Improve Your Sight Reading Skills
Category: Practice and Performance
In a previous post I discussed the importance of sight reading. That’s all well and good, but if I don’t give you any practical tips, what good am I? (Even if I do give you some practical tips, I am probably of limited use to you.) So this post is dedicated to discussing some tips and techniques you can use to improve your sight reading skills. Actually, the word “tips” makes it sound like improving your sight reading will be easy. It’s not. It requires a lot of dedication to become a good sight reader, and it won’t happen overnight. But, with time and effort, you can improve your sight reading skills to the level that you desire.
Step 1: Improve your knowledge of music theory. Know your key signatures and chords so that you can identify them in a piece of music. Know common chord progressions. And hey! it looks like you are taking a good step in visiting my blog! Good for you! Here you will find some useful (and some not so useful) information on musical theory. (<- shameless self-promotion)
Step 2: Start simple. You didn’t learn to read by picking up Tolstoy. Well, I shouldn’t speak for you. *EDIT* I didn’t learn to to read by picking up Tolstoy. Similarly, you probably won’t learn to sight read by trying to play Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu right off the bat. A good rule of thumb is to start sight reading several grade levels below your current level. If you find that unreasonably easy or difficult, adjust as necessary. If you are a beginner yourself, you are learning about sight reading at the perfect time! Starting early will allow you to develop your sight reading skills along with your technique. And that’s a good thing.
Step 3: Start slow. When first starting to practice sight reading, you don’t necessarily need to play the pieces up to the correct speed. The elements of music that you have to worry about when sight reading in order of importance are:
- Most important: Notes and duration. Hit the right notes for the right amount of time, and you are golden!
- Next most important: Dynamics. Make your louds loud, and your softs, soft. Put some feeling into it!
- Also important, but a little less so: Your tempo. Advanced students will want to put a little more focus on this aspect of sight reading, but for beginners, slow and steady wins the race!
Step 4: Play A LOT of music. Don’t practice it! This means playing through the piece once, and then leaving it be. Don’t repeat sections, don’t study the music. Just let it rest.
Step 5: Play a lot of DIFFERENT music. Different styles, different keys, different books, just different!
Step 6: Try not to look at your hands as you play. Learning to sight read is learning about where the keys are on the keyboard just as much as where the notes are on the page. Looking up and down from a piece of music can be difficult. Eventually, with practice, you will just KNOW where the keys are without looking at your fingers. (Kindof like a Jedi power, but cooler.)
Step 7: Scan ahead. As you play, try to be looking at the next measure and recognizing notes, rhythms, patterns, and other goings on. Scanning ahead will prepare your brain for what it needs to tell your hands to do.
Step 8: Use memorization with caution. I think I’ve touched on this before. Memorization is not always a bad thing. Indeed, it is sometimes even a good thing! But memorization can actually hinder your sight-reading progress. Don’t memorize every song you play. Look at the book while you play, and deliberately read the music.
As a side note, I feel like I’ve used more exclamation marks in this post than I usually do. Part of me finds this to be slightly disturbing.
photo credit: »grahamblackall
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Posted on February 27th, 2010 by sharlene
1 Comment
March 21st, 2010 at 7:57 pm
a fine article. I wanted to share the sight reading studies I found at http://pianostudies.angelfire.com/ they help me parctise in all the keys