Songs for Sight Reading—Vol 1

I developed this reading curriculum over a five-year period, composing a new piece almost every week. I wanted my Suzuki harp students to have a constant supply of new material to use to develop their reading skills and I found that I was constantly searching for appropriate pieces for them to play. I needed pieces that were simple enough that my students could be successful in their attempts, but challenging enough that reading music kept their interest. I needed pieces that were written idiomatically for the harp. I needed music that was printed simply with an age-appropriate layout and no fingering or placing indications, allowing me the freedom to mark each piece in a way that could meet the individual needs of each student. I finally realized that it was far easier (and more fun!) to compose my own sight-reading curriculum than it was to be constantly adapting pre-existing music to fit this purpose.

There are four graded volumes of sight reading pieces in this curriculum. Several of the pieces are duplicated in multiple volumes at varying levels of difficulty. This allows students at different levels to play together. It can also be a pleasant surprise for the student to occasionally come to new material that is partly familiar already. These particular pieces are cross referenced in the indexes of the four volumes.

New concepts are introduced incrementally. You can address those concepts in whatever degree of detail works with your student’s capacity and curiosity. For example, if the piece is written in the key of G, but there are no F#’s used in the composition, you can use that to spark a conversation about keys and levers and pedals. You can play a G major scale and talk about how E minor is the relative minor. You can look at the last measure and discuss how the piece resolves to its tonal center. Or you can quickly acknowledge that there is an F# in the key signature, but that since you never play the F string you don’t have to do anything about it for this piece, and then move right along.

Some of these pieces can be used as “improvisation starters.” Students can take some essential idea from the piece and apply it to improvising/composing their own variations. For example, if left hand keeps a steady drone and right hand plays a repetitive rhythm, can you invent new notes for right hand to play? Some ideas are included to supplement pieces that lend themselves particularly well to this kind of exploration.

Songs for Sight Reading Volumes 1–4 can be used in a variety of ways. Invite these pieces into your own unique studio and use them to help your students grow from wherever they currently are into more confident, more empowered, more joyful readers of music!