The Sight Reading Thread

BartK · 2024-06-15T15:29:04+00:00

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...

ShiroKuro

So back to your other questions (if I’m still allowed in this thread 🙂
Hopefully you get the point that I am one of those people who really cares about sightreading. Like Bart, I really, really want to be able to sit down at the piano, open up a score book, and play through it for fun. To me, this includes being able to play close to the intended tempo as well, because that’s where you start to really enjoy the music.

And I really agree with Bart that developing this skill can only happen with pieces that are below your playing ability. Well, and for those pieces that are at or above your playing ability, the read-playing approach is a way to make sure you’re practice general reading skills.

Still I also like to have stretch pieces, and I believe working on pieces above my current level helps push me forward, so my approach over the years has been to work on pieces of a range difficulties so that I get the technical pushes from harder pieces and so that I can develop reading fluency with the easier pieces.

WAIT! That idea, reading fluency, is what’s missing from my post above about read-playing. I think read-playing is essential to develop reading fluency, and reading fluency the contributes to your ability to sightreading truly new pieces. (Ok, sorry to go on about that… but it is helping me articulate it for my own benefit…

To this end, over the years I’ve done different things, like using dedicated sightreading books (a line a day and others) and also played through pieces below my ability (this has gotten easier as my ability has gone up).

For a while, I was trying to play through pieces in the “Classics to Moderns” series, which are ok, but limited in some ways as others above have noted. But the biggest thing for me is that I don’t play classical music and it’s not the kind of music I want to play, so I have often looked for contemporary pieces to use for this purpose. During the pandemic, I bought several different books of contemporary compositions and used those the way I used the Classics to Moderns books.

This thread is reminding me to get those out and maybe add them to my practice routine again.

Later this evening, I’ll come back to this thread and list some of those titles in case other people are interested in non-classical options for sightreading practice.

BartK

ShiroKuro That idea, reading fluency, is what’s missing from my post above about read-playing. I think read-playing is essential to develop reading fluency, and reading fluency the contributes to your ability to sightreading truly new pieces.

Yes, the more you do any activity the more fluent you get at it (obviously) and doing all of your practicing while also reading the music is going to add many hours of reading experience. But I still think that dedicated sight reading practice in strict time has had a tremenously positive effect on my reading ability. It's a different kind of experience where you have to deal with issues on the spot as they arise and learn how to get out of trouble gracefully. You learn to recognize patterns more rapidly. You learn to use intuition to guess at some of the notes based on patterns you know. You learn to let go of errors. You learn to find notes without looking and keep moving your eyes ahead in the music. All of these and more are developed much more significantly when doing strict sight reading, IMO.

ShiroKuro

Ok last post in this thread (for now) and then i have to go to work 😅

So, I want to make a little tip sheet for myself to print out and have by my piano, and I want it to be “short and sweet,” simple phrases that trigger the ideas< rather than paragraphs of explanations…. So based on all the ideas in this thread, here is the beginning of a tip sheet.

Sightreading tips:
Use a metronome and play in strict time
Play through without stopping
Play through mistakes
Count out loud

I’ve left some things out that are obvious to me (like, choose easy material, look through the piece first…)

But what else would you add to this list of tips?

ShiroKuro

Thanks Bart, you reminded me of one more to add to

ShiroKuro Sightreading tips:
Use a metronome and play in strict time
Play through without stopping
Play through mistakes
Count out loud

Actively look ahead in the score

Ok, now, here's one more, or potentially a question.

I've read, and had piano teachers agree, that it's best to read from the bottom up, i.e., from the bass clef up to the treble clef.

I do not do this. Or rather, I almost never do when I'm playing or practicing repertoire material.

Does anyone here do this (actively read from bass clef up to treble clef) for sightreading? @BartK ?

BicBic

ShiroKuro I like the way you describe this, I have noticed that it’s good for me to force myself to properly read the music when playing pieces I know quite well, partly to make sure i haven’t inadvertently had something wrong creep in there!

Interested to see your non classical sight reading sources, although i almost entirely play classical, I would like my sight reading to include non classical as this is sometimes the type of music i play through without learning (eg Christmas music in December, Disney music on request etc)

Your sticky note looks similar to mine, except I also have the reminder to make sure I’m choosing easy enough music that I will be getting it mostly right!

BartK

ShiroKuro
Absolutely! Your read-playing idea is basically what I have been doing for the past few years. Sometimes there is a very technical spot where you just have to keep your eyes on the keys but even then you should still be able to mostly keep track of where you are in the music. A good test is if your teacher or anyone pointed to a measure and told you to start there would you stumble in confusion for a few seconds and have to go back to the nearest known starting point or are you able to just look at the music, know where you are, and resume playing from there? I know it took me some time to be able to do that.

Stub

BartK A good test is if your teacher or anyone pointed to a measure and told you to start there would you stumble in confusion for a few seconds and have to go back to the nearest known starting point or are you able to just look at the music, know where you are, and resume playing from there?

My answer is no if I don't have any fingering written in, yes if I do. An even harder test is if your teacher says start on the second part of beat 2 in measure 38, or some such random spot. Being able to start on a random measure, or in a random spot in the measure, works only if you can also use fingering that works with what came before and what comes after.

Stub

ShiroKuro I think this is perhaps one of the most important activities one can do to develop sightreading ability. In other words, over time, active reading of known pieces contributes to the ability to sightread new pieces, i.e., to play through a piece of music you’ve never seen or only seen and played a few times.

My thought as well. I don't practice sight reading per se, but I do actively read and over time my ability to pick up a new piece and "read" through it has increased; with increased ability to read new pieces, my speed of learning those new pieces has increased. I don't see myself picking up a piece I've never seen before and playing it in front of somebody--there are people who do, and more power to them--but it's not something I see myself doing. What I do see as the benefit of better sightreading/reading is making it easier to start new pieces at or above one's level.

ShiroKuro

BartK But I still think that dedicated sight reading practice in strict time has had a tremenously positive effect on my reading ability.

100% agree.

It's a different kind of experience where you have to deal with issues on the spot as they arise and learn how to get out of trouble gracefully. You learn to recognize patterns more rapidly. You learn to use intuition to guess at some of the notes based on patterns you know. You learn to let go of errors. You learn to find notes without looking and keep moving your eyes ahead in the music. All of these and more are developed much more significantly when doing strict sight reading, IMO.

Yes, yes, yes, and yes!!

I didn't mean to imply (with all my rambling about read-playing) that actual focused sightreading isn't needed.

It most definitely is. I have gotten away from it, but this thread has inspired me to revisit my sightreading materials. I'm going to print out that tip list (as soon as I'm confident it's mostly complete) and get a book or two out and ready, and plan to add sightreading to my standard practice routine.

BartK

ShiroKuro I've read, and had piano teachers agree, that it's best to read from the bottom up, i.e., from the bass clef up to the treble clef.

I don't think most teachers agree on this and I don't believe there are hard and fast rules like that. It depends on the patterns in the music.

Honestly, I don't think that I'm reading in any regular direction from the bottom or from the top. What I'm doing is more like trying to quickly find patterns at a glance and using that information subconciously while reading details. For example, if I see that the left hand is playing a broken chord Alberti bass for the next measure I just put my left hand in that position and play the notes automatically while focusing on the treble clef, then I look ahead to see how the pattern changes in the next measure and prepare for that. If the pattern is different I might do something different, for instance I might notice that the hands are moving together or appart in thirds or that the notes are repeated in a regular pattern up a fifth or something like that. You have to become good at seeing the patterns at a glance and acting on them without much thought while saving brain time for decyphering the important details. It's much like not thinking about the spelling of each word while reading text.

Maybe the "look at the bass first" advice is a way to get students to notice the bass chord changes quickly and focus on reading the melody. That might work in some music but not always.

lilypad

ShiroKuro

ShiroKuro Coming into this thread late and have lots to say… 😅
But first, has anyone else used the Super Sightreading Secrets book? I have it, and years ago worked through most of it… but now I can’t remember whether I liked it or found it useful or not. 😁

I've had that book around for many years and have used it off and on. At some point, I have too much trouble keeping my place in the visual perception drills and set it aside. I like the keyboard orientation drills, but didn't advance very far because they're supposed to be practiced as sets with the visual perception drills where I kept getting stuck early on. I still have the book and may return to it for just the keyboard orientation drills, since that seems to be my biggest barrier to keeping my eyes on a page of music. Oddly, I can often manage octave or even greater leaps without looking down, but smaller intervals (4ths, etc.) often challenge me.

ShiroKuro

BartK Maybe the "look at the bass first" advice is a way to get students to notice the bass chord changes quickly and focus on reading the melody.

I asked my teacher about this recently actually... but it was well before this thread started, and not in the context of sightreading per se... I think he said the reason has something to do with harmony, but oddly enough I can't remember what he said! 😅
I have a lesson today, maybe I'll ask again. He's pretty patient! 😃

I'm pretty sure that I'm most often looking most at the treble clef, but I think it depends on the score of course. I'll try to pay attention to what I'm doing when I practice tonight

Josephine

ShiroKuro

I also asked my last teacher about it. He said that you have to start with the treble, and then bass, and you have to read a few bars ahead of your playing. I was there to improve my sight reading, so he was focused on that. One of the exercises I had to do during a lesson was to play a new piece from sheet music, and as soon as it went well I had to transpose it to a different key at the spot. So I had to play the piece from sheet music, but in different keys. Maybe because you don't start to memorize it as fast this way, I don't know what it was for to be honest. Does someone else know what it is for?

keff

I participated in an online sight reading course run by Lona Kozik during covid lockdowns. Her advice was to read the lowest notes first which I find quite difficult.

WieWaldi

keff I participated in an online sight reading course run by Lona Kozik during covid lockdowns. Her advice was to read the lowest notes first which I find quite difficult.

She was talking about chords, right? I think it comes down to training and how you are used to doing it. The background of this advice is, in my opinion, that the name of the root-note is the important one, you need to know. And normally the root note is the lowest note.

BUT: there is no guarantee that the chord isn't inverted, so in my opinion this advice is pretty worthless. If she learned it that way from her teacher, she got used to doing it that way and then this is the easiest for her. And because this is the easiest for her, she is teaching the same to her students.

Let me propose what I think is best for chord reading (and I will train this way):

treble clef / RH: read from bottom to top
bass clef / LH: read from top to bottom

Or to be more precise, read the "inner" note and memorize the shape of the chord (also the inverted ones). The reason for this is simple. If you need to look down to your hands, place your eye on the inner finger (e.g. thumb) and the rest of the chord is then just muscle memory. And if you orientate in the center of the keyboard for both hands, your eye has to move a smaller distance, and you can check both hand with a single glimpse.
(I find it very slow to place my left hand with the pinky as reference finger. Especially if the hand does a jump and the destination key is covered by my hand.)

Some time ago, Sam posted a link to a video where the eyes or pianists are looking at. And I found in case of looking to the keyboard, the eye is often oriented to the thumb (or where the thumb needs to go).

JohnCW

My tip, probably already covered in thread WAY to long to read all the way through.

Use a printed score. First work out all the chords if not indicated, an write them on the score including what inversion it is. Next identify and notes on ledger lines that are beyond what you instinctively know. Write the note beside it. Then figure out you fingering and write that one score.

Now just practice it, adjusting figuring if necessary.

lilypad

JohnCW My tip, probably already covered in thread WAY to long to read all the way through.

Use a printed score. First work out all the chords if not indicated, an write them on the score including what inversion it is. Next identify and notes on ledger lines that are beyond what you instinctively know. Write the note beside it. Then figure out you fingering and write that one score.

Now just practice it, adjusting figuring if necessary.

I like this advice. I hadn't thought to do chord analysis for sight reading, but a teacher from a couple of college classes I've taken, always had the class take this as a first step when starting to work on a new piece.

The ledger line notes is another good tip that I don't haven't been remembering to follow. One of the sight reading book series I've used advocates identifying the highest and lowest note in the piece.

ShiroKuro

@WieWaldi this is super interesting, thanks for posting it.

The idea of eye orienting to the thumbs makes a lot of sense to me, because if you know where your thumbs are, you can get the rest of your fingers where they need to be.

As for reading direction, reading the treble clef bottom to top, and the bass clef top to bottom might sound like it doesn’t make sense (bc you would start in the middle and then it’s like your eyes have to go in different directions). But actually, since we can take in a lot of visual information, if you’re looking at the middle, you are likely able to see the notes above and below as well… hmm, I’ll try to see if I’m doing this…

MRC

ShiroKuro The idea of eye orienting to the thumbs makes a lot of sense to me, because if you know where your thumbs are, you can get the rest of your fingers where they need to be.

It may seem like a good idea, but it isn't. It isn't, because piano music isn't generally built from the thumbs outwards. The most important things are usually found at the top and the bottom. Here are the essential elements, in order of importance:

1. The melody

In most of the music we play, the melody is the most important thing. You will recognise a piece if you hear just the melody. There are times when I've saved my skin in opera rehearsals when the going gets really tough by playing only the melody. It's more important to get the tune (notes and rhythms) right than all the rest. Usually the melody is at the top, but you need to be able to recognise the rarer cases where the melody is in the middle, or at the bottom.

2. The bass line

In classical or romantic music, if you get melody and bass line right, you can already give a good impression of the piece. Most of the time the melody together with the bass line is enough to indicate the harmonies.

3. Other stuff

harmonies
accompaniment rhythms
dynamics
inner voices
ornaments
rubato
other details...

These elements vary in importance. Probably harmony is the next one to concentrate on, but sometimes a subito ff or pp will trump the harmony. An advanced sight-reader quickly works out what is most important, but if you're a beginner sight-reader it's enough to concentrate on getting top and bottom right.

One more thing: the idea that you must read ahead. If you think you should always be looking at a place further on in the piece than what you are playing, it won't work. What you do need to do is to learn to grasp things phrase-wise, not note by note. I'll post in more detail about how to achieve this when I have the time.

MRC

Josephine One of the exercises I had to do during a lesson was to play a new piece from sheet music, and as soon as it went well I had to transpose it to a different key at the spot. So I had to play the piece from sheet music, but in different keys. Maybe because you don't start to memorize it as fast this way, I don't know what it was for to be honest. Does someone else know what it is for?

If you can transpose a piece into another key, it means you grasp how it works harmonically. You're not just associating notes on the pages with keys on the piano, you're developing an understanding of tonal relations in the piece.

ShiroKuro

Josephine He said that you have to start with the treble, and then bass, and you have to read a few bars ahead of your playing.

Which is the opposite of what I was told (I.e.m start from the bass clef. The part about reading ahead is the same advice)

Anyway, sometimes I wonder if teachers are just telling us what they do, when other approaches work just as well. 🤔

ShiroKuro

MRC The idea of eye orienting to the thumbs makes a lot of sense to me, because if you know where your thumbs are, you can get the rest of your fingers where they need to be.

It may seem like a good idea, but it isn't. It isn't, because piano music isn't generally built from the thumbs outwards. The most important things are usually found at the top and the bottom.

Yes of course. But here, I was just talking about sort of keyboard geography and knowing where your fingers are without looking down. But yes, as you say, the top and bottom notes are generally the most important parts. In any case, I’m still thinking out loud here, and haven’t been at the keyboard yet after posting this, so I’m not sure what I’m doing when I’m sightreading truly new music in terms of whether I’m orienting to my thumbs or not. For better or for worse, at this point so many of the things I do at the piano are on auto pilot (I’ve been playing for 25 years now, yikes!)

One more thing: the idea that you must read ahead. If you think you should always be looking at a place further on in the piece than what you are playing, it won't work. What you do need to do is to learn to grasp things phrase-wise, not note by note. I'll post in more detail about how to achieve this when I have the time.

I think you may be contradicting yourself here a bit. If you’re playing a totally new piece of music, especially if you don’t know the music in your head (but even then sometimes), you’re not going to be able to grasp the phrase if you’re not reading ahead. Reading ahead helps ensure you’re not playing note-by-note. And of course it’s crucial for choosing the right fingering on the fly.

I think your point (if I may) is that “looking ahead” on its own isn’t sufficient.

thepianoplayer416

ShiroKuro
I have nothing against people reading from the top down or the bottom up whichever way works for them.

I prefer doing it from the bottom up since we recognize intervals & chords from the bottom note.

Josephine

ShiroKuro Which is the opposite of what I was told (I.e.m start from the bass clef. The part about reading ahead is the same advice)

Anyway, sometimes I wonder if teachers are just telling us what they do, when other approaches work just as well. 🤔

I think so. Maybe there is no official rule how to sight read.

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