@"MRC »#p6676
QUOTE « 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. » END QUOTE
THIS !!!
I learned how to read music at the same time I learned how to read (a, b, c …). As a result, sight reading is very much second nature to me and I will forever be grateful to my parents for my childhood piano lessons even though my dad was just beginning his career at the time with a new house, wife and kids so finances were really tight and $5 a week for lessons weighed heavily on the family budget.
I would just have two comments to add to many of the points already raised in this thread.
First I feel the point made by MRC is spot on with the analogy to language. If I paraphrase further his writing to the music world, at first one is reading individual notes and this turns into recognizing chords (let’s see a D, then an F# and an A …. hey that’s D major on fundamental - without even having to stop and analyze it). The cognitive pattern recognition later evolves to a higher level where one now pretty well automatically sees a series of chord related notes (whether together or in sequence one after the other - arpeggiated) and then to a chord progression structure (think sentences in grammar). So, by now in one glimpse you acquire the ability to have a pretty good idea of a few bars of music at a time. At this point, you only need to focus on the irregularities i.e. notes that stick out like a sore thumb in the otherwise regular chord pattern. For example, if an F Maj 7 also has a G written in there, your concentration is on that one irregularity as the rest is already known territory.
So there is a big difference on having your attention drawn to a whole bunch of discrete notes as opposed to only focusing on the irregularities. Knowing your scales and chords on the tip of your fingers is obviously pretty well required at this stage. At least that is how it works for me.
My second point is that I wonder if people have realistic expectations as to what constitutes the definition of sight reading. There are obviously many levels to this skillset. I get the sense that for many wanting to take any piece of written music score and sight reading it right away with perfect rendition at the keyboard is a little bit like the proverbial pie in the sky (sorry to burst your bubble). I would suggest that this would depend on the difficulty level of the score with respect to your current level of playing and reading skills. If the score is below your level, even if only a little bit, then you would likely be quite successful (but not necessarily perfect depending) and in any case it would only take just a few passes at most to have the piece under your fingers. (you may need to figure out best fingering to use in some passages for instance, or maybe there are some large jumps you need to tame, etc).
