Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Does sight reading help in general?

So true!!

I totally agree.

I never sight read a piece I am going to learn.

I always sight-read through a piece once through first before deciding whether it's worth learning .

As an amateur, I only learn pieces that are enjoyable to play as well as musically interesting: I prefer just to sight-read through stuff that may be musically great but which I don't find enjoyable to actually play (I name no names ), but once I decide I'm going to learn a piece properly, my mindset changes, and I don't sight-read casually through it anymore.

Life is too short (at my time in life) to learn stuff that I don't enjoy playing, no matter how 'great' the music may be - and there's a lot of this kind of 'great music' that I prefer to listen to rather than play myself. I leave them to the professionals to learn and perform them properly..........

So true. I do sometimes continue to "sight-read" works I've decided I'll want to learn, and what a mistake that is. It means I end up learning quickly my favorite parts, keep skimming through the rest, and never again feel like I can approach the whole piece freshly and work at it well from the beginning. It's an awful habit, or some kind of perverse desire for immediate gratification that is terribly ungratifying.

Then what do you call the first time you play the notes?

I've spent the past year really working on sightreading. It's been helpful in a lot of ways. I learn pieces much quicker. My playing is becoming more intuitive now, in that it now goes from eye to finger without that pesky brain getting in the way and slowing things down.

Here's the great French pianist Gérard Depardieu improvising Boulez ("C'est ne pas Mozart"): http://youtu.be/T0vyMuAkOYQ (starting at 1:30).

Followed by some sentimental Hans Zimmer, which good ol' Pierre would certainly turn up his noble nose at........

"Note aquisition"

"Sight learning"

"Psychokinesis"

Or, most importantly,

"PRACTICE!"

prout

I think most pianists use sight reading to mean the first time they play the notes. "Sight learning" is a phrase I have never seen anywhere.

Except for "practice", I have never seen any of the other phrases used to discuss the process of learning of piece of music anywhere either.

Perhaps "sight-learning" means studying - and learning - the score aware from the piano. There are some who profess to do that on a regular basis, learning more each time they do it.

Regards,

Thanks for your input .

I'm definitely going to discuss this with my teacher on Friday, our first lesson after the summer break (I'm excited).

Hopefully, we will be able to do two 60 minute lessons per week and then devote like every fourth lesson for sight reading, i.e. one lesson every two weeks would be for sight reading. Of course, we could adjust this later on.

Once you understand what and how you should practice sight reading I think it will be done close to 100% by yourself. The only exception might be if you want to play duets and have no one besides your teacher to play them with.

Also, unless you have time to practice a LOT I think two lessons/week is a waste of money and highly unusual.

I do have the time to practice a lot, because I don't work full time, however I am lazy :-(. If I spent all the spare time I do nothing, practicing...
Last year we were doing 1 lesson a week because it's all the teacher had the time for as I started in the middle of the year, this time I'm starting from the beginning so she may be able to plan two weekly lessons for me. 2 weekly lessons here is kind of the norm...
Also hopefully two weekly lessons will help conquer the laziness as I don't like coming unprepared for lessons.
I have taken two weekly lessons with a previous teacher and it was fine. Of course I know the progress will not be twice as fast as opposed to taking one weekly lesson...

Probably not, but the next time someone asks me what I'm doing at the piano, I'm definitely going to tell him, "Psychokinesis!"

I think that sightreading is a very useful skill to develop, even if you don't plan on being an accompanist. If you increase your sightreading ability, you should be able to learn new music much more quickly. I think that the best way to improve sightreading is simply by doing it. Sightread new music on a regular basis, and make sure that you practice a wide variety of repertoire.