I've just heard about the new books 'Joining the Dots' but they seem to be piano-specific so probably not that suitable for violinists as I suppose half the book will be about the bass clef, and feature two hand pieces.

I tend to use the Paul Harris books, which are good, but still come up against a lot of difficulties getting my students to perform particularly well in sight-reading tests. OK, this is what confuses me - I thought the sight-reading tests are supposed to be pitched at two grades below the level of the exam, so a student taking grade 3 will be expected to play a piece at grade 1 level. But what do I find? The AB sight-reading specimen tests are often pitched at the level of the exam itself, so you might be expected to play in 3rd position, for example. In other words I think they are too difficult! But then again, are the tests pitched at the same level as the specimen tests in the preparation books? We never get to see them!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the majority of my students don't seem to be particularly musical these days - often don't know when they're playing out of tune and just can't get their heads around key signatures and what they actually mean in terms of fingering on the violin. Ie if you're in the key of Eb you can't play an open E string! And you have to remember to play a low fourth finger on the D string (for Ab)! But they merrily get all this wrong and don't even hear that it sounds wrong - it's driving me mad!!! Can it be because a lot of mothers don't sing to their children any more? And singing has declined so much in most primary schools? And the older children spend so much time on Facebook? I went to a school concert the other night - a large school as it happens (and not a school I am involved with I am relieved to add!) and was quite taken aback at the lack-lustre quality of much of the playing - and it's a very big school with a huge pool of students who play musical instruments.

I'm just feeling a bit of despair at the moment at the thought of another round of sight-reading tests to get them preparing for in the next couple of months while they glaze over and play all the wrong notes again....

And yes I do have some that just 'get it', understand key signatures and play nicely in tune - and hey! they practise a lot! - but why can't they all be like this? I'm getting so tired of the 'I've had so much schoolwork' excuses....

Nothing useful to say, just bags of empathy!

This week I have mostly been getting depressed about the fact that so many of mine don't notice the mistakes in notes & rhythm that they're dropping into the Christmas carols that they claim to know.

It really is interesting though that the 'naturally' good sight-readers are the ones who put in the most practice, pick out tunes on their violins, so know what intervals feel like, and are happy to sing.

I don't think that string sight-reading tests have ever conformed to this mythical 'two grades below' thing. I guess that must be a keyboard thing if it exists at all. The fiddle sight-reading can cover the range and keys of any of the scales for the grade.

The AB put some [staged] exams on Youtube and made available the sightreading pieces, albeit I can only find the piano ones, not sure if they've published any violin extracts.

Grade 1 sightreading test

Grade 5 sightreading test


If you missed the exam videos, here's a link to one of them - the Grade 5 piano exam

Practice is important, and I am not so far from being at school that I have forgotten how much work there is and how much time you have after school. They can make time to practice. If, as an adult, I can work a 50 hour week, socialise, get the houswork done and still find 8-10 hours to practice violin and piano, they can certainly find half an hour five or six days a week to practice, and use five minutes of that to sightread through a piece to improve their skills.

Children have a lot to do with school, fair enough, and its very important to give them time for fun and socialising, but half an hour a day really doesn't seem to be out of the question, and their parents are paying for them to progress.

The two grade below thing I think is just a rough estimate. So you will probably find some of the technical stuff from the current grade in their, but easier to perform. I have also read, and kind of experienced, that the AB specimen tests are much harder than the actual exam pieces, but I don't know how true this is as I thought they used old exam pieces as the specimen tests?

Sight reading should be a part of daily practice

As far as sight reading is concerned I am fast coming to the conclusion with the present group of pupils I have that it isn?t ? sight ? reading that I need to work on but ? reading ? pure and simple. I have gone back to something I used to do and that got a bit lost along the way when I had more good readers than I have now. That is to say I am starting each lesson with some reading work. It is all very basic and rather boring for me. I try to vary the activities (Violinia I?m afraid but they are piano, not violin pupils).

I posted in the thread Grade 3 sight Reading to explain how I got them to practise for the actual sight reading test. But that was really limited to how to tackle the actual test and isn?t quite the same as how to become a good sight reader.
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I get them to recite the names of the lines and spaces from memory, to find the keys on the piano, always reading and saying the name aloud before playing. I have some pages of exercises based on the lines of each clef, on the spaces and on combinations of these. I use flash cards, always making them find the correct key after they have named the note. I get them to recognise step wise movement, disjoint movement and the direction. In lessons I continually try to make the connection between the symbol and the sound/piano key. But I am a great believer in written work so when we have done a page of exercises orally I often give them the same page to write up the note names at home. And I do find that those working steadily through their theory books tend to be better reader.

I also give them short very easy pieces to learn on their own in one week. I?m sure everyone does this sort of thing but my problem was that I never found myself doing enough of it. The result was that my good readers romped through lots of pieces and really enjoyed their music and my poor readers plodded along taking far too long to get any repertoire going. So this year I am starting every lesson with reading exercises instead of with scales. The scales come next ? but as I have never let up on this we get through them quickly now. Most of my pupils who will do their Grade in June already have their scales and arpeggios learnt, even if not quite up to scratch technically , which means I have more time for the reading practice.

I suppose what I am trying to do is to make reading music such a taken for granted thing that the words ?at sight? start to take a back place. I certainly won?t succeed with all of them but it is a priority for this year.

Sorry to go off-topic, but I'm just listening to this and am amazed by the scales. They're *very* accurate and fluent, but what's with the really long final note??

Edit: And the singing!!!

Hi Violinia - Yes - I share a lot of your frustration, I'm not feeling the best at the moment because I've just had a failure in the last crop of pupils.

Going back to what you said about the level of diffiulty of sight-reading tests, I think the problem is that exam sight-reading tests are by their nature 'artificial', in that within a short piece of music you will have to encounter certain prescribed "difficulties" for that grade (rhythms, accidentals, keys etc) whereas in a real piece of music ideas can develop organically. This is no criticism of the AB, it's just the way it is. I often find that if, say, I have a pupil going in for grade 4 and I set them a grade 2 piece to sight-read, they do better than when I give them an actual G4 specimen test.

I don't want to state the obvious, as you strike me as an experienced teacher, but I tend to tackle in a number of ways: rhythm only, easy duets, 'prepared' sight reading... I think it's also important sometimes to give them something which they can almost be guaranteed to read perfectly, however basic it may be to achieve this. I know this is not the whole story, but it does boost their confidence.

Sounds like a weakness in their aural skills to me if they cannot hear that they are wrong. Maybe some appropriate aural training is required here.

I think that often the fundamental error we make is identifying it as sight-reading in the first place. If we drive along a new road, we don't say 'I'm sight-driving', and in the same way, if we chop an unfamiliar vegetable, we don't say 'I'm sight-chopping'. Doing things by sight is something which we all do, day in day out - the fact that there is a sight-reading test in exams doesn't mean that it should be treated as a separate skill which must be acquired. It is simply part of the learning process which some board's have chosen to test in examinations.

My daughter who is just 12 recently made great strides in her violin sight reading, and the answer for her was threefold

Firstly, lots and lots of it - the more she did, the easier it really did become; Secondly, lots of rhythm clapping - recognition of the motifs that re-appear time and time again, thirdly by playing the scale for the key of the exercise several times beforehand, and if she didn't know it, then working it out - going into higher positions if necessary. This helped her establish in her mind what notes she might expect to find in that key (except accidentals).

We used the paul harris books first, starting with the book two grades below, so that she could actually get something right, as a bad sightreading excercise can be most depressing, and building up. Saved the ABRSM book till a couple of weeks before the exam, as otherwise you run out of tests! For extra material we also used previous grade pieces.

Yep. Julie Andrews knew.

I certainly agree with this as can be seen from my post above. However, as in all subjects, a certain technique is required to succeed in certain tests . This is because the tests are necessarily rather artificial.
I think pupils need to learn to read confidently and accurately in general. Then I think they need help with coping with a sight reading test in an exam situation so that this part of the exam isn't a bugbear for them.
I don't think the two things are exactly the same.

That's true, although I don't think that is learning to sight-read; it is learning the technique of doing well under pressure.