Sight Reading: It’s Important!
Category: Practice and Performance
Close your eyes and imagine you are one of the world’s greatest pianists. World renowned. (Actually, don’t close your eyes – continue reading.) Now imagine that you are asked to play with the New York Philharmonic – a beautiful concerto by Chopin. You are provided with sheet music that you have never seen before. Now what?
Sight reading! It’s what we all do the first time we lay eyes on a piece of music. Whether or not we are GOOD at it is a whole different issue. Imagine, in the above scenario, that you have sub-par sight-reading skills. Not only would it take LONGER to learn the piece of music, it could be downright embarrassing. (Uh, Mr. Boico? Could you wait a second while I write letters above the notes?)
Here are a few reasons why having good sight reading skills is important:
- It makes learning a piece of music easier. A good sight-reader can identify notes and patterns without laboring over every note.
- It allows the musician to try more pieces. Being able to read music easily can allows the musician to “test out” all sorts of music. Sitting down and playing a new piece of music gives an idea of whether or not they like the composition.
- It improves versatility. Do you want to be a studio musician? A musician in a band or orchestra? Play the piano in church? Being able to sight read will allow you to be more versatile in these situations. A new piece of music will not be a major hurdle to overcome.
Now these are just some of the reasons why sight-reading skills are important for most musicians. Of course, it’s not important for every musician. There are plenty of musicians that can’t read music at all, but have excellent ear training and improvisational skills. It all depends on what your goals as a musician are. Next post I’ll introduce some techniques that you can use to improve your sight reading skills.
Posted on February 25th, 2010 by sharlene
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