The Sight Reading Thread

@"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).

Thanks Pallas and everyone else for the very useful information! I have been a lifelong avid reader of both fiction and nonfiction, so I'm quite happy to add music reading to that skillset... gradually

WieWaldi you could look up the RCM complete syllabus online
https://rcmusic-kentico-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/rcm/media/main/about%20us/rcm%20publishing/piano-syllabus-2022-edition.pdf

Then check some of the pieces at each level on IMSLP to get a bit of an idea of the difficulty level of the RCM rep books

I'm using a couple of books in addition to the easiest repertoire I can find for sight reading: Paul Harris's "Improve Your Sight-Reading!" and Keith Snell/Diane Hidy's "Sight Reading" (Kjos).

Nowadays I'm going through easy pieces by various well known composers through imslp. I figure it would double as musical education.

Pallas Yep, go in chronological order and you start to see how the music evolved over the years too.

Sophia To the ones who have the book, is there any piece you would recommend to start with?

Hey Sophia I went through the book today looking for the easiest pieces. I did this after I read @WieWaldi 's post about looking at notes on the page and thinking about where the key is, and I'm afraid I may have given you a bum steer about "Easy Classics to Moderns" containing sight reading pieces for beginners.

WieWaldi, Sophia, Pallas, Nightowl, and others who are posting recordings: Your playing sounds really good and I am grateful that you are sharing recordings. I love listening to you play! You all play so well that I forget about what you may be going through with reading music. Thank you WieWaldi for reminding me and in no way do I mean to disparage anything you're doing! You are all amazing and I'm so glad you are here!

Anyway, I identified what I think are the three easiest pieces in "Easy Classics to Moderns" vol. 17:

Dmitri Kabalevsky: Chit-Chat, p. 138: I believe this is the easiest piece in the book. Only one hand plays at a time.

Dmitry Kabalevsky: First Dance, p. 136: This is probably much harder than Chit-Chat. If you work out the chords in the LH before playing it may be doable.

Jean Philippe Rameau: Rondino, p. 34: Played slowly this might be approachable. Watch out for the polyphony in the left hand in the second measure of the fourth line, or maybe just skip the last note in the left hand in that measure.

I suspect that "Chit-Chat" is the only piece that's even close to being sight readable. That's not a lot of sight reading material for a 160 page book!

I'm past being a beginner but when I was working my way through "Easy Classics to Moderns" I struggled with many of the pieces. It's amazing what the editors of these books call "Easy"!

I second that! Really really grateful for all the help and encouragement. I'm learning a lot as well! Most of all patience

For me sight-reading is relatively important. I have been playing piano for about 12 years and continuously work on it. In terms of my sight-reading or playing progress, I do not notice any difference from week-to-week or even month-to-month, but when I compare what and how I played a year ago versus today, then I do notice a difference. In general, my progress over the years was sort of steady, there was not a large jump or so.

Besides keyboard playing, when I learn a new piece on my bass guitar, I also make it a point to learn from the actual written bass notes, not the fret numbers on the bass tab.

One iPad app that helps me is "Note Trainer". This app has various options, I typically select random notes in the C2-C6 range in random keys and with accidentals. I do like 320 notes per day, 10 sessions at 32 notes each. Below is how that app looks like. I use the app in conjunction with a Bluetooth MIDI transmitter plugged into my keyboard.

I realize this is not really sight-reading, because these random notes are not in any context. But still, those exercises have helped me address my following weaknesses:

a) Recognize from the sheet music which note it is
b) Find that note on the keyboard
c) Remember the key in which the song is played
d) Recognize accidentals
e) And do a) through d) fast enough so that it does not hold back my playing.

All the best,
MandM

WieWaldi There is also a series of complementary books - Improve Your Sight-Reading! A Piece a Week, by the same author (Paul Harris). The books are also graded from Grade 1 to Grade 8, and available for Kindle and as print books. I think they are a great addition to the original learning series.

Gooseberry Thanks you, added links to big list.

I found there are often 3 versions (like here):

• kindle (cheapest)
• Paperback
• Sheet Music (by far most expensive)

Does anybody what separates the sheet music from the paperback version?