Teach Yourself to Play Piano: On Sight-Reading Pt. 2

Anyone who's had any instruction in sight-reading has been told to read ahead.  This piece of wisdom is crucial yet useless if not further explained.  Of course I would love to read 4 measures ahead, but that's just not in the cards, is it?  It is especially important to instruct young students on how far to read ahead when they're first beginning to read.  At first, it's just one note ahead.  After some experience their little gaze will widen to pick up more and more notation. 

A couple of strategies I've recently come across that will help you stay ahead of the music are using a flexible tempo and reading from the bottom to the top. 

Using a flexible tempo allows you to slow down (not stop) when you come across difficult passages in your reading.  This strategy trains two skills essential for sight-reading.  The first is, of course, reading ahead.  To see that a complicated passage is fast-approaching, your eyes will need to be ahead of what you're playing.  At first you might only be seeing that the difficult measures ahead of you look like Sanskrit, and that your chance of negotiating them smoothly is laughably slim.  Quite alright!  That is where slowing down comes into play.  The second skill you are training is processing the actual notes.  Now of course this should be happening every time you're sight-reading, but if you slow down and take care to understand and play all the notes on your score, your eyes will start to gather more and more information.  Soon the Sanskrit will read like a romance language that you took in college.  You're still translating in your head, but it's easier than Sanskrit. 

Reading from the bottom to the top-bass to treble clef-is something that I have not incorporated into my own practice yet, but I can see its benefits especially for a beginner.  Bass clef is usually more difficult to read for beginners than treble clef, so starting from the bass clef will ensure that they get at least as much bass practice as treble practice.  Another reason for this strategy is that the bass dictates the rest of the harmonies.  If you decode the bass line, faking your way through the rest of the parts becomes possible.  Understanding the bass motion will give young and old readers alike a greater sense of harmonic context.  If we're sight-reading within a context of a key, a harmonic progression, sequential succession, etc., our brains and our ears and fingers begin to know what to expect. 

For a step-by-step how-to guide to sight-reading check out my hubpage, Teach Yourself to Play Piano: How to Improve Sight-Reading Music.  Also, check out this video from a well-known piano pedagogue.  She discusses the flexible tempo strategy and other useful tips.

Teach Yourself to Play Piano: On Sight-Reading Pt. 1

Ah yes, I'll start my blog giving advice on the bane of my existence.  I would wager that I used to be the worst sight-reader in the world.  I am not using the phrase "in the world" figuratively.  Let me clarify.  I am not the worst sight-reader in the world, however I used to be the worst sight-reader in the world for someone who plays piano at my level.  That is to say, the discrepancy between the repertoire I played and the repertoire that I could sight-read, was wider than any other in the world.  Wider than the stylistic differences between Bach and Rachmaninoff (now that was figurative language)!  Who can play a Rachmaninoff  Concerto and not sight-read selections from the Anna Magdalena notebook?

Through fifteen years of playing the piano, I managed to stay away from sight-reading almost entirely.  I will not blame this on my teachers.  When I was younger, it was hard enough to keep me in piano lessons, and while at college I was an English major and had no time to remedy all the holes in my music education.  However, now I'm back at school getting a music degree.  For the last year I've been trying to improve my sight-reading off and on, and I've seen a little success.  Using the criteria above, I've probably moved from the worst sight-reader in the world at my level, into the bottom 10%.  Not bad!  At this rate, I'll be a passable sight-reader in ten years.

I've found that improving your sight-reading is a long process, and it's hard to see the improvement when it happens.  This summer I've been doing a lot more reading, so we'll see how I look when school starts back up and I'm thrown into an uncomfortable sight-reading situation.  If you're a piano teacher, force your students to practice sight-reading.  If you're just starting piano, force yourself to do the same so as to not fall behind in this skill.  What a luxury it would be to roll into any situation and calmly read the pants off whatever score is thrown in front of you.

I'll have more in the next post on what sight-reading is all about.  Hopefully, it will be less about me and more about the topic at hand.  I recently published a detailed hub on hubpages about steps to follow when you're sight-reading.  It's called Teach Yourself to Play Piano: How to Improve Sight-Reading Music.  Check it out if you're interested in something practical (not this blog).