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?

                  I've been chewing this over a bit. Some random thoughts ...

                  I'd be hesitant to answer the question "Is sight-reading important?" in any universal way. I think it depends a lot on the individual player's goals and the kind of music they are playing. For example, I'm a huge fan of classic blues and boogie piano, and very few of the old masters could read music at all much less sight-read. Heck, very little of what they were playing was written down in the first place ...

                  "Is sight-reading important TO ME?" Somewhat. Since I'm primarily interested in blues and adjacent genres, I'm mostly learning songs by ear, improvising, etc. I do pick up licks and tricks from sheet music, but it's not really the sort of process that requires me to sight-read in real time. Having said that, decent sight-reading skills certainly allow me to learn that material faster, if only because I don't have to sit there and hack out things note by note.

                  Goal-wise, I do like the idea that I might get good enough to sit in with people, play some pick-up gigs, etc. To that end, I think I'd mostly be working from fake books (which is a different kind of sight-reading, I suppose), playing by ear, and just generally having a lot of genre-specific comping and soloing techniques under my belt so that I know what to do even without sheet music. However, I can certainly imagine some situations where there might be full-on sheet music that I'd have to work from, so I do work on sight-reading a bit toward that end.

                  As far as what I actually do to practice sight-reading, I used the Improve Your Sight-Reading books by Faber back when I was doing more traditional / classical piano. These days, I have a bunch of genre piano books (mostly the Hal Leonard Keyboard Style Series) and work from them, starting by sight-reading through the various exercises and tunes before I start learning them more seriously. Those fit my goals well, since they have the kind of piano parts that I'm likely to play (e.g., RH chords and LH bass) in the relevant contexts.

                  So, yeah. My thoughts about that. 🙂

                  Enthusiastic but mediocre amateur.

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

                  These are the books I've been sight reading from:

                  Easy Classics to Moderns
                  More Easy Classics to Moderns
                  The Giant Book of Intermediate Classical Piano Music
                  The Giant Book of Standards Sheet Music: Easy Piano

                  There are some pieces in "The Giant Book of Intermediate Classical Piano Music" that are also in the "Easy Classics to Moderns" books. That didn't bother me, I just played them again 🙂

                  Within each book the pieces vary in difficulty quite a bit, which makes it interesting. I'll sight read an easy piece one day and think "Great, I'm getting much better at this!". The next day, hard piece, and I think "Hmm, maybe not so good?".

                      rogerch thank you for sharing these, I’ve been thinking I should expand my sight reading sources beyond just classical and this standards book looks like it could be a good one for me! As well as fun to play!

                          Pallas

                          I also have no 17, and new classics to moderns.

                            Some sightreading/reading suggestions:

                            Essential Keyboard Repertoire, Vols. 1-4, published by Alfred.

                            These are classical pieces, Baroque to Modern, and are graded, with Vol. 1 being easiest and Vol. 4 the hardest. The series goes beyond Vol. 4, but I don't have those and can't say how useful they would be.

                              BicBic thank you for sharing these, I’ve been thinking I should expand my sight reading sources beyond just classical and this standards book looks like it could be a good one for me! As well as fun to play!

                              I have really enjoyed the standards book. Dan Coates has several other “Giant Book of” titles and I’m planning to pick another one when I’m done with the standards.