Do you think sightreading is one of the most common challenges for a pianist? More importantly, why is it so commonly difficult?

Discuss.

Jessie :

I am not sure that sight-reading is "one of the most common challenges" for a pianist. Your assumption that sight-reading is "commonly difficult" is not necessarily true.

I have never had difficulty sight-reading and I attribute that - in part - to having been a church pianist for several years in my youth, and being required to play congregational hymns at sight.

That said, I know that sight-reading is difficult for some, but I think it is erroneous to assume that it is the most common difficulty facing pianists. For others, it might be the execution of octaves, or scale passages, or passages in thirds, etc.

I would go even further and suggest that there may not be a "common difficulty" since any number of pianists at any given time have so many variables in their background, their experience and their skills, that difficulties may be as many and as varied as there are pianists in the group.

Regards,

Sight reading IS very challenging and can relate to how well a person was taught how to read music in the first place.

I was fortunate to have been taught to sight read at a very early age when I started piano lessons and even to this day (I'm now 60), I'm still an excellent sight reader and can read most music unless it's extremely difficult. The disadvantage is that I rarely memorize pieces since it's easier for me to play with the music in front of me. Also, although I have a good ear, I don't play by ear very much since I'm so used to having music in front of me. If you want to be an accompanist then good sight reading is a necessity.

I discovered some interesting things about sight reading both as a teacher and as an accompanist. During my time as an accompanist for a local operatic society (mostly Broadway type shows) I was lucky enough to have a page turner during rehearsal. It took a while for the page turner to train herself to anticipate when to turn the page. It was mostly dependent on the tempo, with the page turn as much as 3 bars before the actual end of the page! What this told me was that I was subconsciously committing 2 or 3 bars to short term memory before actually playing it - almost like a buffer on a computer hard drive.

As a teacher I would teach my students not to analyze every note in a chord, but to look at the pattern and where that pattern is on the staff. After a while they get to know that a particular pattern translates to a particular hand shape and position on the keys as well as knowing that it's an F# minor/something chord so you know roughly what it should sound like. After a while, their skills become sharpened in recognizing and hearing the notes and chords in their mind before playing them.

Music is basically a hieroglyphic language (hence the importance of pattern recognition) with a few words interspersed here and there. Sight reading is difficult because there is more information on a page of music than a page of writing. Consider this: In one bar you could have 50 different notes that have to be played with both hands, as chords and in succession. Those notes have a frequency, a duration, they may have to be attacked in a certain manner, there may be silences (rests), there is a tempo, there may be expression marks (loud to soft etc.) and finally some phrasing. Phew! All that in one BAR!

Bruce,
I totally agree with your last statement. Every pianist has something they find more difficult than other things. In my case, I cannot stretch more than an octave + 1 with my smaller hands but I have never had any difficulty playing classical pieces (except maybe Liszt!). I often wonder if people had smaller hands back then. Jazz is a problem since I have to roll those wonderful sounding tenths in the left hand which becomes really tedious and uncomfortable in faster pieces.

Some of the popular piano teaching methods where the student is taught how to play quickly but not how to read music correctly I believe ruins the ability to sight read.

Neil

Beautifully put fastscot!

I am hopeless at sightreading and I always have been. I blame it on never being taught it properly in the first place, but also because I was self taught for a long time at quite a young age, it wasn't really the sort of thing I would focus on. I didn't realise how important it is. My most recent teacher was a fantastic sightreader, and she was apparently like me until she went to university and her future husband dragged her screaming through violin and piano pieces. I'm hoping something similar will happen to me when I go to the RNCM this September. The future husband thing would be a bonus too, hehe.

^ WOW , RNCM. Their library is amazing. I wish you the best there.

xD

Would it be simplistic to say that I liken sight reading to being a good choreographer on the keyboard. How our body and mind respond to the written music is like a dancer in a dance troup getting all the moves right from having looked at a floor diagram of where the action is to take place.

I think that's cool!

When you know all the "steps" your brain just calls them up as you realize you need them. There is minimum thinking going on. All the thinking and preparation went on before and all the drilling has paid off in what looks and sounds like an incredible phenomena.

Wouldn't it be great to see light waves come out of the pianist body as he plays?

Betty

I am atrocious at sight reading! I began as a child playing by ear and now I think I rely on it too much. Now as a piano major I know I will be expected to do some accompanying and I'm really worried about it. I'm in two choirs and I watch the accompanists and I think "oh lord, will I ever be able to do that?" Is there a way to get better? Any tricks I should know about?

There is a way to get better - but it's not an overnight thing. Just do it. Read previously unseen music regularly, every day. Start with material that's well below your playing level and build up the difficulty as you improve (which you will, if you stick at it). When reading, keep your eyes on the music, and keep the rhythm going. That will be the important thing in most accompanying. Don't worry too much about mistakes, just keep going. If there are too many mistakes, choose something easier, or choose a slower tempo.

And do a search on "sight reading". You will find about a zillion threads, some heated but most packed with tips.

But just start

Apropos of sight reading: I just had my socks knocked off by my teacher. He showed me the full orchestral score of the Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto and asked me (I hope in jest) to sight read all the instrument lines simultaneously. I think my jaw must have hit the keys. "No, try it" said he. (Yeah right.) He mentioned that you also have to transpose some of the instruments into other keys while you simultaneously read all the instrument lines. As a conductor, he said this is what he has to do and he CAN do it. I plod when I sight read but now I am even more deeply humbled.

Deborah :

I hope you remembered to retrieve your socks!

Cheers!