Sight Reading

[sherry-lenox]

In my opinion this is the hardest thing for pianists, organists, harpists to remember.

I’ve worked frequently with amateur and some professional accompanists who unconsciously would take all kinds of rhythmic liberties when sight reading.

No matter how slow you have to set the metronome, you have to remember that the point of having it ticking away is so that you don’t miss a single beat.

[shelby-m]

I haven’t done much sight-reading yet with harp (aside from what I do when I my teacher plops a new piece in front of me).

[armande-fryatt]

Thanks for suggestions about books. Very helpful 🙂

[Rachel Redman]

Sally, I had to pass a sight reading test with the National Piano Auditions, when I was playing the piano. I struggled with sight reading (I prefer to practice a lot, or play by ear) so my teacher emphasized the need to practice sight reading frequently. It’s a very useful skill to have, the further you advance in your music!

Something I learned was the importance of understanding what you’re actually looking for as you sight read. When I took my test, I was given a minute to look over the music…very helpful! If you are well-versed in your scales, chords and inversions, arpeggios, finger placing, etc., then your fingers should naturally fall into correct position, and it should be easier to jump around while following the music.

Always keep in mind the key signature and timing. Try to look at the notes on the page, less as individual notes, and more as patterns and combinations. I just wrote a blog post on this very thing as I’m in the process of learning some new songs and found, to my dismay, that I wasn’t as quick at sight reading, as when I actually just practiced sight reading alone- use it or lose it, I guess. For the in-depth post and tips: http://www.bridalharp.com/blog/7-news/56-how-to-sight-read-part-ii

Hope this helps you! Keep up the practicing, you will get better; trust me!

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

It’s a basic pedal harp book, but the ABC of Harp Playing by Lucile Lawrence addresses both the very basics of sightreading, by coordinating reading and string finding at the same time and the craft of reading and altering orchestra parts as needed. The Art of Modulating helps with sightreading without pedal markings by practicing chord progressions and chordal glissando finding.

[Stephen Conor]

I find this true. Piano teachers today really help their students with such concern. Look for books that a piano teacher could advice you to get and more practice. Practice would be the best teacher you could have in sight-reading. Best of luck.

[carl-swanson]

I recently ran into another problem concerning reading that I have not seen discussed here. About 6 months ago I was asked to teach a 12 year old beginner. When her mother told me she already had 3 years of piano, I thought to myself Thank God! I don’t have to teach her to read. Boy was I wrong on that one. After three years of piano lessons, this kid was still counting lines and spaces to find notes. As soon as I realized this, I started working with her on reading and theory. After a couple of weeks I assumed we were beyond that and I focused more on playing. Wrong again! As soon as the pieces got beyond one note at a time, we hit a brick wall. She was calculating to find all of the notes, in a chord for example. And this vertical way of reading prevented her from seeing blocks of 3 or 4 notes and therefore being able to place 3 or 4 fingers at a time.

After struggling with this for several months, I happened to deliver a repaired harp back to its owner, a professional harpist who also taught. Over a cup of coffee I told her about the problems I was having with this student. Turns out she also had a 12 year old student who was doing exactly the same thing. “I keep telling her, just memorize the lines and spaces. But she has this elaborate way of finding notes which she invented, and she won’t stop doing that,” the teacher said.

I finally sent my student to another harp teacher in Boston whose real speciality is teaching theory at all levels, beginner to professional conductors.
The girl is now making some progress. But it’s very slow, because her default system is to revert to the ‘calculating’ that she has depended on for the past 3 years, and that’s very difficult to overcome. The parents want me to start teaching her again in 2 weeks and I’ve already decided that for the next few months I’m going to spend 20 to 30 minutes(of the 1 hour lesson) on reading exercises. I’m not going to assume anything this time around. I’m going to use flash cards, first with a single note on each one and make her identify the note in 1 second or less. When she can do that, I’ll have cards with 2 notes in a row, then 3 and finally 4, so that she learns to read horizontally and read blocks of notes. With all of these exercises, I’m going to use pennies or marbles to drop into a bowl to indicate a right or wrong answer. Wrong means either naming the note incorrectly, or taking more than 1 second to name it. The importance is speed, which prevents ‘calculating’ or counting lines and spaces.

Has anyone else run into this problem? Any suggestions for overcoming it?

[Jessica A]

It might be a vision problem.

[carl-swanson]

She does wear glasses. I don’t think it’s a vision problem. Her mother has also assured me that she is not dyslexic and that she’s bright as well. I think the original piano teacher let her read like this for 3 years and never bothered to correct it. So now the habits are deeply ingrained.

[Philippa mcauliffe]

http://blitzbooks.com.au/Books/SightReading/SightReadingBook1.aspx

There are two Aussie

[Jessica A]

Is it the girl’s idea to play piano and harp, or is it the mother’s?

[Tacye]

Carl, why do you care what the notes are called?

[carl-swanson]

It was the girl’s choice herself to play the harp. She dropped piano and is playing harp only, and actually seems happy with the harp. The problem is that her system for figuring out lines and spaces has brought any progress on the instrument to a dead halt. She expends so much effort in just trying to read the notes that she accomplishes nothing when she practices as far as improving the piece is concerned. Reading the notes relative to one another I think is more or less what she is doing now, and that requires calculation. If she could just look at the notes and know instantly what they were, she could focus her attention on actually playing the harp instead of what she is doing now. As it is, the 10th time through a short 2 line piece from the Mildred Dilling book is no better than the first.

[kay-lister]

Carl,

I wonder if your student might have a slight form of dyslexia.

[carl-swanson]

Kay- I actually asked the mother that and she said that no, there was no problem and in fact the girl is quite bright in school. I think the core problem is that the piano teacher never really took the time to teach her to read music properly, so she came up with her own hairbrained system for figuring out notes, which worked well enough when she was dealing with one note at a time but not when the music got more complicated. And now I’m the one who has to untangle this mess and get her to read correctly so she can advance on the instrument.

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