Hello everyone. I was a member here several years ago, and I disappeared for a while. I'm returning, and it's good to be back.

I wasn't sure whether to put this in the ABF or the Pianist's Corner, but I'll try here. I've recently taken some time off from piano lessons due to some family issues, and things have been settling down, so I will resume soon. Before starting again, I have been reflecting on my development these past few years. Overall, I am very happy in terms of technique and musicality, and my teacher has been very helpful. My main frustration is with my performance skill, in the sense of preparing pieces for performance (and then performing them). I've noticed that it takes me an extreme amount of time to learn new pieces, even if they are easily within my technical capability. Part of the problem, it seems, is that it takes significant effort for me to read music. That is, I can't read quickly enough to learn, say, a phrase in any coherent manner. I end up just choppily grinding away until it eventually is committed to memory.

I've noticed that I've learned new pieces in this fashion since I started piano lessons (though, at that time, my reading was horrible, and I had to count the spaces and lines with my finger). At first, it was okay, and I got through it. But years of this kind of thing has kind of eaten away at me, as it is a very painful process. Now I just become bored and dissatisfied when I've hacked away at a piece, just trying to learn the notes - I end up just dropping it. This has led me into a very curious situation, where I am a piano student who has nothing off-hand to perform when asked. I either have partially-completed pieces that I had given up on, or I have pieces that I am working on with my teacher, which slightly exceed my technical limit, but I don't consider those fair game for performance.

So I suppose that my main point is that I really need to get past the initial stage of just learning the notes for any piece - the process is always the most painful for me, and it has been deterring me from learning new music, putting my development at a standstill. I'm hoping that maybe some of you have some experience or can share some advice about this issue. I really appreciate any insight or stories you might be able to contribute. Thanks so much!

In my first year at the piano I had a similar experience, as the notes reading was very difficult to me. I had learned few reference points and used them to count lines and spaces above and below to locate the note. It was awful. After several months of suffering I began reading aloud very simple scores, out of piano, 10 minutes a day, respecting the duration of the figures. First with 3 different notes, then 4, then 5 ... and within weeks I was able to achieve a fluency that surprised me.
I recently organized my study routine and included reading out of the piano and sight-reading at the piano in my daily tasks.

I have been learning for about two months now playing easy songs i find i have this problem too, It takes me about 30 mins of going over the song to get things right, But one thing that is helping is i am learning intervals which really helps as you dont really need to think about notes as much i guess.

Hey Coolkid,
I know what you mean. I have this problem, too, and its really annoying and frustrating to work for months (literally) to get three or four pages of music under my fingers. Sometimes I feel like an illiterate.
I've tried self-teaching books for sightreaders which helped a little but not as much as I had hoped for. Now I force myself to read the score of my pieces while playing even after I know them by heart. I sometimes say aloud what I am doing ("arpeggiated E flat major chord ... starting both hands on a ... chromatic scale from a to f" etc.). Being able to pick up these clues from the music later has somewhat increased learning speed.

Coolkid,

What you describe seems to be pretty common in many students to one degree or another. I know I have felt my reading holding me back in the past.

IMO, you have a reading problem and the obvious solution is to become a good/better reader. To do that you have to practice reading. Probably every day. There's just no way around it.

There are lots of threads on sightreading if you do a search. But I think you would see improvement if you just committed to read every day, even if it is not, technically, "sight reading". Find lots of material that is below the level of pieces you normally tackle, start in on it, and read something new every day. Even if its not "sightreadable" its still reading practice that will ultimately improve your ability to learn more advanced pieces.

good luck,

Jim

I agree with JimF.

Do you have a sense of what you can and can't do in music reading? Note recognition? Chords? Rhythm? Dynamics? Can you play a one-line melody with one hand? With the other hand?

I would start with very very very simple pieces. Method book primer pieces. Establish some baseline that you can play. And work very slowly up from there. That way you will get a very firm base, and when it starts to get hard, you will have a clear understanding of just what level is hard, and what it is that makes it hard at this point.

I've forgotten who has the sightreading blog, but one of his key tips that has been helping me is to read ahead.

I think it's important to learn all the notes. You can start out with landmarks and with intervals, but ultimately you have to be able to see a note on the staff and immediately know where it is on the keyboard, without backtracking to another note (landmark) or relying on the previous note (interval). You can make yourself flashcards (do both clefs, plus B, middle C, and D between the clefs, and later add leger lines). Name the note, then play it. Sometimes try it the other way: play the note, then name it. You can choose a few and arrange them in an avantgarde tune on the music desk, and play them while naming them.

There's recognition involved in chords. If you choose the right level of method book (generally about the middle of a series, and a little before), it will give you lots of practice with I-IV-V chords.

That's all focussed on notes; there are similar things you can do with rhythms, including making flashcards of common rhythm patterns. Start with simple rhythms (can you read quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes accurately?) and then add eighth notes, then sixteenths, dotted notes, syncopations.

You could try writing your own music to then read. MuseScore notation software is free and easy to use. You can get some additional practice by saying the note names as you put them on the staff.

All that said, I want to encourage you. I find it incredibly useful to be able to read music, and it gives me a lot of freedom in what and how much I can play. It's worth the effort it will take. So go for it!

Thanks guys, I really appreciate all of your feedback, and it is really good to hear that I am not alone in this.

Maybe in hindsight, I need to give myself a little more credit - in some ways, my reading isn't horrible. I can read lines and chords in a single staff fairly easily, but I have some difficulty with the entire grand staff. That said, I guess I need to refocus my issues somewhat. I've never really learned how to learn music; as I've said before, my procedure is to just hack away at a piece, measure by measure, until it is done (which could take me months and months for just a few pages). It is extremely painstaking! Is there a more efficient way to learn a new piece? Can the learning process be a bit smoother and less repetitious?

Thanks again for your input!