Sight reading is 2 hard for me..
how do u score in your practical?
Can u tell me some tips..

QUOTE (June @ Oct 22 2004, 03:42 PM)

Sight reading is 2 hard for me.. how do u score in your practical? Can u tell me some tips..

Practise makes perfect.......
I'm not amazingly good at sight reading either.
Grade 3: 17 for sight
Grade 5: 18 for sight
Grade 7: waiting for results (expecting about 17)

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~tremolololo~
Just done Grade 7 Piano (22nd Sept.) (done well except aurals!)
Getting my results in early November
If you want my e-mail address, please contact me through PM first.

There is a similar topic under general forum.

practice every day. when i first started, i tried sight playing the melody on it's own, then the bass on it's own. it's a nice way to break yourself into it, but really, there is no better way than practice, practice, practice.

sorry...

Sorry there's no easy solution to this one just lots and lots of practice and make sure that you're taking exams at the right level.

Start from the beginning by reading really easy things.

Practice it. It's hard for us all. Remember how long it took you to read words after you learned to talk? Similar.

Hi June,
Well, I just got 14 in my G8 piano and I am quite pleased . But I know that I'll have to really improve my sight reading if Iam to be called a pianist.

Have you tried the 'Improve your Sight Reading' books. I found them to be very useful. Also try practising pieces of older grade books. Basically you just have to play a lot and importantly you have to keep going ignoring all mistakes and looking ahead atleast to the next note.

Its just a matter of practising actually.

There are sightreading books available for the grades.You should do a few sightreading exercises a night and it will improve over time.You may have been told this before but.....
Before you begin to play, look at the time signature and decide how you will count the piece.
Look at the key signature.Notice any accidentals that may occur.Notice scale or arpeggio patterns.
Work out ledger-line notes.Notice dynamic levels and other marking.Decide what speed to play and cout one bar before you start in order to establish this.
While playing your sightreading piece continue to count throughout the piece, keep going at a steady and even tempo,ignore mistakes,look ahead,play musically.
Atonal music can be quite hard to read at first and it may be helpful to learn some.My sightreading improved after learning a few of Shoenbergs pieces.
Hope this helps...

I have some tips for sight reading

1. Read the time signature and key signature

2. Be careful on accidental.

3. Tempo(If it is fast, don't play too fast. You should play it slower than when you perform the pieces)

4. Do not see the piano key, focus on the score.

5. Forget wrong notes when you play it.

6. Practice more times.

QUOTE (3238 @ Oct 25 2004, 03:14 PM)

4. Do not see the piano key, focus on the score.

I agree with others and especially this tip!
However, there are some practices needed to be done before trying this.
As you need to know the positions of keys very well, I think you have to try to use some cloths to cover your eyes and play the pieces that you are quite good (which you can memorise), e.g. exam pieces. Try to keep your usual standard on playing the piece no matter your eyes are seeing the keys or not.

the only thing you can really do is practice. it will eventually get better, mine did. i was awful at sight reading but then worked really hard at it and got 19/21 for my grade 4.

QUOTE (Rupayan @ Oct 22 2004, 08:10 PM)

Hi June, Well, I just got 14 in my G8 piano and I am quite pleased . But I know that I'll have to really improve my sight reading if Iam to be called a pianist. Have you tried the 'Improve your Sight Reading' books. I found them to be very useful. Also try practising pieces of older grade books. Basically you just have to play a lot and importantly you have to keep going ignoring all mistakes and looking ahead atleast to the next note. Its just a matter of practising actually.

I have this book for Grade 8.
It is very good because of plenty of exercises and scale skills,
which I hadn't learned before.
Such as substitution.

sight-read everything and anything, every oppourtunity you get. Clementi sonatinas are excellent for sight-reading, accompanying can be very useful, I accompany the string players at my school, just playing from sight and I really notice the difference.

I don't go along with specialist sight reading books - unless someone is training ONLY to take exams.

But if you want to be a musician in an area that needs reading from music - any music will do for sight reading - hymns, solo lines, any pieces around your playing standard.

Specialised books do help at first, just as they did when you started to read words - but as you move on you get into the real stuff. There comes a point where you stop reading every word separately or need to read aloud... and a parallel state is reached in sightreading. You'll recognise shapes and lines; have a feel for key and modulation etc etc

But it's just practice, practice and adapting such music as you have creatively. It takes time - for some of us, lots of time. But it does get better!

The way to learn to sight read is to sight read!

For those wishing to learn to sight read do try out this software: http://noteablesoftware.us/

It records you progress over time and etc, it has helped me imporoved my sight reading over time.

Peter

QUOTE (Rhapsodin @ Oct 25 2004, 04:22 PM)

There comes a point where you stop reading every word separately or need to read aloud... and a parallel state is reached in sightreading.  It takes time - for some of us, lots of time.   But it does get better!

Yes, but how much time????!!!!! I keep working away at it, but seem to take two steps forward and one back (and it feels like one step forward and two back, lol). Would anyone take a view on how many years' playing are required before this much-sought after state is reached??

That depends how much sight reading practice you do, what your natural abilities are and what the desired state for you is, i.e. how good you want to be. I certainly would expect the ability to sightread grade 5 pieces, the actual pieces not sightreading, (this is piano and is only a guess) fluently and musically wouldn't come to even the best people for a minimum of 5 years (and that's a minimum) remember people are only supposed to be able to learn those pieces in 5 years after practising them not sightread them. If anyone told me that they could do it in less than this I'd be rather sceptical to say the least and would probably doubt their definition of fluent and musical... That is just to give you a figure that rather than being accurate (as I said I don't know) lets you know the minimum length of the timescales involved. In reality most people will not be able to sightread grade 5 pieces until they do grade 7 or 8, that's roughly the standard of the sightreading and even then the performance doesn't have to be that good (and it seems most people just say 'I can't do the sightreading' anyway!). So in other words it seems most people still can't do it after 8 years of playing (although maybe that's because it seems a lot of people only practise sightreading for the exams...).

A bit of a jumbled post but I guess what I'm trying to get across is that you should expect progress to be very slow, even with lots of practise. You can't expect to get too far in a short length of time: it's all about practice and patience and that's why so few people are good at it.

Thank you, that's a very reassuring reply and thank you also, AP, for all your other comments around this subject on the forums - I've now a much clearer picture of what I should be aiming for. It's a bit difficult, not going along the exam route, to get the balance right, but in fact your comment on learning to learn to play the piano was echoed by my teacher at the last lesson, so the penny's finally beginning to drop with me!!

Jen