on your ability to see clearly. For instance, I screwed up and read a transition wrong and played it that way for a week or so before I noticed it. It wasn't that bad of a screw up, I read it as Eb instead of Fn, but I shouldn't have made such an idiotic mistake. I only did it because the copy of the score is a bit fuzzy at that point and even with my glasses on I didn't see it clearly enough.

          (Now I have to go unlearn that measure and relearn it the right way. Which is tough because my memory is being stubborn and refuses to forget this bit of information like it does everything else.)

          Sgisela My philosophy about this is that it’s good enough for me to work on the things that I want to work on. I wish it were better, but for myself, I’d rather spend time on ‘stretch’ pieces that I can chew over for long periods of time rather than feeling like I can just pull something out and read it easily. It’s what I find satisfying at this stage of my piano journey and what keeps me motivated, so I don’t spend lots of time sight reading. I have gone through short phases where I do more of this, but it just doesn’t stick as something I want to do.

          That's perfectly fine and everyone has different goals. For me it was the opposite. I used to push my limits with stretch pieces and was always working hard to learn the next couple of measures but after a while I found it exhausting. I just want to relax after work and play something nice. I still intend to play mildly challenging pieces and make some technical progress that way over time but my main goal has shifted.

            Pallas Thanks for the reply. I agree that it is a very good idea to obtain as many different method books as you are able, at the lower level, and to just play through those tunes as a means of relaxation, enjoyment and importantly to improve sight reading. This approach would have suited me much better when I returned to piano in middle age and I think I may have learned faster.

              Okay, I promised to share some more specific tips so here we go.

              • My most important breakthrough was when I started doing strict in-time sight reading with the metronome and followed the advice to always keep going even after messing up. So, for a very long time I was of the opinion that it wasn't that important and I just can't get myself to keep going anyway so what's the point? Then, one day I decided enough excuses I'm just going to do it. I picked suuuper ultra easy material - total beginner stuff (this was when I was already playing advanced Chopin), set the metronome tempo to "ridiculously slow", and started playing without ever stoping to correct anything. From that point onwards I gradually increased the difficulty but always kept this rule of not ever stopping. I don't always succeed - for example, if I pick a tempo that's too fast - but I will always play the piece enough times so I can play it through end to end in strict time. In my opinion, this is by far the number one improvement I made to my sight reading practice and has vastly improved my confidence and comfort. Trust me when I say this really, truly works.
              • I don't do this very often anymore buy I used to practice the rhythm separately before playing the notes. Tap the rhythm hands together in your lap strictly in time with the metronome.
              • Count out loud while sight reading. This is an additional difficulty so you can try it on your second or third run after you played the piece through to increase the challenge. This really makes you aware of where each beat falls even when the rhythm is complicated.
              • One mistake I made early on was to "cram" a lot of sight reading of one book every day. I would pick a book of easy pieces and read maybe 10-20 pieces every day. The problem with that is that the pieces in the book quickly became too difficult and I was stuck. I had to go back to the beginning or find a different book. A much better approach, which I used for a long time while going through graded books, is to play only one piece per day. Yes, just one. You need to truly sight read it in strict time (see above) and your brain needs some time to process that and gradually become faster at recognizing patterns while you progress through the book. It's not something you can do by reading 10 pieces. You have to read one and then rest. Then the next day read another, etc. Over time you will progress enough that you will not hit a difficulty wall that cannot be overcome. If you need more material then instead of going quickly through one book you should rather have multiple books of approximately the same level that you go through at the same time, playing one piece per day from each.
              • Sight read lots of different and varied music is very important. You can use hymn books or Bach chorales but playing only those will only make you good at sight reading that type of music. Sight reading is mostly pattern recognition and you have to sight read lots of different music to become familiar with all those different patterns.
              • Not looking down and looking ahead in the music is something that develops naturally over time so don't fret about it.
              • Practice your scales, chords, and arpeggios until you can find the notes automatically on the keyboard without thinking about it.
              • Don't name notes. Sight read by intervals and by pattern recognition. The way I read chords for example is that I see a certain pattern on the sheet and that translates to a certain shape that I make with my hand without thinking about individual notes (and I practiced my scales so much I automatically know where the sharps or flats of the key signature are).

              So these are my tips for improving sight reading. I still wouldn't call myself a great sight reader but I know I made significant progress using these tips.

                Great thread!

                Historically I've been a lousy sight reader because I'm a memorizer. Most of what I played were stretch pieces, taking months to learn. For me the process of playing a passage repeatedly results in me memorizing it with very little explicit effort. So after a few weeks of working on a hard piece it was mostly memorized and I mostly stopped using the score. If I tried to play from the score later I sometimes couldn't even do it!

                Similar to you @BartK a few years ago I decided I wanted to be able to sit down at a piano and just play something, without having to work on it for months. I've taken the path of learning to improvise, and that has been really fun!

                Last year after reading about sight reading on PianoWorld I decided being able to sight read easy music would be another fun way to sit down and play. So I added sight-reading to my daily practice. I don't time it so I don't know how long I spend each day. I've gone through several books of easier classical music, and now I'm having fun working through Dan Coates's arrangements of Standards. These pieces are super fun to play!

                I've tried some different approaches, including:

                • Read through the piece without playing, noting the structure, key signature, accidentals, and tricky-looking spots. Then play it.
                • Read through the piece and play little snippets that look tricky. Look for any chords I don't immediately recognize and figure them out. The play it.
                • Play the piece completely cold from beginning to end.

                I haven't settled on a single strategy. Each day's sight reading session I may use a different approach.

                If the pieces I'm playing are short I'll play more than one. If they're longer I'll only play one. With the Dan Coates Standards I usually play two per day.

                I usually play each piece twice, noting any improvement on the second playing. Sometimes the second playing is worse than the first one.

                If I really like a piece I will play it more than twice. For a particularly fun piece I'll go back and play it more later, but not as part of my sight reading practice.

                I try to play without stopping but I'm not consistent about it. Thanks for the suggestion of using a metronome, I think that would help me.

                The easier piano music is usually in C, F, G, or D. I'm really happy when I find a piece in Eb or A. I would like to be sight reading in all 12 keys, not just the ones with few sharps and flats. I'm working on moving to digital scores rather than sheet music and I'm hoping the software will be able to transpose the pieces to any key so I can pick an easy piece and then play it F# or my favorite key Ab.

                After sight reading for almost a year I'm much better at it than I was when I started. I've gone from only being able to sight read the very easiest of pieces to being able to read some easier intermediate pieces. While I feel like I've come a long way progress is slow and gradual, just like everything else with piano. I'm OK with that, it's all about the journey!

                I never used to practice sight reading. I think I was naturally ‘ok’ (always got high marks on it in exams, unlike the aural section…)

                In my latest restart of piano practice (since November) I decided to incorporate sight reading into my practice (which is not daily!)

                I spend 3-5 mins on it in my normally 30-40 min sesh, which is normally one or two pieces. I have a few different books I go through - e.g. Bach chorales, Bartok for children, kabalevsky children’s album, Tchaikovsky album for the young etc.

                I have a reminder I wrote stuck to my piano on choosing sight reading -

                So I have i play slow enough that I basically get the notes more or less right and it’s all in rhythm and no hesitation (tho I don’t used a metronome…) If I think the next piece in one of my go to books is too hard then I go to another.

                I’m not much more than 6 months into piano practice, but I do think doing the sight reading has helped me regain old skills better. It’s also nice to be able to just play stuff somewhat recognisably, like when my daughter asks me to play some random song from the Disney book.

                Sgisela
                On the flute vs piano thing, yes! I was exactly the same on clarinet, could sight read so easily compares to piano as there’s only one set of notes to play!

                  My teacher gave me a piece of advice which helped me push past a hump.

                  • Go through the score (or one page of the score). Name the chords in your mind, track the melody. Observe any tricky spots where you have jumps, etc. which could throw you off. Then, play through the piece without stopping. For a couple of weeks, I would just spend 2-3 minutes staring at the score before playing a note. I've toned that down since, but it really helped me get used to the "tracking" eye movement which is used for sight reading.
                  • Learning more difficult repertoire naturally increases your level of sight reading over time. But this has not always worked for me, so I'm assuming there are preconditions that must be met for this to be helpful.

                  I don’t do sight reading regularly for the sake of improving my reading. The pieces I’m working on are time- consuming already. A lot of people with a teacher probably only play their assigned pieces than looking for unfamiliar ones on their own.

                  In my younger days I learned to read the treble clef playing violin. After starting piano, I find that I can read some pieces with the bottom clef in treble like the middle section of the popular Mozart Sonata in C with the theme played in F major. Takes a while to learn the bass clef… mainly recognizing the very low notes below the staff.

                  I’m not a beginner so I can play through the pieces in the Alfred’s Adult Piano Course I & II and Faber Adult Piano Adventures I & II the first time up to 2 retries.

                  A lot of technical pieces you’re not only reading the notes but working on the finger sequences at the same time. Just reading the notes is not enough. I need to write finger # into the score as reminder.

                  Once got into a heated discussion with somebody over a slow movement of a sonatina. It was assigned by the teacher about 2 years ago out of a RCM-3 book. The LH has repeated chords in arpeggios C-E-G & F-A-C while the RH plays a melody over it. The other person was a beginner going into intermediate. He said that he had trouble putting the piece together and told his teacher to drop it twice before learning it reasonably well on the third attempt. I told the man it took me 2 weeks to learn the notes of the piece about 2 1/2 min and another week to solidify my playing. Made him feel bad that he needed 3 tries to get it. It’s in a level 3 book so I consider it lower intermediate. It’s a slow movement in Andante so for learning can drop the tempo to Adagio or Largo (slow practice) what many people would do. Don’t want to comment why he needed to drop the piece twice before learning it. Guess everybody is different.

                  BartK I used to use the metronome during reading practice, but somehow got out of the habit. Not sure why I haven't been doing it this year. Based on your experience, I'll definitely add it back in.

                  Not looking down and looking ahead in the music is something that develops naturally over time so don't fret about it.

                  That is encouraging. Proprioception is one of my biggest challenges to keeping my eyes on the music.

                  Practice your scales, chords, and arpeggios until you can find the notes automatically on the keyboard without thinking about it.

                  Also good to know. Forgetting to apply sharps and flats from the key signature is another challenge I have. A good reason not to neglect scale, chord, arpeggio practice.

                    Here are some thoughts from a seasoned sight-reader.

                    The most important thing about sight-reading is not to see how many notes you get right, it's to see how quickly you can understand what the music is about.

                    Think of learning to read a language. You first learn to understand and speak your language. Before you start learning to read, you are already fluent in speaking: you can take part in conversation, listen to stories, tell stories, recite poems... When you begin learning to read, at first you're stumbling over individual letters. You get used to combinations of these letters making up words which you already know. Then you string these words together and get to the stage where you can read a whole sentence and grasp what it means. When you've got this far, you start reading stories, and if you take delight in discovering new stories, you read more and more and become a fluent reader.

                    For me, it's logical to learn music the same way. You start by listening and copying, you get familiar with the sounds, you learn to play simple tunes, you get the feel of certain chords and rhythms, and only then do you start learning how all this is communicated through dots on a page.

                    I think many adults get the idea that they should be better at reading and look for recipes to learn to sight-read fast. They need to understand that learning to sight-read takes time and goes hand in hand with learning about how music works: harmony, rhythm, structure, style... The nice thing is this: once you get to the stage where you can read music - not sight-reading at super speed, just the basics - the more you read, the more information about music theory you will assimilate without having to consciously analyse it. It's just like reading books in your language: the more you read, the more you gain an "instinctive" understanding of grammar and style, how to tell a story well, or how to tell one badly.

                    So for beginners:
                    Don't get in a sweat about sight-reading, give it time!
                    Just remember read music that is new to you from time to time. Slowly, not too much at once. Think of it as reading a story: you want to enjoy it, not push through relentlessly even if you're not understanding what you're reading. When you listen to a recording, see how well you can follow with the score.

                    And for more advanced pianists:
                    Read through lots of music for the pleasure of discovering it!
                    Take a piece you don't know and read it. Don't try to play it at speed, don't worry about stopping or going back over something, but try to get a feeling for how it should sound. What's the key? What's the mood? Do you understand the harmonies? If you come across some tricky rhythms, see if you can speak or tap them. If a passage sounds weird, play it again to see if you got the harmonies right. If a passage sounds particularly nice, play it again for the pleasure! When you feel you have a good idea of how the piece should go, you could listen to a recording and see if it comes close to your imagined version.

                    The more time you spend discovering music like this, the nearer you will get to what might be called "real" sight-reading: keeping time and not stopping while managing to get enough of the notes, rhythms and dynamics right so that you manage to convey the essence of the piece.

                    I got this book: Sight-Reading & Harmony (Complete Edition)
                    It contains about 160 one-liners in different keys (from 3 flats over plain C up to 3 sharps). Each one-liner is printed in 5 different difficulty levels on one page. All the one-liners are chorales - with a German title (no lyrics, haha).

                    I tried to do it, but I gave up when I was confronted with keys I couldn't play. I said to myself: If I get to a piece with a new key, I practice the scale in this key, before. And then things got boring.

                    I think I will pick up this book again, because I really agree it is very important to be able to have good music reading skills, and some sight-reading skills, too. This should speed up the learning progress tremendously. Thanks @BartK, for this thread. I take it as a friendly reminder.

                    btw: Can anyone start a list with good material for sight-reading training?