...Where you just don't seem to get any better. I'm feeling particularly down this week. I am studying grade 6 piano, but I'm working on improving my sightreading and have been for probably over a couple of years.

I had a look at the sight read specimen tests for garde 6 and I can't even get past the first one. It's weird because I don't think it really depends on the grade I am studying whether I will sight read or not. If I had a sight reading test on one of my grade 6 pieces I would have passed because one of them I played semi ok the first time I played it. And yet, I can't play some grade 1 pieces first off.

I guess I'm in a panic and trying to rush things. I am trying to sight read as many pieces as I possibly can, but the grade 6 sight reading tests just seem so far away from where I'm at right now. I think the worst thing is that I'm slow at sight reading, I have to improve my speed somehow but I guess this will come after practice.

But I just hate those moments where things seem to plateau and you just don't seem to be getting anywhere no matter how hard you try.

I think everyone hits patches where things don't seem to improve noticeably for quite a while, even with lots of practice. What often seems to happen is that after a long while where nothing seems to happen, there's a sudden leap forward, so the work does pay off in the end.

For sight-reading, have you tried a different approach? I'm using the "Improve your sight-reading" books for flute at the moment and also sight-reading through a book of modern studies, to get more confident with unusual key signatures and so on.

T.

Sight reading is a skill which needs to be developed over time. Daily practice is helpful and most of my have a sight reading book to work so they can practice at home. Instead of trying examples from grade 6, I would suggest you go back to a grade you can sight read comfortably! It may be grade 3 or 4, but that's ok. Practice examples which get progressively more difficult from that standard. Sight reading shouldn't be a struggle. Try Improve Your Sight reading - Paul Harris, Sight reading for today - J Last, Sight reading for fun - Lawson.

I'd echo this and even suggest that if you purely use Grade 6 S/R material, then it will take a very long time to improve. Yes, go for lower grade material, as then you will have some spare brain power to think about pitch, rhythm, articulation, dynamics..... Don't be afraid to practise your S/R with one hand at a time counting out loud the beats/sub-beats. Sometimes, I get some of my pupils to play one hand but to say the letter names of the other hand out loud at the same time.

Start with the level you can do comfortably now and work gradually towards what you want to achieve in X number of months.

It will get easier when you use good material regularly.

more or less snap

have you had your eyes checked? I've been wingeing about my sightreading on these forums for years. HOWEVER I've just realised I have poor convergence of the left and right visual fields!!!!! This is NOT tested in routine eye examinations, at least, not to the level needed for music sightreading, and not in the UK. If I hold a pencil vertically 5 inches from tip of my nose and move it far right so that only my right eye can see it, and move it back to the front, I still see only one pencil. But if I do the same to the left and move it back, I get 2 pencils about 2 inches apart, and it is quite painful getting the images together quickly. If I blink then I suddenly get only one pencil.

This means that the right eye is dominant and that the brain supresses the image from the left when it can. When it can't, it sees blurry or double depending on the distance involved.
This explains ALL my symptoms and complaints! Bass clef swimming about only when trying to read 2 clefs. Losing my place, becoming disoriented, rhythms stuttering, unable to look ahead etc...unless I can guess correctly, explaining the random nature of success.

Now reading english prose isn't affected because english is a highly redundant language: you can guess correctly from seeing only the first and last letters of a word and its place in a sentence. BUT music notation is definitely not redundant: you have to clearly see every little thing. Reading complex music at speed triggers the double view leading to confusion, and if I try to keep doing it, headaches and nausea. You need both eyes working together to a very high level of resolution. (I think ithis is why coloured notes helped me, as it introduced redundancy).

When I figure out how to correct/improve it, I'll make a post. If anyone reads this and has a suggestion, please post it!

At the moment, I'm sitting as far from the keys as I can, placing the score in front of the right eye, and carefully scanning a line or 2 of music making a *mental map* of it: all the things the sightreading books recommend like scale and arpeggio bits, where accidentals occur, the rhythm etc etc so that I can guess better. I can then play something correctly albeit slowly. I'm a long way from the 30 second scan being enough at grade 6 level sightreading BUT this is such an improvement over even a week ago that I actually feel there is hope for me yet.

Ah, If your working from paul harris's sightreading series, dont worry, they're REALLY strange and are their, their not really pieces but just random notes which are really hard to play I think when you get to about stag e 6/7 that's the level you expect, I worked from his grade 7 one for my grade 7, and the actual exam was MUCH easier!

hehe, how many times have you banged on the keys in frustration

actually of all the one's I've tried, I found the Right@Sight by far the most difficult. With the Harris ones, I found that I somehow got into his style and was able to guess what was coming up if I played too much of it at once. I would think exposure to alot of different styles would be helpful.

Glad the exam was much easier for you!!

Out of the ones i've tried (Paul Harris, Read @ sight, AB specimens), i'd have said the paul harris ones are just about the easiest. The ones in the AB books always seem much harder, but then i think maybe they put the worst possible in the books, because i'm sure they're never that bad in the exam.

In France there are people called "orthoptiste' who treat this problem. You need to be referred to them by an opthalmologist who prescribes a certain number of sessions - I think you start with 20 but this is not usually enough (for children anyway) and the prescription is renewed if necessary several times. Each session lasts for about 20 minutes.

I suggest you make an appointment with an opthalmologist (not an optician) and specifically ask him to test this.

Yes, as a child I saw an orthoptist, though I didn't get exercises. My optician first picked up on the problem, he sent me to my doctor with a letter, and my doctor sent me up to Moorfields hospital, where I saw an ophthalmologist and orthoptist for lots more tests and a couple of extra consultations. For a while it looked like I was going to have an eye op, but then the glasses it turned out that actually having the correct prescription glasses meant that, eventually, my eyes have learned to work together.

My optician has a wonderful device for testing this, it's a thing you hold up to your eyes but each eye sees something different. The left has a horizontal red-numbered scale and vertical white numbered scale. The right eye gets a white arrow and a red arrow. So you have to say what number the arrows point at.
Vertically I am always spot-on, i.e. the white arrow points at 0. When I first got given this as a child I simply had to say the red arrow doesn't point to a number, because the numbers are over there (on the left) and the arrow is over there (on the right). Now I've had good glasses for many years, the red arrow (which ideally should be on zero) tends to hover slightly to the right of that but it is actually on the scale.

My optician is extremely good. He's an independent, and not the cheapest. When I was juat post-uni, I went to one of the high-street names to save some money. Then I went straight back to him! I've told my husband (who also has dodgy eyes) that if we ever move out of the area, we're still coming back to him for optical stuff. My husband agrees I saw other opticians as a younger child who said there was nothing wrong with my eyes (because I could see everything in focus - just using one eye, or the other, so they thought it didn't really matter that my eyes didn't work together).

thanks kerioboe and maizie. I'll investigate who/what's available in my nearest big town.