my sight reading is terrible and i really need some help

when i sight read i see the note relative to the position of the last note rather than the actual note. So if there is an e and then g rather than think g ill think two above the last note. Is this how your supposed to sight read or should i be thinking each note?

when practicing is it a good idea to try the right hand first and then the left hand afterwards? (for piano)

ive heard that when you practice sight reading you should play without stopping even when you make mistakes, but when i make mistakes there often too big to come back from

does playing to a metronome help?

is it ok to look at your hands if your making big jumps?

Can anybody reccomend some good sight reading books or any good methods of improving sight reading? I don't need to learn for any exam or anything i just want to learn to sight read.

im really bothered by my inablility to sight read so any help is greatly appreciated

You'll get much better advice from others, but since I'm online while everybody else is , here are a few things that helped my son, who is an ears rather than an eyes person.

He got some collections of sight-reading pieces, threw away all shame, and started at the beginning...

1) FIRST check the time signature and tempo, look at how the beats fall in each bar, set the metronome if you aren't sure what it should be. Check the key signature, play the basic arpeggios or chords for that key...

2) SING through the piece, using the note names instead of la-laing it, so that you are reminding yourself of any stray accidentals etc.

3) PLAY through - keep metronome at the proper beat, and play it half-speed or even quarter-speed if you have to, paying attention to time value first and right notes second (because a lot of poor sightreaders seem to have more trouble with the time/rhythm than with the notes, and if you play with other people, you can fudge a different note without inciting everybody else to violence, but if you mess up the beat, your life expectancy may be significantly shortened! ).

On a piano you can't really do it any other way since you are reading several notes at the same time and can't possibly physically "say" more than one note at a time.


Depends if you mean sight-reading for "instant rendition" or sight-reading a piece that you are going to learn to play properly over a long period. If someone puts the music in front of you and says "Can you play this?" You obviously don't have time to play each hand separately however, unless it is in an exam (and you say this is not the case) it doesn't matter if you don't play all the notes so you need to learn which ones you can safely miss out; the most important thing is to keep going. (If you want to go and learn it properly it is not a good idea to simplify it the first time).

I don't really have any ideas apart from lots of practise. Sight-read anything you can get your hands on and if possible sight-read duets with someone as playing a duet means you can't stop but have to keep going.

I have sight reading trouble too with piano. What stage are you at, I mean what grade? Because the easiest way of training to sight read it to go backwards to really easy pieces and play them very slowly. Sight-reading is really the art of reading music fast. I have the schaum piano books which have a sight reading practice at the beginning of each book. With the sight reading exercises you practice each hand seperately till you know the notes and can do the exercise fast. You can also do the exercise by saying the notes rather than playing them, this gets you to understand the note names too.

Then I learn really easy pieces very slowly with both hands at the same time and actually practice 'reading' the music rather than playing from muscle memory. So once I get the hang of one piece and I can play it without a mistake I move on to the next piece and play it from the beginning with both hands as slow as I need to to read the notes. I read somewhere 'the only way to learn how to sight read is to sight read'. And 'perfect practice means perfect playing' these are what guide me when learning to sight read. You need to train your fingers to recognize the notes without your brains intervention, it takes a lot of effort to begin with because you have to 'think' about what the note is and then find where it is on the keyboard. But after a while you won't have to think and it becomes automatic. Its difficult, but all it takes is practice. Eventually you begin to speed up. After 2 days of practice I can now sight read grade one pieces not too bad. Whereas a couple of days ago I was rubbish at it.

when i sight read i see the note relative to the position of the last note rather than the actual note. So if there is an e and then g rather than think g ill think two above the last note. Is this how your supposed to sight read or should i be thinking each note?

This is, in fact, how I teach my students to sight-read, and will give you a broadly correct shape - something which is credited in exams, despite the odd wrong note, so I wouldn't necessarily be too quick to give up on doing it this way. (ed - Noodle, I accept that this can result in one mistake sabotaging the entire attempt - I find in practice that it more often rights itself within a bar or so).

I agree with Noodle that (for instant-type sight-reading) it is better to put hands together from the start. I try to get my pupils to tap the rhythm with both hands (on knees or on the lid of the piano) first before even looking at the notes. If you're preparing a piece (as distinct from practising sight-reading) it usually needs to have each hand sorted out separately, but actually depends on the style of the piece, as in some cases one hand actually helps the other.

If you want to actually work on sight-reading skills as separate from learning pieces to perfect, you should really be sight-reading things two or three grades below your current learning ability.