Hi,

Can someone please help me. I need to practise my sight reading for a saxophone and jazz piano exam. Has anyone got any tips on how to practise these or where to get the music from??

All help gratefully accepted.

Thanks!!

Hi SS and welcome to the forums.
The exam boards publish sight reading tests for most instruments and it would be a good idea to get hold of one or two of these for your grade and perhaps for the grade below if your sight reading really is a problem for you. If you have friends who play you can swap music around with them too and try sight reading that. What grade are you going for/

Hi petrat thanks for the advice im doing grade 1 jazz piano and grade five jazz saxophone. The thing is I have never done any ABRSM exams before so was wondering what type of music they would get you to sight read!!

Thanks for your help

The jazz exams have a quick study rather than sight reading. You can opt to do the test in one of two ways: either by reading a short phrase and then improvising a response, or by copying the phrase after it has been played to you by the examiner (without seeing the notation) and then improvising a response. Sample books are available and it's really important you look at those before you do the exam as the test is rather more involved than the traditional sight reading found in the classical grades.

Good luck!

I have out of the library (may end up buying) a copy of "Improve your sight reading" by Paul Harris. It's for oboe but there is a sax version. It consists of two parts; prepared tests where he demonstrates how to approach sight reading and unprepared which your teacher springs on you. Looks pretty good to me.

The best thing anyone taught me about sight-reading was to look ahead i.e. be reading at least a bar ahead of what your fingers are playing. If you don't do this naturally, it can be weird at first - it seems like it should be impossible - but being aware of the concept and practising it has improved my sight-reading massively.