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!
