What techniques have any of you used to improve your sight reading in a structured way?

I ask because it dawned on me recently that I had never really learnt how to sight read, I've just got on and done as best I can, without any real structure to my approach. In exams its always been the part I dreaded and now, thinking about a diploma in the not very near future, I think its something I really need to work on. Apart from playing through lots of new music, which I do all the time, I was just wondering if there are any techniqes and approaches that might help...

I have no problems at all with fairly basic music and regularly play new pieces at sight to pupils (who are all working through the early grades) so I'm sure there is a confidence issue, but with anything more complicated I seem to fall apart completely and feel that a plan might help!

Thanks in anticipation.

My technique for sight reading is to listen to a recording first, memorise how it "goes", then attempt to play the piece. Obviously this is not going to help me in an exam situation. I suspect sight reading is an area I need to work on too!

I've heard that when you play through a piece as a sightreading exercise, you should then go through it again, analyse any mistakes and correct them rather than just leaving it and moving on. Obviously you wouldn't be able to do this in an exam but apparently it helps you learn for next time. I guess it might help you to be aware of mistakes that you commonly make.
Another thing I'd recommend is to record yourself when you're sightreading and then go through it with the score afterwards. Sometimes I find I do things like slow down or hesitate for awkward bits though I'm not always aware of it at the time.
It's great that you get experience of playing pieces for pupils, but if possible do some accompanying too. It might help get your confidence up as you'll be playing more difficult pieces but you won't be the only person in the spotlight. Piano duets are also really good for getting your confidence up.

Hope some of that helps!

Let's not underestimate the importance of theory of music too. It's possible to anticipate the chord progressions with Grade V theory or the higher the better.

Indeed you won't have the opportunity of hearing a recording in advance in the examination context. However, I've always been advised to think of how it's going to sound before you start. Or better still, using the allocated 30 seconds or longer which you get to prepare it, go over all the sticky and challenging bits, taking advantage of every second. Look out for all the usual hazards: clef, key and time signature changes, expression, staccato, dynamics, rests, etc etc. I always valued the practice books which my teacher used to provide me with on a weekly basis. Not specifically sight-reading, but just general music which she managed to pull out of her drawers. This always hit the spot and gave me the necessary experience, helping me to overcome my fear of it - that's the key. Three words sum it up: Practice, practice, practice!!!

LR

Ooh er.......

Thanks, all of you. Funnily enough, Bass Clef, I've recently arranged to do some duets with someone nearby and my own teacher suggested I try and get involved in exam accompaniments! Also, Lone Ranger, thought I might attempt Gr 8 theory and have had my head in the books for a while. Funny how somehow I don't link all these disciplines with sight reading in my own mind. It's becoming apparent the problem is a brain problem!!! Still haunted by bad childhood memories!

Perhapth they're thong bookth?
(Thorry, couldn't rethitht it ... !)

That sounds really good David. I shall try that in my own sight reading.

Yes - sounds an excellent idea, and I shall try it with my pupils.

One thing I always regard as important (and I've said so before so skip this bit if you are tired of hearing it!)

is that the rhythm and pulse are as important - if not more so - than the notes. I always get my students to work out the rhythm first. Conversely, putting your hands on the keyboard in the shape of the first bar is usually not the most useful first step (although it's what transferring pupils nearly always do).

As far as I can see, this holds good at any grade or level, and goes some way to being able to hear the music in your head. A reading attempt which holds together in terms of pulse and rhythm provides a good framework, and may stand more chance of keeping going in an exam situation.

it does?

Don't forget though that a Quick Study is not really just sightreading - it's a bit more than that. In the earlier stages, I've found the Paul Harris books on developing sightreading useful in theory, for my kids, but in practice, they still just didn't "get" what sightreading is about.

It's worth practising the process of Quick Study as it will happen in an exam - taking five minutes (or perhaps actually longer to begin with) to read through the music, and to learn the checklist which can be so very useful - time signature, key signature, the rhythm, and tricky bits etc. You could use any music of a suitable level - if you feel your reading standard is lower, then go for something slightly easier than is demanded in the exam until you can manage, then build up. The key though is that at diploma level they are looking not just for the right notes in the right order, but a real sense of the music in front of you, and that will need to come across. The occasional fluff will matter less if the meaning is there - and above all the sense of rhythm of the piece needs to be heard, I think.

So when practising, put the piece up, look it through, try to identify tricky bits, allow yourself to try those out but don't waste time playing the lot, and if you find a tricky bit is likely to need more work to get right, practise it.

Glad it wasn't just me who thought the sentence needed to be simplified! Yes, one could work out what it meant, but it wasn't exactly a candidate for a Plain English award!

And it still says nothing about how to do it, even when you have got through the dense expressions...

It does imply that you should be able to make sense of the horizontal (rhythm) and vertical (pitch) organisation and convey that to your ears and fingers. I'm amazed and impressed that teachers will read through that kind of book; it would turn me off in 5 minutes, so it's as well I'm not a teacher!

I thought David's original suggestion (removing the music after 30 seconds) was a really good idea and I'm sure it would help a lot in teaching pupils what they need to do in that brief time before they have to play. So many people dread sightreading.

I think that would work for sight-reading, but still come back to the point that the Quick Study isn't just sight-reading - it's more than that, and involves a slightly different approach. The reason I'm banging on about it like this is that there have been so many posts in the diploma section about failing the Quick Study, and I'm sure that part of this will be down to not understanding the differences, and not preparing to put across a musical rendition of the dots, just a technically accurate one.

Thanks everyone, this is all useful. I will definitely be using your '30 second' method David, for myself as well as pupils and I fully understand your point, Anacrusis, regarding the different approach required for the Quick Study - I've got a lot of work to do!

On a similar note, I was working with a beginner earlier today who was very hesitant. When she learns a piece of music she has relatively few issues, but faced with sight reading she really was struggling. When we unpicked what was causing the problem I realised she could judge intervals accurately by instinct but was stopping to mentally work out the name of every note before playing it. I suggested that was an unnecessary barrier to playing the music at this stage (obviously hoping she'll be able to name notes quickly eventually) which shocked her completely and she said she thought that was cheating! Even now I think if I named every note I played I'd never play anything that sounded pleasant - isn't spotting the pattern a legitimate short cut?!

Absolutely - in the long run it's essential! One note for the pupil though - real facility with this does involve developing a sense of key - it's very easy to see that if you have one dot on a line, and another on the line above, it'll be a third of some sort - having a feeling for key then helps decide if that needs to be a minor or major one. Again, this sort of processing will happen without going through all those intermediate steps once there is some experience of sightreading .

I have the opposite problem - a natural sightreader on my instruments, I've found it incredibly daunting to try playing from any clef other than treble (even bass, which I learned on the piano but not on recorders), because the dots translate to fingerings without going via note names, and I've had to go back a step to learn these new skills....

That bit was obvious to me since that's how much time you would get to study the sight reading test in an ABRSM exam. The clever bit which I'm definitely going to try out is not going straight on to play the piece, but to answer a set of questions about it to check that the important bits have sunk in. I'll certainly be trying it.

I find that noticing all the important things and getting your fingers to arrive in the right place at the right time at quite different things.
I almost always KNOW when and what I've played wrong.....

I have found three factors make for good sight-reading:

1. Your general musical understanding. This includes the ability to look at a score and see not just instructions for manipulating your instrument, but to have a good idea of how the piece will sound, what its structure is, what is its harmonic basis, and so forth. of course you have to have complete familiarity with standard musical notation.


2. Mastery of your instrument - so that you can just make whatever movements are called for - without need to to work them out carefully, practice them and repeat them over and over. But this is developed not by practicing sight reading itself but through gradually extending your abilities by pushing at your limits with difficult pieces learned slowly and thoroughly, and with technical exercises to develop skill in new techniques.


3. How much sight reading you have done. You practice by playing through (or attempting to) reams and reams of music from the trivially simply to the very challenging

That all makes perfect sense. I wonder, though, just how accomplished at those three elements I would need to become to no longer tense up with fear when doing a sight reading excercise. (Is the psychology a fourth element?) Pathetic, I know!

sbhoa - I know what you mean. I feel reasonably confident when reading music away from the piano. I can usually hear the music in my head and understand what I'm reading - but the fingers seem to either stumble around clumsily, despite the brain knowing where it wants them to go, or to become jelly unable to play with any conviction at all!!!

I don't really think that had occurred to me before I have the impression that my sight reading at the moment isn't very good at all (though my teacher tells me otherwise), but, when presented with a new piece or study or if I take a look at "one of those pieces I shouldn't be looking at yet", my sight reading is actually pretty good. It's only when the dread phrase "right lets do some sight reading" comes out that I become rubbish at it.

One thing that helps enormously with the 'keeping going' bit is accompanying - or ensemble playing, or playing duets. Initially, you won't play any fewer wrong notes, but the urgency of having others playing or singing with you seems to do something to keep your eyes ahead on the score, whereas playing solo always presents the temptation to glance backwards momentarily to see what you've just done wrong. Once your eyes get used to not looking back under any circumstances, you will start playing fewer wrong notes as well as confidence grows and you become more able to blot out what has passed and can't be fixed.

Obviously though, this requires somebody to play with, which is a luxury that not everybody has! Something that has just occurred to me is this: Why not buy the cd of a lower grade exam syllabus - AB, LCM or TG would do - and use the score to see how you can manage to play along? I know this is generally a bad idea, as it will inevitably produce a non-musical result, but if the aim is at this stage to simply improve the ability to keep going with as many right notes in the right places as possible, then this might just help for somebody who doesn't have anybody to play with. My pupils always sightread better if I play along - either what they're playing a few octaves higher on the piano, or chords a few octaves under. I'm not trying to be musical; I'm just trying to force them on, and it definitely makes a difference. They look ahead more, and are fussier about getting their timing right if I'm playing something at the same time. Being musical about it just can't happen unless there is a certain amount of technical correctness in place. So that bit really needs to be worked at first.

That's so true.
That's what happens with me. I was also discussing this with an adult student of mine the other week when she struggled through a sight reading test which she would have managed much better if it had been presented as 'lets learn this, do you want a bit of a play through the first bit before you go?'.

I also think that realistically what is required for a good sight reading mark is not in line with 'real' sight reading.

If say, someone is taking Grade 3, what level will the sight reading test be at? Is it like a grade 1 piece from list A B or C, or Grade 2?
BEv

Thanks David.

TG explicitly state that the sight reading will be of the same standard as a piece you find two grades below, i.e. G5 sight reading will be of the same standard as a G3 piece, although as David says, not as long.
AB doesn't state explicitly what sight-reading standards are, but I think it's safe to assume they aren't likely to be all that different, and the experience of teachers on here tends to agree