Among the dozen of other sight reading threads, I wanted to ask how many here have used, use, or use with their students one of these 2 methods.

For those who do, how often do you use the method (daily?), for how long? How do you use it? Have you found it useful?

I like Four Star - and their multi-pronged approach to cover rhythm, sight reading, ear training and so on. However, for me, I didn't really need all of that so I would do a "week" in one day and got through them way too quickly.

So now I use Improve your Sight Reading and find the exercises a little more targeted towards my problem areas. I just do two or three a day and then take a piece or two from easy classical repertoire (Joy of First Classics, etc.).

knotty, you said "use with their students". You might want to post this in the Teachers' forum for more responses.

I'm using Classics to Moderns for sightreading currently. I did Introduction, that was at a good level or maybe a bit too easy for me. Now I'm on Easy, and I can't quite decide if it's a bit too hard for sightreading, or if it's actually at the right level and is doing me good at really challenging my sightreading.

Andy Platt, what are your sightreading problem areas?

Mine are: playing piles of notes at the same time, or distinctly different rhythms (not just subdivisions) in the two hands: e.g. suspensions in one hand against straight quarters in the other. Rhythm and single line note identification are not problems. Mostly I'm trying to make myself read ahead as I sightread, which I think (from your blog) is the key to improvement for me.

Playing the notes?

Mostly I find it hard on reading both staves, keeping looking ahead, keep going after mistakes. It's all improving, just slow.

"Improve Your Sightreading" has a good mix of different things - rhythm, interplay between the hands, reasonable changes of hand position, etc..

A tip from my piano teacher concerning reading ahead: "Try reading just one note ahead."

Andy,

What level Four Star did you do?
Do you mean to say that you kind of just read many tunes a day and finished the method too fast?

I'm taking the other approach somewhat. I'm reading and re-reading many pieces that when I don't do well. I started on Four Star 3 in february, and I'm getting to the end of level 4 now.

I'm working on Improve your Sight reading at the same time. I find the 2 methods very similar, although the pieces in Improve your sight reading I feel are slightly more challenging. I'm about 20% into Improve... level 3.

I have to say I think the results are pretty good, though I don't have much to compare to.

My main problem is separating reading the 2 hands, especially when things change directions. Also, because I use intervals a lot, whenever I make a mistake, it's hard to recover.

I used Improve Your Sight-Reading up until level 7. At that level I wasn't happy with my lack of proficiency. The books worked for me up to a point. They really improved my basic sight-reading skills, but there weren't enough exercises at each level to be proficient at that level.

So I've stopped believing in those books. If they were 400 pages at each level instead of 40, that might be enough to gain proficiency at each level so you're really ready to move up to the next one, but 40 pages aren't enough.

For each grade so far (upto and including grade five ABRSM) I've used them and find them very useful although agree with Maechre that there aren't enough tests in each book for that grade. However I do the following:

1. Use improve your sight reading (2009 and latest edition) for the grade.
2. Then use the specimen sight reading examples (2009 edition again) for the grade.
3. Then use Improve your sight reading for the same grade but the pre 2009 version (which you can normally pick up on ebay for just a couple of quid) which I find is usually slightly harder than the current editions.
4. Then use the pre 2009 specimen sight reading tests.
5. Finally supplement all this with some sight reading of real pieces (in my case children's church hymns and easy classical pieces).

That way I've probably been through about 200 tests at each grade plus done non ABRSM stuff.

Works for me!

You could even go back to the editions pre the pre 2009 editions although I've tried the specimen sight reading tests and they seem poor and unmusical in my opinion.

I use them everyday for somewhere between ten minutes and half an hour depending upon my state of mind at the time.

Cheers