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Being the analytical and logical guy that I am, I read with interest the thread on playing hands together, apart, etc. So if I accept the fact that I should practice HT all the time (not sure I do yet, but that is OK), I am interested in learning how the experienced players read ALL of the music at one time. To take this to an extreme, how does a conductor read a complete symphony with all of it's many many lines of music? I know, he/she isn't playing each note so he/she can scan, but still he/she has to be able to understand an entire page very quickly.

OK, here goes my logical brain at work. I fly airplanes, and there is a set routine we use for scanning the instrument panel in instrument flying conditions. We spend most of our time looking at the attitude indicator so we can keep the plane straight and level or in the proper attitude for a turn, descent, etc. Then we briefly scan left to check the airspeed indicator, then back to the attitude indicator, then we quickly scan right to check the altitude and then down to check the vertical speed indicator to see if we are staying level, climbing, or descending. Then back to the attitude indicator and so on.

When I am playing music, I find myself reading (or attempting to do so) the melody line and pretty much ignoring the bass line. I presume this is because I am still reading a note, translating it to a finger movement, and then reading the next note, etc. I find myself trying to play the left hand just by memory or by what feels right - doesn't work!

So how do you scan the music when you are playing? Do you scan up and down between left and right hand? Or do you focus on the melody line and kind of view the bass line using periphery vision? Or do you read ahead a couple of measures for the RH and then read a couple of measures for the LH?

I don't even know if I used the right terminology here but I hope you can understand what I am getting at. I am up to about page 45 in Faber and they are starting to make it a little bit more complicated than a two finger chord with the left hand with four quarter notes with the right.

Any advice or insight will be appreciated.

Regards,

First of all, this isn't a "fact" and it doesn't have to be accepted although some on this forum recommend it. Both of my teachers (both conservatory trained) are big believers in HS as well as HT practice.

However, your question about sight reading is still valid since there are times you want to read through a piece with both hands. You need to recognize notes quickly, of course, but you also need to concentrate on learning to recognize the shapes of intervals and chords so that you don't have to "name" each of the three notes in a C minor first inversion chord for instance. You recognize the "shape" and see where the bottom note is, then you can play it without focusing on the other notes individually.

You also need to recognize the overall structure as you go. Is this a single melody line with accompaniment? Is there a secondary melody or secondary accompaniment that needs to be coordinated? Then you can learn to see the measures as not just a bunch of notes, but as two, three, or however many lines and layers.

Of course, it helps to keep the key and time signatures in the back of your mind as this is another underlying framework in which you can fit what you see.

All easier said than done. Lots of slow practice, and lots of practice of very simple pieces can help get you going.

Search the forum here for "sight reading"; there are lots of threads with good advice as this is a common question.

Somebody (Kreisler?) in some thread on reading reminded us that when we read and play music, a lot of acquired skills come into play. Working on sight reading alone gives limited or slower progress in sight reading. Here's the sense of it:

We work on other things which help us get the sense and structure of music into our fingertips and brains. You get used to patterns in scales, chord patterns. Music has certain structures that you can anticipate - modulation to the dominant (V) or minor key. A certain phrase would suggest a particular counterphrase to complete it. You might notice whenever you see a certain cluster of sharps the music tends to move a certain direction.

So as you study music, practice other things, you begin to build up a kind of landscape internally. You are able to anticipate what the music will probably do. You are navigating in familiar territory.

Therefore if you also work on other things, and build this landscape, sight reading becomes easier. It includes this kind of anticipation. I don't know if this makes sense.

Here's a secret - very few players read ALL the music at the same time while sightreading. It's about picking out what's important and making those notes a priority, and catching as many of the others as you can.

When in doubt, concentrate on the "outside voices" - the melody and the bass line. Once you get used to covering those you'll find that it becomes easier to add the notes in between. (I'm talking about sightreading here, not learning repertoire)

I hope that makes sense...

Elaine

The 1 and 5 fingers tend to be the frame to be aware of, with the 2, 3, 4 fingers being the finders of the notes within the frame.

Seeing the shape of the music, either in melodic movement or harmonic movement keeps the hand busy following the trail of distance and direction.

Movement on the music staff: Ascending? Descending?
Define note values used in this piece.
Look for rhythm patterns.
Look for note patterns.
Have fingering defined on your copy of the music - you want to be consistant with fingering choices. Plan them out.

Each hand has an "ambitus" and a "tessitura" within it's clef. Ambitus is the range that the notes are within. Tessitura is the most frequently played note.
The highest note of a phrase it it's "focal point". Usually tension to the focal point and then relaxing from it.

I call the 1 and 5 fingers the bread and the 3 inner fingers, meat, cheese, condiments to explain the importance of the frame falling into place accurate and then the selection of keys within.

To me the hand shape happens in your mind just before the playing of the keys represented. If you are moving and arrive before completing your hand span, chances are great that fingers will miss their (neglected) targets. ("Bulls eye" is needed.)

Betty

I would like to understand this part more completely. I scan my music and I see that for a section all of the RH notes fall in the range of C to G (5 fingers). So I bring my hand to that area of the keyboard and before I get there my fingers are the width for those five notes - then I play - in that order. Correct?

Now further in the music, the notes are in a range of C to C - they're still in the same area but the ambitus (thanks) changes. My hand is already in the correct geography of the keyboard - do I expand the bread of the sandwich to cover this new wider area before playing the new notes when I get there - and then play the new notes?

So I'm always scanning ahead so that I can prepare ahead of time before playing. That seems to be an argument for slow practice as well.

This would be part of working on a piece, rather than prima vista? This is an aspect of prima vista I am not happy about- it seems that ideal fingering cannot always be caught in time. Should one limite prima vista and work mostly on repertoire?

Not reading all the notes at the same time certainly seems true to me. What I read, as Elaine points out, is the melody first, and then I read rhythms and note spacings. If the notes look "stuck together" one below the other on a staff they're probably thirds, and I can do that without reading the actual notes (reading by intervals). Most printed music these days is also written so that notes that are played at the same time are in a vertical line, and the rhythm notes in between are off-set horizontally to be played in between, and that certainly makes it easier to read (some handwritten music is poorer at this.) In the bass cleff I know the top line is A and the space below the staff is F, and anything in between I see as clusters, not specific notes. I also often "guess" at the ledger line notes, knowing that in specific situations musically they are likely to be an octave or two from the previous note, or be part of a particular chord.

So for me sight reading, or any reading that isn't working specifically on trying to find particular notes or rhythm I'm having trouble with, is all the same kinds of short cuts we use when reading words. The more one does it the more one becomes fluent, finding those "short cuts" that work for them.

Cathy

If you mean that you would have your hand at an octave stretch covering all the notes in the phrase before you play, then no, probably not (though it would depend on the passage, speed, etc). For example, in a RH passage which went: CCECEGc, you would not have your hand spread to the octave while playing the first 3 or 4 notes - unnecessary tension, and restricting wrist movement. I would, however, have it planned, so you know your hand will expand to take in the notes at the other end of the span when appropriate.

Sheesh - the trouble with the internet is that it takes too many words to describe what we do ...

It is a problem with prima vista sight reading. As you progress, however, you have more experience with seeing patterns as a whole and fingering them in logical ways which you have learnt through this experience. It's also another reason why it's usually recommended to sight read below your playing level - so you will have some brain space to deal with fingering as you read.

The other thing is that you can't really focus equally on all aspects of the music at the same time. Your sight reading time (prima vista) is primarily notes and rhythm. You will often manage a decent fingering too, but don't beat yourself up if you don't. I sight read frequently as an accompanist and I do have these passing thoughts as I play through something - "if I'd had time to have a look at this first I could have worked out a better fingering - but hey, I didn't, so I did some tangly thing and got all the notes in anyway "

As for the breakdown in time between repertoire and sight reading (PV), generally I think repertoire should have the largest slab of time. But there's a tiny implication in what you say that one might be bad for the other. I don't think so - I think they are both good for the other, even if in one you focus on something that in the other you tend to downplay.

Thanks, Currawong - I was getting into the fine tuning that Betty describes, which includes an anticipation - she has her hand in position and shape BEFORE beginning to play and that's what I was after. It's easy to see when you're also changing position. Guhl, in her wonderful course, also outlines similar things in detail.

So that's what I was after:
CCECEG ... Before playing the notes my hand goes to position and is in a "small" shape - then I play. Then as I get to that higher C - BEFORE I play it I would expand the hand to cover this new range (assuming the rest of the music remains in the range of C to C).

I became aware of this idea of anticipating and arranging your hand a couple of months ago. It has contributed greatly to a flexible and relaxed hand because it is always in the right shape for the notes to be played. This is something I'm working on presently and that question remained.

Yes, that sounds like what I meant . Just adding that in your initial "small shape" you would have adjusted the fingering to take into account the higher C at the end, so instead of, say, 11315, you would already be fingering 11213. This is without having to actually stretch your hand out over the octave to start with.

Thank you again, Currawong. I've just tried this on the piano. I guess you really have to analyze the music and see what is best - choreography.

There is a principle in this that I wasn't aware of a few months ago - this idea of having the hand ready and in place before beginning to play, so that you actually have two separate actions: shaping the hand and then playing one after the other.

When I learned to do this there were three benefits: a tension-free hand because the fingers were where they needed to be, accuracy, consistent accuracy each time. The idea is actually mind-blowing if you were not aware of it.

I realize it's only one of a list of things but it's one I hoped to look at more closely. Many thanks.

Currawong - just saw the comment on prima vista - question of focus. I have what I was after with Bach: familiarity with the keyboard and score together, right note at right time, but I wouldn't want to play like that. Working on repertoire and developing it is much richer, and you'd be working on different aspects over time.

I like the way Guhl develops sight reading, but that belongs in another thread, I'm sure.

If you are really desperate, and you aren't afraid to be humble, you can try what I did.

On the pieces that were in difficult keys (many black keys) I would draw angled lines above the chord pictorially depicting where each finger should go.

Some of the pictures looked like the state of Virginia, some liked like North Carolina (yeah, it was that retarded).

I'm sure every practicing teacher is either aghast or laughing. But, hey, it worked.

Regardless of the particular sight-reading
procedure you use (I believe you should use
the most difficult material in the
classical repertoire--one measure per
day for beginners, more as you get better),
I've found that it is best to do your
daily sight-reading as the very first
thing in your practice session, after
a brief warmup. Then after the sight-reading
you proceed to your regular repertoire.

There is a tendency to do your repertoire
work first, since it is you main work,
and save sight-reading for the last thing
in the practice session. But I believe
that s-r should come first. The reason
is that s-r is the most exhausting thing
you're going to be doing in your practice
session. It's new or supplementary stuff
that's not familiar, and you'll need
to concentrate hard on it. You can't
run through it automatically like with
your repertoire that you repeat every
day. Moreover, for most people it is
a chore, psychologically, extra work
that you're forcing yourself to do, which
makes it even harder to concentrate on.
Thus, this needs to be tackled when
you're still fresh in order to get the
most benefit from it--if you save it for
the end of the practice session, you'll
be already spent and won't be able to
get anything out of it.

This is an interesting question. I'm at a late elementary/early intermediate level at the moment, so the music I'm reading isn't very difficult, but to use your flight instrument analogy, I'd say that whichever hand has the melody is the attitude indicator, and the quick glances go to the harmony, which for the music I'm playing is usually very simple. However, I also spend time reading scores that are way beyond my level while I listen to CDs, and I do pretty much the same thing there as well. And I do get lost, but I can usually get back on track by looking ahead in the score for something that looks as though it'll be easy to recognize and then listening for it. I can't cite any particular advances that show this is beneficial, but overall my sightreading is improving and I don't do sightreading exercises as often as I should .