The Sight Reading Thread

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.

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.

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

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.

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).

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.

@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…

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.

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.

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.

Think of this: if you only manage to play the melody in the treble, the piece will probably be recognisable. It won't be recognisable if you only manage the bass.

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.

Re reading ahead, there's a lot to be said, which is why I need more time in order to go into detail. The basic point I'm making is that you're not constantly reading ahead of where you are playing. You scan a phrase very quickly to grasp it in its entirety, but most of the time while playing it you are looking at the notes you're playing. It's like reading a language.

MRC
Well sure, but at this point in my playing, I’m not going for “recognizable.” If that was the goal, I could just play the treble clef one-handed.

In any case, I feel like our discussion here is shaping up so that it sounds like I’m arguing for one thing, and you’re arguing for another, when I’m not committed to either approach (yet). As I said above, I’m just thinking out loud and until I sit down at my piano (which won’t be for another 12 hours probably) I’m just speculating here.