Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Q: Piano Pedagogy. Learning piano vs. Learning a song.

This is kind of hard to explain but I will try my best.
(And some background info. I have been at piano for about 6 years. And have learned most theory from several different books. Alfred's Books 1-3 etc).

Suppose a piano piece has elements in it you don't understand.

It would be understandable that one would have to learn those elements first to attempt a song (Piano/Theory Learning). That being said, even after you learn those elements, the piece doesn't become a piece of cake. You still play it choppy and make mistakes (Song Learning).

Right now I am working on the RCM Grade 1 book. I'm not really in a rush per se.
Outside of RCM, there are pieces that I actually want to learn to play and have been learning such as Cannon in D (Faber Piano Adventure version). These songs, I intend to keep with me for the rest of my life. Most of the songs I want to learn are within my level more or less.

I separate my piano work into two categories. "Piece/Song Learning" and "Piano/Theory Learning".

With "Song learning", I will sit there and work on that song for a while. I will work on it one measure at a time. I will memorize it etc. I want to play it well.

It is pretty common that sight reading is on of the most neglected things.
My RCM books, I put into the learning category of "Piano Learning". I'm not really following RCM and I'm not going after a certificate. And I don't really care about the pieces in the repertoire books or etude books, but they are of a particular level which goes in only one direction. Up. I basically use those books as sight reading practice (live flash cards). I will also admit my sight reading is bad so I am not actively trying to learn these songs. It will take longer to learn the pieces doing it this way, but as I said, I'm not really in a rush. I know I can't even attempt to play songs at way higher levels so I don't attempt to. Some people say you can only sight read a piece once. I don't believe that. It doesn't work with me. Even if I play a piece a second time in a row, I have already forgotten what I played. It hasn't become internalized or muscle memory yet. If I'm starting to glide through a part without really thinking, then I have internalized it. Until then, I am still actively reading notes. And that reading is improving my instant note recognition just like flash cards. The note is sudden and unexpected and I have to quickly recognize it, and find the note on the keyboard.

Since one can technically use anything for sight reading, is this necessarily wrong to use an RCM book of a particular grade level as sight reading material and work your way up? I go through each song one by one, and repeat the book over and over again. It gives me enough time and space in between songs to kind of forget them, so I can sight read them again. Yeah, eventually I get to the point where I am learning and memorizing the pieces and muscle memory is coming in. And then I'm killing 2 birds with one stone and I don't mind that. This is what happened to me when I was working on my RCM preparatory repertoire book. Even though, I hadn't "mastered" all the songs to the point of being able to play them perfectly without a single mistake (well some of them I did), I had learned all the songs. There weren't any parts that I didn't understand and couldn't do. Any mistakes I made were random accidents. This is just a theoretical example but, I could have played a song 10 times in a row and potentially made 1 mistake in a different place each time, and fixed the previous mistake each time. To me those are performance level perfection mistakes. And as I understand, to pass and RCM level, you don't need 100% anyways. So I figured, I understood all the theory, I knew how to play all the songs. There was nothing I didn't understand how to play. And I could play them all. In fact I had played them all perfectly. I just didn't always play ALL of them perfectly on the first attempt. Some I did, some I didn't. I was paying attention to tempo timing and dynamics and making it sound good too. I also listened to teachers performing those songs on youtube as a comparison and my performance was just as good. Anyways, I realized I was no longer sight reading, so I decided to move onto the next level.

I'm going through the RCM books as a side hobby to continue and keep the learning alive (especially sight reading!), being exposed to new stuff and in a successive level but, all the music I want to learn is already within my level of learning more or less. They are all fairly simple songs compared to all the piano music that exists. I don't know how far I will go in RCM. Maybe I'm not even at their standards, but as long as I'm doing anything, it can't be bad right?

Hello, bananasushi,

About sightreading: You can get about nine or ten piano repertoire books about RCM preparatory level and just play through those books, maybe just twice or three times per piece. That's about what my children's piano teacher does with them, and they seem to have picked up sight reading in an enjoyable way. When you're ready to move to RCM level 2 repertoire, you can get about nine or ten piano repertoire books at the RCM level 1 level and do the same thing.

By the way, I didn't realize there was such a thing as Banana Sushi, but when I saw your name, I googled it, and it looks pretty interesting.

Three months ago you asked for similar advice and you seem to still be using the same approach even though we told you how ineffective it is. Why do you keep doing something that doesn't work?

First, something you didn't ask about:



This statement is a "yellow flag" for me --

You haven't talked about dynamics or phrasing. You write as if, when you've learned the _notes_, you've learned the _piece_.

. . . But music is more than playing the right notes at the right time.

Unless you are recording yourself and playing back your performance, you don't _really_ know how your playing sounds to other people.

For the question you asked:

I think that sight-reading a book of music -- from start to finish -- and doing that same book again, _does_ give you real practice in sight-reading. As you say, you haven't practiced any piece well enough to develop "muscle memory" for the notes.

But it's not perfect:

If you have a good musical memory, the first reading will "stick" in your mind. When you play it a second time, you'll have _some_ memory for "what comes next?". And that means it's not _pure_ sight-reading.

No, I'm actually learning real songs the correct and proper way. Such as Canon in D. Slowly and one measure at a time. I learned from everyone's advice.

At that time a few months ago, I was actually trying to learn RCM matieral (albeit on my own) and wondering why it was taking so long. After everyone's answers, I now know why it was taking so long. Because I wasn't learning them properly, I was only sight reading them.

NOW, I've decided I'm not really trying to "learn" RCM. I will only use it for sight reading material. And I'm asking if that is ok.
It's like killing 2 birds with one stone. It isn't just random material. It's consistently of a particular level. I'm using it for sight reading, but in the long term I'm also learning it, so as I learn it, I can move onto the next level. I like stuff that advances because it creates goals I can work towards. But my main goals are the real pieces that I want to learn, which I explained are not hard songs. They are all relatively easy. You know, pop songs etc. They don't get harder, they mostly are of a set level more or less. I don't want to become complacent at a certain level, so on the side, as a hobby I'm going through the RCM books slowly as my sight reading material.

What are the standard rules for sight reading? I figure it can't be anything too high of a level. And once you are starting to internalize the song, then you are sight reading less and less until the song is memorized and you aren't sight reading anymore. I'm not jumping to high levels. I finished preparatory and have only moved onto grade 1. I explained that I was playing all the songs in preparatory properly and compared them to teachers playing them on youtube.
Can't someone theoretically use anything for sightreading? As long as it isn't too high of a level? With that I figured Grade 1 Repertoire was fair game. It doesn't seem too far out of bounds. I'm MAINLY using if for sight reading material. Yes, eventually I start to memorize the songs. But that is ok too isn't it.

Sight-reading is the learned skill of being able to play-through music without stopping, with a reasonable degree of accuracy. If you play through it again, you are no longer sight-reading.
Generally, sight-reading is about 2 grade levels below where you are. To develop this skill, you need to play-through a large number of pieces every day.


Yes, as you start to learn a new piece, you can sight-read it once... and only once, to identify the problem areas.

It seems like you are 'putting the cart before the horse'.

Learn to play the piano in an organized manner which will develop skills. I would recommend you get a teacher-- but that has been suggested to you frequently by others.

This rule-of-thumb is often quoted. I think it's about right.

So you have a problem:

. . . There is no music that you can sight-read,
. . . at your current level of skill.

Sight-reading is _hard_. You need to develop unconscious mechanisms that link your eyes and your hands, and they have to work _fast_, and handle complex material.



+1.

You remind me of a friend or mine who tried to cure her hemorrhoids for the last 20ish years with homeopathic pills... after 6 years still floating around RCM 1 and "not rushing per se" is one of the biggest euphemism of this new century.
RCM 1 is something that a non talented adult can pass in the first year of touching a piano with the support of a teacher who is not a complete idiot.

Again, your life, not mine, so you are free to be as much of as an underachiever as you are pleased to, but in this case you keep wasting pretty much everybody time writing a massive post about nothing.. because in reality you should stop almost all your internet activities and get a teacher ASAP.

I am just completely confused about your posts... 6 years of piano study? Your playing sounds as good as the teachers on youtube? And you are working on a grade 1 book?

And adding to that confusion I don't understand what you are asking really...? How to sight read better and more advanced music? How could you sight read properly something you cannot play with some practice?

Hello, bananasushi. I don't know if it works, but I am doing the same as you do: learn with several basic books.

Ok, so maybe what I am doing isn't official sight reading. Maybe I will just call it "practicing". But, are you guys saying there is nothing to be gained from playing through different new songs in that manner? So that I'm stimulating my mind with new, fresh, un-memorized material? There is no way that my sight reading will improve? Cause I was thinking that any time I expose myself to notes, and I haven't memorized the song yet, I'm still practicing note recognition and reaction. Much like flash cards. I could just do flash cards, or I could go through a song and go through the notes one by one and say them and actually press the key on the piano and then eventually my reaction time gets faster and faster as it did when I was working on my Preparatory repertoire. Even though I can't play them perfectly on the first try by sight reading them, even I know that the pieces aren't "hard". They are within my grasp of learning. I have attempted material that was way too hard for me just for the heck of it. And I would just stare at the measure stumped not knowing what to do like it was another language. That is definitely too hard.

Anyways, so maybe what I'm doing is not sight reading but a form of note recognition practice. I know that my note recognition ability and speed is improving. I used to do this before with some of my pop books that had varying levels of pieces in them. I would just play and move to the next page etc. I did find my note recognition improving. I actually felt I was getting better at the piano. I was starting to be able to not only hit notes right away, but sometimes I even instinctively hit the next note without even reading it even if the next note was more than one interval away. Anyways I got busy with university and stopped playing piano and I noticed my sight reading ability suffered greatly. But as I've been playing new stuff frequently again, I've noticed it coming back. I can't argue with that.

The concept I don't understand about sight reading is, if you can play a new song perfect from start to finish, you are sight reading it. To me all that means is that you can prove that you are competent at that song and reading those notes. If the level of sight reading material remains the same, how is your sight reading improving? What are you learning? It would seem that the task is too easy for the person doing it that it isn't challenging them in any way so how are they improving? Then how and when do you progress to something harder? Doesn't it stand to reason that to improve at something, eventually one has to move to a higher level? Or is the stuff that is challenging you at a higher level, the actual repertoire that you are working on? And sight reading is just for keeping that something sharp? Is the improving done on the repertoire learning phase, and the sight reading phase just keeps it there? Is there any way to improve your sight reading by actually bumping your sight reading material up one notch and just playing through lots of new material once each every day?

Another thing I don't understand is (I'm gonna put this in a new topic). If you are supposed to practice sight reading every day, but you can never sight read the same thing ever again (as some have said), how many millions of pages of music do you need? Half an hour of sight reading practice a day could be up to 10 or more pieces. That's 3650 pieces a year. How can anyone own that much stuff? Let's say you spend one year in a level and there are ten levels. That's 36500 pieces or music. Who can afford that or even have room for it? Yeah I suppose you can get rid of old stuff but it is still a lot. What is the limit?

If you are a complete beginner, what can you really sight read? You would have to buy all the beginner books to use their first few pages or random notes to use as sight reading. Or is sight reading at that level not really necessary? And when does it become necessary?

Take the analogy of reading English. How did you improve your reading in elementary school? Did you keep re-reading the same stuff or did you read lots of different books and very gradually got better at it?

Ok Charles, you are probably right about the recording myself part. I haven't done that yet. But once again, I'm not actually following RCM. So I don't need a certificate. Nor will I go around boasting I'm in a particular grade level because I know that isn't true. I know you don't have to have 100% to pass a grade level. And the teacher wasn't playing those simple child's pieces as a virtuoso. They are 20-30 seconds long. They aren't very complicated in general. They aren't emotionally moving pieces like moonlight sonata. I was saying I considered my performance acceptable on the basis that I was playing at the right tempo, I was hitting the right notes, I was paying attention to the dynamics in the song. There were no awkward pauses. It flowed smoothly. And it sounded nice to me. I knew how the song was supposed to sound and I felt my playing was acceptable. But it wasn't a performance for an audience. I felt that I had gotten the point of what the material was trying to teach me. Each song teaches you something doesn't it? So I moved on. I'm not trying to become a performer. I just want to use some stuff to work on as supplementary material to challenge myself from a different angle. I have found my note recognition and response time improving as a result of playing new stuff. Can I say I was using them in the same manner as "exercises"? Would that be ok? Or is there no reason at all that I should ever be doing what I'm doing? Cause it's not the only thing I'm doing. It's just one of the things I'm doing. I don't put hours into it each day. I practice scales. I practice from the dozen a day. I practice czerny, and hanon etc. I do various stuff. But when I learn a song that I actually want to learn, I learn it one measure at a time slowly. The way everyone recommends to learn a song as has been told to me by many people on this forum, or certain youtube teachers such as Josh Wright and many others.

Hi
I don't think you are learning piano in the same way... what i think you are doing, Albunea, is to use a method book(s) in a systematic way to learn a skill, and play the music associated with it.

You therefore build the skills at Level 1 so you then move on to Level 2, etc. Right? Systematic and planned?

Ataru, I haven't been floating around on RCM Level 1 for 6 years. I have been involved in many different books. I just started RCM grade 1 a week ago. I was on my Preparatory level repertoire book for about 4 months I think. I often take a breaks to work on songs I want to learn.

Before Preparatory, I was working on the Alfred's books 1-3. Mostly 1. I was also working on some books before that that I had bought in Japan when I was living there. Don't worry, I can read Japanese. And the books were beginner. They start out teaching you the first few notes on the keyboard and progress by adding more. Having simple one handed songs. then hands together. You know how it is. Don't need a lot of text there. I would work on my Final Fantasy Books, then work on learning some Hymns. I've jumped around a bit. But I like to go back to my old books and redo them again and again as well. But you know, I'm just a slow learner in general. Even in Alfred's book 1, I had a lot of songs I struggled with in the second half of the book. I learned them. And memorized them... and forgot them again as I went back to them a year or two later. I didn't forget the whole song, but just couldn't play it perfectly with no mistakes. I had to relearn again. Sadly that is the way my mind works. When I was taking music lessons and using my Alfred's level one book, I did make my piano teacher cry with my performance of "Somewhere over the rainbow" she said it was very moving.

I took long breaks as I was in university. And then I've been working a lot. Sometimes out of town for a month at a time, back in town for a few days, then back out of town again. Then I was working two jobs in town. I'm married now, and I don't learn as fast as a child. My mind just isn't quick anymore. The thing I like about the RCM books is that they are shorter chunks to take in (about 40 pages) vs. an Alfreds level 2 or 3 book which are like 150 pages. And I believe the RCM curriculum to be more academic. But Alfred's is where I learned all my music theory. I'll admit I've had a lot of music and other materials distracting me.

When I bought my preparatory book 2 years ago and started playing it. It was actually hard for me, to the point where I was turned off by it and didn't really want to work on it at that time. When I went back to it a couple years later and told myself I was gonna learn it no matter what, I realized at that point it wasn't as hard for me as it was a couple years ago. I had improved a bit in that time. Then I got to the point after a few months where I was playing them one by one properly every day. That is definite progress. Now I'm working on Grade 1 and I wasn't hit with that wall feeling of "this is too hard. I don't want to do it". One thing I did with my preparatory book was incorporate foot tapping. I now do it with everything I play. That also helped with songs in different timing. I was exposed to a song in 6/8 time and I had to take a break and learn on youtube about 6/8 time and how to count it. So these were new "lessons" or "challenges" that I faced and I worked on it and overcame it.

Sometimes I think one has to just take some harder material and work at it. RCM is good because the pieces are selected in a way that they want you to learn specific things. So I work at them, get better, and overcome the challenges and eventually. I think this past half year was a big growing period for me. I learned a lot of different stuff.

I think I was just calling what I was doing the wrong thing and that was probably confusing people.

Is it ok to practice (not sight read) stuff higher than your sight reading level to improve your sight reading ability?
Can this improve one's sight reading ability? Because I believe it has with me.

@Bananasushi
I have been taking piano lessons for 4 years after about 3 months of self study. My previous experience was from 30 years back and then very little so I practically started as a complete beginner. I consider myself a slow learner in some things due to disabilities and a demanding job. I have tried to practice every day though and have managed to do that with very few exceptions. But my practice on weekdays may be reduced to 20-30 minutes before going to work. I practice more on holidays and weekends, but the 30 min is mostly quite enough to make some progress with 45 min lessons once a week during the school year. I practice on summer as well, just a bit differently than when working with my teacher.

In that 4 years I have gone from playing some simple beginner pieces to working on Scarlatti sonatas, Chopin preludes and all kinds of shorter pieces of various difficulty from many composers. Pieces that I can listen to professionals play as well, they just do it a lot better yet. I have always focused more on quality than quantity due to the restrictions mentioned above.

The kind of method book pieces you talk about we worked briefly on the first year or so and then moved on. I'm sure I would have done that without the teacher as well, because there's little motivation in such things musically. So it just seems odd that after at least a few years of piano study you are fine with playing a method book of such low level over and over again and not want to advance and play some real music instead. And to explore and learn new things all the time.

I can think of a couple of reasons:
- You just don't have the technique and knowledge to play even intermediate pieces. And that's where a teacher would help you.
- You don't know what's out there that you could reasonably start working on to build your skills. Again something that a teacher can help with.

The biggest problem is that if you don't get a teacher and you keep practicing those same things over and over and you do it in a non productive way, you will never advance to more interesting music and never learn to play with efficient and unstraining technique, beautiful tone and musical understanding. Sight reading is a great skill to have but making music should be the priority IMO, whether playing from the notes or from memory.

So why you would delay something that you yourself say is a good idea (get lessons) and instead keep writing these to be honest very confused questions on the forum instead, is something I just don't get. It will only get more difficult to start to work with the teacher after you have spend more time ingraining your own practice habits that seem a bit too unconventional to really work IMO...

dogperson, if I have understood bananasushi well, I am doing things similar to him (or her? ), except that he must be much more advanced because started much longer ago and has been playing some other songs he likes (which I am not doing since I found it too hard). So what I do in common with him is to go back once and again to the same songs in my books: Bastien 1, Thompson 1, The First Year of Piano and internet music for level 0/1 (now also my alto part in choir sheets). When I play them first, I only play them like 3 or 5 times, then the next day again, etc.

At first I was trying different things, and then I concluded that I would never be able to memorize, or be working very hard on one particular piece for a long time, and that my only way ahead was to learn sight reading, and that is what I am trying. This means I will stay at low levels for a long time. Fortunately, unlike outo, I like many of the basic pieces, and they are already a huge challenge for me, so can't even think of advancing fast. For example, I am learning this now:



I like it.

I also play a couple of times the first measures of a more difficult song...right now like 10 measures, and started about 2 or 3 months ago.

@Albunea
Sorry if I made is sound that one has to advance at certain rate for piano playing to be meaningful. Your way can be just as enjoyable. But the OP seems to want to know how to get better at something and has been working on that on and off for 6 years. So we are trying to offer him actual pragmatic solutions instead of continuing to build all these elaborate theories about learning and practicing that don't seem very usable. He is continuously asking questions that are impossible to answer in any productive way really.

BTW. I could name a few grade 1 pieces that I really like and don't mind learning