Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Need serious help with sightreading

I have already looked at the topic located in the FAQs. From what I read, the thread is basically saying I need to count aloud while playing. Although I appreciate the fact that this might help others, it most definitely hasn't changed anything for me. I have been playing since I was 6 or 7 years old, and have already completed such songs as chopin's Scherzo no. 2 and revetude (almost 17 y.o. now). However, if you asked me to sight read something as simple as Bach's first minuet, I stumble all over the place. The main thing is playing with both my hands. My teacher always stressed beginning by playing with hands seperate, so that's how I learned to read music - playing with just my left, then just my right. At the moment, not being able to sight read is probably my biggest problem. I've spent hours upon hours practicing, but it's almost as if I have a mental barrier that prevents me from sight-reading fluently. I know the skill is there, lying dormant, but I just can't coax it out. At times, I'll have fleeting moments in which I can sight read pretty well, but then it all goes away. Can anyone give me some tips? My current piano teacher is trying to help me as well, but he's getting almost as frustrated as I am.

I would try doing a search on the forum (rather than look at the FAQ), as this has been covered extensively many times.

I've been putting a lot of work into improving my sightreading. It's a maddeningly slow process, but it's coming round for me.

My teacher has had me sightread the simplest stuff to start with–in other words–"beginner books". It has worked! With easy pieces it is easy to focus on staying on beat while resisting the urge to stop every time I flub something. That's the most important thing; keep on beat and play through wrong notes; chances are unless a listener happens to be reading along with a score, he will not notice them if you do not call attention to them by stopping. Hard, I know...

Yeah it takes practice. I'm not advance as you think I am, I am currently sight read and memorizing invention right know. Thats that only thing I can do right know, and it also saves alot of practice time and it also increases my progress on sighr reading. I didn' tnotice I can sight read better than I was before.

It takes practice, keep it up everyday and slowly read.

Kubalit:

If you've learned almost every piece hands separately first then this is, of course, your problem re sight reading. This is a shame, because at your your level of playing it would/should be great fun to read through a lot of the piano literature.

If you can't sight read Bach minuets, try to find something even easier(or just read it at a slow of enough tempo that makes it possible) and do a lot of sight reading. Despite the thousands of posts about sight reading at PW, I think the most basic thing is to practice doing it a lot(at ever increasing levels of difficulty).

I would also try to sight read great or at least good music even if this means well below tempo. The idea of this is that great music is much more fun and inspiriing to work on so hopefully, it will not seem like you are "working on your sight reading". Examples would be the easiest selectionsfrom: Bach(like the Minuet), Grieg Lyric Pieces, Schumann Pieces for Children, Mozart Sonata slow movements, Bartok Book I of Microkosmos, Schubert Waltzes, Bach Chorales, or any method books with the highest quality material.

I think it's highly unusual at your level of playing for a teacher to insist that you learn a piece hands separately first. I would think it is also quite boring. This method is usually used only for the most difficult places or early piano studies.

this has been a long standing issue for me as well. i'm finally making some pretty dramatic progress thanks to taking up the progressive sight reading program created by the royal conservatory of toronto.

i highly recommend it!

start with book one, work very systematically through the daily exercises, in order, and you will be amazed.

the series is published by frederick harris music in canada, but i've been able to buy them at my local music store, so yours should have them or be able to get them.

ask for the "four star sight reading and ear tests for piano students."

OK, your dramatic progress has sold me. I've been toiling steadily for years at reading simple things at very "relaxed" tempi: Hymns, folk songs, collections of easy this and that (Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Richard Rodgers). The toil has paid off, but I'm afraid the unsystematicness of my approach might have slowed me down a bit.
The great triumph so far has been that when a friend suggested we play something from Debussy's Petite Suite, I was able to flounder through En Bateau with him with my eyes more or less glued to the page. This wasn't really sight reading, there had been a lot of practice on it, but the ability to play something at a steadyish tempo while not looking at the hands was new and exciting to me.
I think I must have mentioned Leonhard Deutsch's book "Sight Reading at the Piano" It inspired me to about double my practice time and to get going on reading through Haydn Sonatas which have been a lot of fun. The best thing about it is his introduction where he tells how the St Matthew Passion got him back to the keyboard and gave him his clues about sightreading. His ideological point is that sightreading is the one important fundamental for the amateur - it gives access to the literature and forms the basis of mastering technical difficulties.

I agree with all that pianoloverus has written. I, too, do not understand why someone who has reached the level to play Chopin's second Scherzo and "revetude" (Revolutionary Etude, perhaps; who knows?) would still be instructed by a teacher to learn pieces hands separately. Hands separately should be reserved for difficult sections and awkward passages and it certainly isn't conducive to practicing sight-reading. If you had to sit for an examination one part of each was a sight-reading test, surely you wouldn't sight-read it hands separately? At this level it seems to me that it is a waste of time and risks the onset of boredom before a piece is learned hands together.

Get some of the simplest material you can that you can read hands together and start working on developing your sight-reading skills by sight-reading. That is, I believe, the only way to do it.

Regards,

The most important "tips" for me:

1. Scan the music first. You will be suprised at what you pick up in 10 or 20 seconds. Key, tempo dynamics, repeats, etc.

2. Know your theory. If you see the piece is in G, then you can expect to see some C and D (IV and V or V7) chords, with maybe Ami and Emi (ii, and vi). Scan the music for these.

2. As already stated work you way up from easy pieces.

3. Develop your own "cheats" to get you through tough spots, such as: Play the melody line only, or keep the rhythm going and fake the melody. Generally if you play a wrong note you are only a half step away from one that works. Also sometimes if you repeat a "wrong" note, it starts to sound "right".

4. Don't rush. Once you find a comfortable tempo, the "groove" will help keep the music moving.

I am a pretty good sight reader. I do believe it is necessary to be comfortable in all keys. The way to do that is practice all the scales and know them cold. You also need to know chords. You can practice that by playing songs from a fake book. Finally devote time to sight reading at each practice session starting with easier pieces. Start by determining the key that the piece is in then play the appropriate scale before beginning. Don't worry about the tempo and slow down in the more difficult sections. Good luck.

I think it's a mistake to make a goal of not looking at your hands. OF course, you can't stare at your hands while reading music, but all good pianists look at their hands sometimes while playing. Sometimes it's just with their peripheral vision or sometimes more directly. You have to be able to look when necessary and then find your place in the music.

This kind of post typically has its origin in a so-called
"sight-reading" demonstration by a "friend." A friend
picks up a score that "he has never seen or heard
before" and plays it fluently in front of a classical
pianist. This can have a devastating impact on
the classical player, because he is vastly better
than his friend and yet the friend can apparently
sight-read much better than him, which makes him
doubt his worth as a pianist.

There are a number of things that need addressing here.
First, is the validity of the sight-reading demonstration
itself. Typically, this is a fraud, and the friend has
played the score many times before. This is one of
the oldest and dirtiest tricks in the book, and
it only works when the person pulling it is a
trusted figure, like a friend, relative, teacher, or
famous pianist, because you'd immeditately suspect
a stranger. One might ask why a friend would pull
something like this on you--well, that's what's so
fundamentally disturbing about this stunt.

Then, classical pianists are notoriously bad sight-readers
--and people who pull the above stunt know this.
Those highly-accomplished pianists who enter Juilliard
every year as performance majors aren't tested on
sight-reading because they'd flunk the test. Many
big-name concert pianists, most notably Emmanuel Ax, can't sight-read. So your sight-reading is right on par
for a classical player.

YADA, yada, yada...[my best George Costanza imitation. ]

Where do you get all those wonderful animated icons?
I especially like this one, both for the icon itself and for its apropos usage in this conext.

I get most of them from here:

http://www.runemasterstudios.com/graemlins/

But the dead horse is just an image I found:

http://forums.musicplayer.com/images/graemlins/default/deadhorse.gif

Glad you like them.

For a time, I thought the need for such an icon/graemlin had passed.

Some things are just too good to be true.