Sight Reading

[Sarah Mullen]

The flash cards are a very good idea.

[Angela Biggs]

Carl, my husband has this problem. He gave up on trying to read music as a child because once he heard the piano tune through once or twice (max), he could replay it without looking. Well, my primary instrument is voice and I now live in an area where experienced accompanists are very difficult to find, so I want him to learn to play for me! I bought this set of flashcards from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Color-Coded-Beginning-Students/dp/0739015575/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314206379&sr=8-1

We spent a few minutes every day drilling his reading: first with note-names only, then note names with octave designation (C4, A3, etc.), and finally he would respond to each card by playing the appropriate note on the piano. We timed every session, so he always had a goal: beat the last time! Wrong answers were penalized simply because I didn’t stop the timer – he had to keep going until he got it right. He definitely got to a point where his time plateaued and he recognized that he had to stop counting the spaces. Once he could go through all of the provided pitches with instant recognition, we moved to a very beginner piano book and started reading a couple of new pieces per day to establish horizontal reading habits; I stood over him and beat out the time (very slowly).

The two most important pieces of this were timing each session in the early stages (really worked wonders!), and daily practice. If your student is only working on reading once a week in her lesson, he or she isn’t going to improve very readily.

Jeremy continued on his own with a self-devised plan: he found a piece he really, really likes and obtained the sheet music. It’s a long, difficult work, and he works it a section at a time. When he comes to a new section, he first tries to play through the music by reading, then works on it, asking me for help as needed and listening to the recording while reading the music if he’s still not getting it – which gives him an opportunity to associate the symbols with sound. Of course he memorizes that section quickly, but then he has another new reading challenge waiting just up ahead.

You might try something like that — find a piece that enthralls your student, and give it to her in tiny sight-reading pieces: four measures of melody, then the same four measures with all of the RH notes, then the same four measures with RH and LH, and then those measures become part of her practice assignment for the week. That way she’s reading music in order to obtain something she wants.

Best of luck! Let us know how it goes! 🙂

[carl-swanson]

Angela- Those are great ideas, and are along the same lines as I was thinking of doing with her. Thanks.

[HBrock25]

i have the same struggles with sight reading as you have, even we played different instrument (i play the piano), it has the same principles when it comes to music. one thing to enhance is the hand and eye coordination, which is very important in sight reading music.

[carl-swanson]

I had a friend years ago who had gone to the Juilliard graduate school in the 1940’s and studied with Joseph Levine. She was an incredible pianist and she was a very good sight reader. I asked her once how far ahead of what she was playing was she scanning with her eyes. She thought about it for a moment and then said to me, “When I’m sight reading, I see the whole page.” I don’t think I could ever get to that point.

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