Hello,

Can anyone shed any light on this subject.

My daugher aged 9 is at Grade 5 Violin standard and about to take this in April. She is very musical, co-ordinated and learns quickly and is potentially Distinction material.

However, she has difficulty with the sight-reading. Her musical side makes her play it too fast which doesn't help but she isn't great reading the rhythms although I think that this is due to difficulties reading the notes. She still confuses A with C in the spaces and B with D on the lines ever after playing for three years!
Her teacher wondered if she was a bit Dyslexic but she has shown no other symptoms - in fact she is academically bright and reads and writes and processes information well so no hint of Dyslexia there.

She wears glasses so it can't be a sight problem.

Can anyone with knowledge of Dyslexia or sight-reading problems help here?

Thanks

A lot of research over recent years has led to the conclusion that dyslexia is not just a problem with reading or writing - that was the old-school way of thinking.

In fact, I had a discussion recently with another forum member about this because they hightlighted in themselves a problem that I too have - poor short-term memory, which is now a very recognised symptom of dyslexia. This forum member is extremely intelligent, well-qualified and a truly gifted musician and, similar to myself, at the age of about 7 had a reading age of someone in their mid-teens.

In my music grade exams, the two areas I always performed badly on were: sight-reading and memorising and singing back a melody. It wasn't for a lack of practice in these areas, it was something I always struggled with and still do.

Sight-reading is about visually taking in several bars of music at a time - depending on the speed of the music - memorising that pattern of notes and looking further ahead all the time. So in fact, you are playing music behind the point of where you eyes are currently looking. Even with all the practice in the world, it's something I've never been really good at and I'd be a useless professional woodwind player for that very reason. In a complete string section it's not a crime to miss a few notes out.

Similarly, memorising and singing back a melody was and still is a problem for me. The examiner would get to the end of only a four bar melody and I couldn't even remember the beginning! I would however agree that the stress of an exam situation also highlights a weakness and very likely makes the problem worse.

These days despite still finding it difficult, I force myself to sight-read, I have to as a freelancer, but at the same time I'm also pretty familiar with the main stay of the orchestral repertoire. Give me a chamber or solo work to play that I don't know and I just wouldn't be able to sight-read it up to speed if it was a fast movement.

I've never been diagnosed as dyslexic because I've never had problems with reading or writing and my IQ score (formally tested) is well above average intelligence, but perhaps that gift comes at a cost elsewhere.

I find this really interesting because several of my pupils are struggling with sight-reading despite my having taken them through a beginner book which normally works very well with establishing good sight-reading ability right from the start.

However! I don't think it's a short-term memory problem because my short-term memory isn't as good as it was (due to creeping old age) yet my sight-reading ability hasn't diminished.

On second thoughts, could it be the lack of parrot-type learning in primary schools - no more memorising poems etc etc because it was considered to be too boring for the children -?

In other words, could those old ways have been good in the sense that they laid down good memory habits - or certain aspects of them (the ones that aid sight-reading, for example) for life?

I'm not sure - I'm really terrible at sight reading, no matter how much practise I do - but when I was younger my mum used to make me learn poetry all the time, to recite for guests.
I learnt "The Highwayman" in an evening, when I was seven, and I still know it now, but for the life of me I can't sight read - it takes me too long to figure out the intervals between each note in my head - I can't look at a sheet of music and hear it. That's just anecdotal evidence of my experience though...

OK it's probably not that then. So what is it? Why do so many kids these days find it harder to sight-read then they used to? Or even read music for that matter? I'm noticing it increasingly with my students, where once they would have found reading music pretty easy once they'd learnt the notes and got the hang of it.

Perhaps it's just down to the fact that most kids spend far more time on computers than they'll ever admit, and just don't spend enough hours learning basic skills like reading music - because it involves a certain sort of brain power and kids are getting out of the habit of using that sort of brain power?

Computers are just so - instant after all, aren't they?

I learnt to read music in the 50's when there wasn't really a lot to do at home except read, draw, listen to the radio and learn skills. I recall just making myself do it - every good boy deserves favour, f-a-c-e etc, and once it was in it was in and that was that. So why is it such a big deal for so many kids these days? Because they don't devote the time to it, that's why. Or they have some mild, undiagnosed dyslexia, or undiagnosed eyesight problems. Or a short term memory problem. Whichever it is, I wish I knew a one-size-fits-all remedy...

It may well be something that will catch up later.
9 is quite young for grade 5 standard and processing notes and rhythm is a complicated business.
I don't think it's especially unusual for talented youngsters to have a 'lag' in this area.
When a 10 year old puil of my fromer piano teacher auditioned for one of the specialist music schools they said that they didn't consider it to be a problem as it was something that could be worked on.

I think you might have a point about learning by rote not being 'the thing' any more. Learning poetry, I feel, is different, in that the words give meaning to what you're learning. Times tables, which are similar in their abstract nature, aren't learnt by rote in school so much now; in my experience, anyway, they're just sent home with the kids, and it's sort of down to the parents how they 'learn' them, and then backed up with games and stuff in school. But they don't recite them any more. Establishing that 'that dot on the page is this note note on the instrument' is just something that needs to be continually reinforced if it is ever to be done at speed. Taking short sight-reading exercises as 'quick studies' and repeating them again and again definitely helps the eye to tell the brain that that dot is this note and that this is where to find it. This is eventually bound to transfer to new music. Once the exercise is memorised it's obviously obsolete as sight-reading/short study material, so natural memorisers as opposed to sight-readers will just need more material to practise! I know this is all pretty obvious, and I'm sorry if that's the case, but (without meaning to imply that it's you!) several students do assume that sight-reading will just get better on its own as they progress through the grades. Obviously some are naturally better at it for whatever psychological reason, but I haven't come across anybody yet, dyslexic or otherwise, who can't improve it over time to some extent.
EDIT - sbhoa's post wasn't there when I started typing. I can see the point of the specialist music schools - sight-reading can be improved if enough effort is put in; musicality may not necessarilly! I would worry more if this was what was seriously lacking at Grade 5 standard. And yes, 9 is still very young.

Another thought....
Separating rhythm from pitch may help.

One of my poorest sight-readers (piano) had reached Grade 5 standard but struggled desperately with sight-reading, so we tried endless hymn practice, hymns being pretty simple, rhythmically - a few times through the simpler ones till it wasn't sight-reading any more - and it worked wonders with the pitch aspect - well, it worked wonders over a period of about 6 months! For the rhythm aspect of it all we tried seperate hand practice of jazzy music; can't report much on that yet cos we're still struggling, but living in hope!

I myself have had a lot of trouble it this department and I'm slowly figuring it out.

I understand the music notation. My memory is excellent. I am neither dyslexic nor uncoordinated.
I can locate keys on the keyboard without looking. But my sightreading of 2 clefs on piano is agonising, albeit improving.

Some time ago a poster noted that when you read prose, your eyes makes 2-3 movements called saccades
a second while a good sight reader will make 6 saccades a second while sightreading. In other words, sightreading music calls for 2-3 times the speed of eye-brain co-ordination. Small wonder that music can look blurry if your eyes are having to move at 3 times their normal speed!! Developing faster eye muscles and more efficient "software" needed in the brain takes time and effort and I would say specific exercises. I tried the Harris, Right@Sight and Richmann books and found they were limited in this one respect, albeit excellent for other necessary skills in sightreading. I found the Playing with Colour children's books were the first step in cutting the Gordian (sp?) Knot because having some of the information encoded in colour made things much easier to look ahead, as much less eye movement was called for. I then used the Kemble books and found them really helpful, and am now moving back to the others for the other reading skills they develop.

In fact I'm rather pleased at the moment - my teacher recently remarked my sightreading had made a leap. And it has! I'll keep at it though as I can see it's an incredibly useful skill and anyway once I decide to do something I stick at it beyond the point of reason until I've got it nailed.

I was a young child in late 1970s and grew up through the 80s. My school owned just ONE old BBC B that took an hour to load a programme from a cassette tape! - therefore I didn't touch a computer until I was in my early 20s, so I don't think my sight-reading issues can be blamed on the use of modern electronic equipment. However, I do agree that children these days are reluctant to use their brain at all. Even for very basic tasks they still want to button press or look it up. There's one boy I teach the violin to who simply cannot work out a key signature unless he goes to the piano and looks at the keys. Both his mother and myself are pretty fed up with his laziness to commit anything to memory. This is made even more astounding by the fact that he's been having music lessons of some sort since the age of 3 and he's now 11.

Perhaps learning has become too 'interactive' in schools and other establishment that's offering educational programmes, ie. too much of, Look at this (pretty and colourful) diagram and answer the question, ......but you can simply 'click here for the answer' (if you can't be bothered to work it out for yourself). Perhaps learning should go back to the way I and other before me had to learn, by encouraging creative thought on solving problems, plus a pencil and a piece of paper, rather than endless pretty pictures attached to clickable instant answers. I also had to use an 'old fashioned book' called a Dictionary.

I'm constantly astounded by childrens poor spelling, use of text language in documents that should be written out properly and their inability (laziness again?) to use capital letters for: 'I' (referring to yourself), at the beginning of proper names, eg. road names, or towns.... not to mention the first letter at start of a new sentence.

I was repotting some house plants over Christmas and put out some newspaper on the kitchen table to protect it. I used an old copy of The Times (dated Friday 18th July 1997). The page I opened it at, purely by chance, was the educational page, where I instantly noticed a half-page report about the poor basic arithmetic skills of 13 and 14 year olds. It went on to say that England was 14th on the table, well below countries such as Switzerland, France, the Far East and even Australia. We were ranked marginally above the United States. I couldn't help but think that nothing has changed in that ten years. The news is still full of teachers and government bods bleating (and procrastinating) about how we have such poor maths skills in 13 to 14 year olds.

On the other hand, there are some pretty studious children out there who are able to learn off their own back and memorise whole tomes of information. (However, that's long-term memory and something I don't have a problem with - most likely the reason why I can commit entire violin sonatas to memory in a couple of months).

(I'll put my soap box back under the table now....)

Very good post, Amanda, and much food for thought there.

Maybe we should take the attitude "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and somebody should develop something electronic that sits on a music stand and does cartwheels with fireworks every time you get through a piece of sight-reading with less than x mistakes within a particular time...

I agree. Also about the pupil being very young. Sight reading skills take a lot of work to develop and it may be a better idea to work on those rather than continue through the exams, as the tests don't get any easier! Personally, I'd say that a break from exam work would be beneficial.

May I just say that short-term memory has a very specific meaning in psychology. it's not the memory of the last few hours, minutes, days, weeks etc. It is the store we use for holding small (very small) amounts of information while we process it.

In most adults, this store will hold between 5 and 9 chunks of information (where a chunk is a single note, digit or letter, or a related group, such as the letters BBC or the C major arpeggio). Most dyslexics have a much reduced short term memory store, often of only two or three chunks. This means that they are often unable to read ahead as far as others, as they cannot store the contents of the next bar or two in the same way as non-dyslexic sight readers learn to.

Sorry if this digresses a little, but this is interesting! If a chunk is a single note, does this mean that in a chordal piece the average person will only be able to read two beats ahead? Does this way of thinking only take into account single notes, or do patterns come into it too - a pattern being a 'chunk'? I read chords, for instance, not as notes in isolation, but as units, with regard to what has gone up the ways from the previous chord and what has gone down, and what has stayed the same - or it's clear that the whole chord as a unit has gone up two tones or whatever. How do dyslexics and poor sight-readers deal with patterns? Is there any way we can improve reading by looking at patterns rather than individual notes? Could a 'chunk' become three notes, for instance, rather than one, if we teach patterns, once key signatures are known?

What represents a 'chunk' depends on the individual, and his/her previous learning experiences. My problem with sight reading on piano, for example, is that I don't tend to be able to chunk chords very well, as I've only been reading them for the last few years. I can recognise triads in root position, so they would be a chunk, but I'm particularly bad at reading chords containing accidentals or seconds, especially when they're in bass clef.

So one reason people get better at sight reading if they do a lot of it is that they begin to build up their internal store of patterns they can remember as a single chunk of info. To use a simple example, the letters BBC or ITV would be a chunk for most British people, but may well not be for those from other countries.

A slight digression: one of the problems with Aural Test A at Grade 4 and above is that the number of notes, taken in isolation, exceeds most people's short term memory capacity. For them to be able to remember and sing back, some sort of chunking has to take place (eg recognition of scale and arpeggio patterns).

Back to sight reading: the 'splurts' technique, described a while ago by sarah-flute, helps get round the problem of reading difficult passages where chunking is impossible or difficult. This involves playing the notes of the passage in pairs first, with each pair beginning on the second note of the previous pair. Then the passage is played in groups of three notes, again with each group of three beginning on the last note of the previous group, then fours, fives, and sixes and sevens too, if possible. I haven't yet tried it extensively with harmonised passages on the piano, but it certainly works very well indeed for melody lines on the flute.

Interesting post. I agree with those above who think that this particular nine year old, just hasn't had time and experience to get sight reading up to the same level as everything else. We are not necessarily going to be good at everything.

What I find a puzzle is how some children find learning to read music at all a struggle. In my large groups of children I find that there will be some who will remember where, say, 'B' or 'A' go on the stave instantly (as I did as a child) and others who might be just as bright find they have forgotten it week after week. Why do some bright children just not remember? There must be something that the brain is required to do for note reading, and sight-reading too, which is different from other skills and it is random if a person has this skill or not and nothing to do with intelligence or musical ability.

Ironically, I had a dyslexic boy once who couldn't read the titles of the tunes he was playing, but could read all the notes of the music!

I'd be inclined to think in most cases that the ones who pick it up quickly then seem to forget just haven't put the effort in between lessons, or aren't sure how to go about practising at home.

I teach a boy who can't read words but can read music! He goes to a school where they don't start reading formally until they are about 8. I have to tell him what his "well done" stickers say

Then there are the ones who actively choose not to learn.

My son is dyslexic and has short term memory problems. This means that when he has to copy something from the board, he looks at it on the board but by the time he has looked down at his page, he has forgotten it and when he looks back at the board, he can't remember what was the last thing he did manage to write down. He has an IQ of 140 (at 11!) and a reading age off the top of the scale so is not unintelligent - but is let down by this aspect of his learning as his notes don't make much sense. If the teacher gives him a handout he is fine to read and learn from this.
Is there a similar problem with sightreading for some people? Could it be that by the time you have decoded the note and mentally transferred the visual stimulus to the motor skills needed to produce the note, you have forgotten what the note was? Don't know what the way to help would be... apart from keep trying.

My son is dyspraxic and really finds reading music SO difficult... but he has NO problem with reading (reading age 4 1/2 yrs above chronological age). He has tracking issues similar to those windy son's appears to have (so finds copying off a board difficult. I do not understand why he can read the Lord of The Rings at aged 11 but can't sight read music!!! Apparently he does have short term memory issues (but it was number stuff that was used when he was tested for this), which explains why scales are difficult. However, he can learn poems, words (he does lots of drama), song words etc, without any effort. The ed pysch explained that all of these are meaningful things to him, and he has learned to by-pass short term memory and get the words directly into long term memory. Maybe reading music just isn't that meaningful to these children... and they do have short term memory problems? So my son can learn a poem for a drama exam, because somehow it makes more sense than music?

Sorry if I'm not making much sense.... am jet-lagged. Just returned from Canada!!!!