I've just had a very stressful lesson!

Since my previous lesson (piano), I've been concentrating on sightreading, at the expense of my pieces, because whilst I'm not saying pieces are easy (by any means!), I do at least feel they are achievable, given enough practice. But with sightreading... commonsense tells me that this isn't the case, but it feels like no matter how much I practise, I will never be able to sightread with even a modicum of confidence, let alone accuracy or musicality.

It's not that I haven't been taught the techniques for sightreading... it's putting them into practice that's the problem...

Anyway, I'm not expecting anyone to come up with a magic solution! I know it's largely a matter of practice, practice, practice (and No Pain, No Gain ) but it takes up so much time in relation to the progress made

I think I'm just looking for tea and sympathy, and possibly some commiseration from fellow sufferers!

Hopefully your teacher had some good advice and support to offer.

I wouldn't do sight reading at the expense of pieces which are, after all, the rewarding part of playing. You'll be doing a certain amount of reading while learning pieces and this experience will help. Remember that children starting out with reading books begin by reading the same one over and over and this is part of the learning to read process.
Luckily most of the time many of us don't have to be able to deliver a performance or anything close to it at sight.

I'm sure you'll get there in the end

As I think I've posted before my piano playing daughter seemed to learn to sight-read overnight (certainly in the space of less than a week between two piano lessons). One day she was very laboriously picking notes out one hand at a time in a five finger position, the next day she was sight-reading pieces with both hands together that changed positions and included chords.

Having deplored her lack of sight-reading skills, now that she has acquired them, I am not so sure that they are a good thing - she no longer feels the same need to practise the pieces she is supposed to be playing in her lessons since she knows she will be able to sight-read them, so she sight-reads other pieces instead and her sight-reading continues to improve. (This is what I used to do as a child, so I know only too well that this is not the best route to improve your overall skills).

Commiserations! I know how you feel, having been there before. To continue sbhoa's analogy sightreading is like any other kind of reading and you just have to do enough of it before you become fluent. But you WILL become fluent - if I stuck an English newspaper in front of you you'd be able to read it, right- and you got that way by practicing reading regularly. It's the same for reading music. I don't mean this to sound like it's going to take you years to sightread - rather that it is a matter of familiarity.

Learning to read was probably pretty hard... but we don't remember it because at the age most of us learnt to read, everything was a learning experience so it wasn't out of the ordinary.

It's like learning any other skill, seems awfully difficult until it gets internalised and then it just.. happens. It'll happen. Hang in there!

What pieces are you doing skylark?

Sight reading is just a matter of practice and patience. But you shouldn't have to practice it for so long your pieces suffer. I just pick a new piece of music every time and play through it. Depending on the piece, it sometimes takes a couple of minutes, sometimes far longer. What are you doing at the moment to practice sight reading?

Oh, heres you're cup of tea technically its a coffee emoticon but I hope you can still drink it

Yes, fortunately he's very good and says all the right things



A couple of weeks ago, I thought that an intensive period spent sightreading would really make a big difference. There's been a little improvement, I think but not in relation to the amount of time spent on it I am planning to go back to my pieces now, but will still try and do some sightreading most days, albeit not as much.



I wonder what happened in your daughter's case? I think something similar happened to me with similar motion scales - I suddenly realised that I didn't have too much of a problem with them any more, and I'm not sure how it happened. Wouldn't it be lovely if the same thing happened with sightreading as happened with your daughter!



Yes, that's true! Thank you for reminding me of that



I've got several pieces which are nearly-but-not-quite finished. I'm going to try and get at least two or three of them finished off by the next lesson



I'm working my way through Paul Harris's book. The reason I'm using a sightreading book as opposed to just picking up pieces is that I know (or at least, I think) it's the right level for me because it's a grade 2 book. If I were to work to the "picking up pieces" method, would I use pieces at grade 1 or grade 2 I've got lots of music at all sorts of levels so I could try this. (I passed grade 1 in the summer)



Thank you, I prefer coffee anyway

You should use pieces that are at a sensible level for you. I still sight read a lot of stuff thats grade one (I once used the grade 1 syllabus). I sometimes look at stuff around grade 2 or 3 (hoping to do grade 3 next summer).

The beauty of using pieces is that they all contain patterns and techniques you are going to come across in the future. The sight reading books are great - in fact, I have a Paul Harris book on its way from amazon, ordered 2 days ago, but pieces are good to use. Its very satisfying feeling your fingers play a certain pattern that they came across 10 bars earlier much simpler than they did the first time!

Anyway, gotta run. Shower then piano practice......

Some useful pointers in here, I think:
Margaret Fabrizio on sight-reading

Funny you should have posted this but I know EXACTLY how you feel. For a start you don't necessarily want answers because to all intents and purposes you already know them, it's applying them that's the problem.

I too have terrible problems sight reading. I always practiced sight reading everyday for about 20 mins and made such little progress that I became very demoralised with it. In the last 9 months or so, since changing teacher I found that because I had to concentrate on my technique and posture so much, plus being given real challenges for my level, time spent on sight reading slowly reduced pretty much to hardly ever!

In a way I decided to almost not worry about it and see what happened. I would say my sight reading has gone backwards but just a little. I was really hoping that if I ignored it and let time pass one day I might have noticed a small improvement. But alas not!

The problem is I think for people who struggle with sight reading is, we must keep practicing no matter what, but in order to make a minuscule difference year by year we must put in a vast amount of time that we don't have. I could spend 2 hours a day sight reading, hindering my progress elsewhere only to have made a tiny improvement to my sight reading.

I don't know about you Skylark but I think I have discovered certain areas that I struggle. If you give me a score and ask me to randomly call out notes I can do that with very little problem, yet when I then have to do that whilst playing it seems that it takes me what seems like seconds for every note read to recognise and tell which finger to press which note. I struggle to see whether notes are going up or down the keyboard, I find it very hard to read by interval and I sometimes think I have musical dyslexia . My reaction time is so slow it's embarrassing. Do you have problems with rhythm by the way? My rhythm is ok, it's the blasted notes!

Interestingly enough, how do you fare with sight reading a single clef (for your clarinet). I think both clefs is such a challenge.

When I sight read there too is no musicality at all because I am using all my concentration to just get through the piece. Also with regards to reading ahead, if I read real music and my hand is generally in the same kind of position I tend to be ok (with repeated patterns) but then when the music changes to a chord much further up or down the keyboard (or has an accidental which send me into a frenzy of panic!) my reaction is so slow to process that info that I would have had to read about 10 bars ahead in order to get my hand in the right place.

I know many people relate learning to read as a child in the same way as learning to read music but both my two learnt to read written English much faster than music i.e. getting to the standard of being able to read information on signs without any pictures or clues as to what the words are saying.

I really think music is much harder to read and play than reading. If you imagine with reading that your voise is your tool, you do not have to speak the words in a particular pitch, the tone and inflection comes naturally as you become more fluent. However with playing an instrument you have to know that note/chord/interval and then know without looking which of your fingers are going to play which notes and locate them in an instant!

Therefore keyboard geography must play a very large part of sight reading well. Also an understanding of the feel of a key signature under one fingers must also help, plus a real good understanding of chord shape patterns, inversions etc. This must take years to learn and I have no explanation how in the case of Kerioboe's daughter how on earth she managed to improve overnight! I can only dream!

I am going to give you a big virtual hug because I know how you feel and it's so frustrating.

I understand the theory of rhythm, and HS is no problem. But I can't say I get the rhythm right when I'm sightreading HT.



I've never done very well with sightreading on clarinet either, but I find it harder still on piano.



I think you're right, aesir22 - I should use pieces, either instead of or in addition to the sightreading books. Bearing in mind what I've learnt from MF (see below), I think I might put the Paul Harris book to one side for the time being.



What a fascinating and inspiring lady. And very wise. I've now watched the video you linked to and various other of her videos. She makes some very thought-provoking points. I found myself thinking "I do like listening to the older generation, they've had so many of life's experiences and can pass on what they've learnt", then I watched her next video in which she said how much she learns from young people And of course she's right again! Thanks for posting that link, SueHM



Yes, this is me too. And even if my hand hasn't moved from the 5-finger position, if there's a bar's rest whilst the other hand takes up the melody, I can't remember which key is under which finger when the first hand comes back in - it makes me feel incredibly stupid Anyway I've thought a lot about it, and particularly since watching MF's video, I'm going to change my strategy so that I stop de-coding and start reading



I hope my teacher won't mind my putting this on the forum, but when I was beating myself up over it at my lesson, he told me that right the way up to Grade 8 (when he was at school), his sightreading was his weakest area. But because he was such a good pianist, he was given the job of accompanying the school choirs, concerts etc, so because he was doing so much of it, he in fact became extremely good at it. It's now even what he enjoys doing most. So we'll have to keep at it, Mini-mo!



Thank you, and here's one for you and everyone else who needs one over sightreading!

It could've been me writing your post, Skylark, but the difference is that, embarrassingly, I'm preparing my Grade 7 exam (!!) due in 2012, and I'm given very very hard pieces to sight-read (chords, held notes, etc.). My teacher does not come up with much advice and the only thing I do during the classes is try, make mistakes ... try, make mistakes ... try, make mistakes ... and try ... and I make more mistakes. I guess there is no tried and tested method that we can rely on to improve sight-reading skills except insisting, insisting and trying again and again. One thing can help, though, in my view and this is more psychological than musical: it is to get rid of this embarrassing feeling (the word embarrassing has crept into my post twice already ... which may show what it is all about deep down, I guess!) and to really let go of any excessive demands on oursleves. Another teacher I've consulted says that when the difficulty is so hard to surmount one has to go down a rung or two and take pieces at a lower level and I think this may work, if anything, to help regain the lost self-confidence in this important aspect of piano playing.
However, going back to your post, I would never sacrifice pieces to sight-reading in the course of a class. What I do is devote some 10 minutes or so to sight-reading every time I have a class; of course, religiously and never letting one single class go without it, but never at the expense of pieces.
The point about sight-reading is that it must be done on a daily basis and far from providing any immediate reward as there is, for example, in finding out a certain passage is beginning to sound musical or that a certain technical difficulty has been surmounted, it is discouraging and frustrating. As a result, one tends to neglect it and, come to think of it, it is only natural that one shouldn't want to do things that don't gratify us, after all. Maybe the key would be to find something rewarding in practising sight-reading, however many mistakes one makes, and this might happen tackling pieces which are well within our capability. While I'm writing there is so much introspection going on and I've realised I've been neglecting sight-reading for the last 5-6 days; but you see, I'm moving house these days and the piano has already been taken to our new address so I'll resume my regular practice when we've settled.
From a different angle, sight-reading exposes us to mistakes more than anything else and some of us - adults, but not only - may be just too proud to hear ourselves making mistakes at (almost) every note we play.
There are so many psychological aspects at stake when sight-reading ... and these certainly play a part, and perhaps have a more significant role than the real difficulty involved in it.
Let's make a point of doing sight-reading every day ... accepting our mistakes and the horrible sound we may make when playing and accepting the frustration and discouragement that sight-reading brings with it (for many of us) and, once rid of these paralysing feelings, maybe we'll start making more progress ...

Some very good tips in that vid i find sight-reading frustratingly difficult, so am reading this thread with great interest

Skyers - it just seems to be something that comes with time and effort. I'm trying to be a bit more diligent with sight-reading practice now as I got a thinly veiled telling off for not doing enough in my last lesson..

I have difficulty with tied notes for some reason, even in really simple pieces.

I think one of the biggest challenges in sight-reading is keeping your focus - I start off OK sometimes but then my mind wanders off somewhere in the direction of Alpha Centauri and I'm left looking at a page full of heiroglyphics..

That link was great, thanks SueHM! I found it particularly useful when she was saying we need to READ music, not decode it. I do spend too long on one note, and occassionally try and get it right when I should be moving on.

When I get a chance I am going to have a look at that video!

Some good news to report! MF mentioned Mikrokosmos in her video, so I've picked that up again. I only had Book 1 which I got a year ago, and I know when I first got it, I found it quite hard because my hands kept going the wrong way. Anyway that was before I'd got to grips with similar motion scales, and now that I can do SM scales, I can do Mikrokosmos. I've just zipped through just over half the book without any problem, and I don't think the rest of the book will be a problem either (famous last words ) so I've just ordered Book 2. Seeing as Book 1 is probably at minus Grade 1 level, this might not sound like a terribly major achievement but the point is that I was reading, not de-coding (this will only make sense if you've watched the video).

It's fun, this sightreading business, innit Thanks again for the link, SueHM!

Quite intuitively, I picked up Bartok's Mikrokosmos some weeks ago and am slowly playing through the different pieces for sight-reading practice. I needed to go down a few levels to feel less discouraged and I quite enjoyed doing the first 4-5 pieces, then I started the move into a new house and the piano has already been transported to the new address ... so I'm taking a few days' break ... so to speak.
However, it is fun - and more reqarding - to sight-read more musical things than what the sight-reading books offer.

Take heart from what my teacher told me as per my earlier post, about him not being able to sightread up to Grade 8, and now being a brilliant sightreader. The key for him was doing a lot of accompaniment - are you able to do any of this, Juan Carlos?

I think the second teacher you mentioned has given good advice, about going down a rung or two. It ties in with what MF has said about reading instead of de-coding. Do watch the video if you haven't already done so.

If your Grade 7 exam isn't until 2012, you've got loads of time to change your strategy on this. A thought that comes to mind is that "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always be what you've always been". So if you've always been a poor sightreader (as I've been), you won't become a good sightreader unless you change the way you approach it. For instance, I'm going to stop using the Paul Harris Grade 2 books for the time being. Because I've done Grade 1, it seemed the next logical step to start going through the Grade 2 book, but I realise now that I'm not there yet. I'll see how I get on with the new strategy!


edit: cross-post

Off topic - but good luck with the house move.

I've just listened to MF's video again and realised that she said the same thing - it was accompanying that helped her a lot with sightreading.

Most of us adults don't get the opportunity to do this, and many of us are never likely to get the opportunity in the foreseeable future because we're not [yet!] good enough pianists. But I suppose what we could do is get the Grade X Selected Exam Pieces, with the CD, and use the piano part to accompany the soloist. It doesn't have to be the current syllabus so there may be scores/CDs from prior syllabi which are being offered cheap on ebay. Or if a friend or family member is learning an orchestral instrument, maybe we could record them playing and then practise accompanying the recording (assuming obviously that it has a piano part). There are possibly online resources as well that we could use for accompanying I've had a look some of my Grade 1 clarinet music (before the Selected Pieces came out) but the piano part is much too high for my level so this strategy wouldn't suit me at the moment - it looks to vary between G3/4/5 but I'm no expert at judging the level of piano music.

Has anyone got any other ideas on how pianists who aren't at school can get regular accompanying practice...

The problem is that easy instrument music often has a more complicated piano part to make the overall "effect" a bit more interesting.

That said, there are books with very easy piano accompaniments aimed at children so that a pianist of the same level can accompany the instrumentalist. Of course it would be much more useful if I could actually give you some precise titles but I can't right now remember if my daughter once had a cello one or if they were something I flicked through in a music shop and thought about buying so my two could play together (before I realised that World War Three breaks out when they do since neither one will admit that they might have made a mistake). I'll have a look later (or tomorrow) and see if I can find some references.


My daughter's piano teacher encourages all her pupils to accompany from an early age and in her pupils' concerts has at least one of her pupils accompanying someone who is learning another instrument and is not her pupil (either a sibling or a friend of her pupil's). You could try asking your teacher if he knows of any pieces that you could accompany.

At this time of year you could try inviting a few friends round for an informal singsong of Christmas carols. You can get arrangements of varying difficulty and I'm sure someone on here could suggest one that's at your level. Although it's not strictly sight-reading because you know the tune you will still be sight-reading at least the left hand (and possibly chords in the right hand). Also the fact that you get to play the same one several times (for each verse) will teach you something about how you sightread. I am actually much better at sight-reading something first time round and am not overkeen on sight-reading songs with lots of verses as I know my playing is going to get steadily worse. I'm not sure why this should be; maybe I can't keep up the intense concentration for very long or maybe it's because the second time round I know where the "hard" bits are and mess them up because I'm apprehensive about them. You might find that the first time round you miss lots of notes out and you are able to add more notes in with each verse. Also, because you know the tunes, you will have a better idea of what you can miss out. If you are not sight-reading for exam purposes, but doing "proper" sight-reading accompanying you can miss somethings out without anyone noticing (you just have to know which ones ) so knowing what to miss out is a useful skill to acquire.

Does your teacher have any other adults about your level? If so, perhaps you could get together for duet sessions (outside your lessons) with the aim of playing through lots of different pieces rather than just perfecting one or two.

Or how about putting a notice up at the college to see if there are any adults of a similar level on other instruments who would like to have a go at playing with you.

Thanks for all these suggestions, kerioboe - they sound good and I'll be pursuing them in the new year

I sometimes feel so inadequate reading about people who have sight reading problems with the piano, because I can do it, but I don't know how best to explain how I do it. But then I have been playing piano for 64 years and I guess most of you don't want to wait that long!

I fully support the advice about reading not decoding, and I had my own experience of this when first learning the flute. I kept getting sight reading blockages on the flute that I did not have when playing the same piece on the piano. I concluded that in fact I was decoding for the flute fingering, and saying things to myself like "A#? Oh yes, that is the same fingering as Bb". This is fine for learning the note, but then I had to let it go. Now I instantly recognise A# as a note in its own right and automatically go for the correct fingering. As a result my flute sight reading has improved considerably. If when you are sight reading, you get most of the simple notes right but not the accidentals then perhaps a bit of this same problem is creeping in, so when you encounter one don't try to convert it to an enharmonic equivalent, try to learn to play it as written. You could try saying out loud what the note is and then playing it straight off.

Something which I often do when faced with a new piece is to first look at the key signature, then play the notes given in it. So for example I see four flats - I play Bb, Eb, Ab then Db in sequence. It is as if I am training my fingers to remember that mostly these black notes will be required in this piece. I am not sure you could do this in an exam but if it helps, you could certainly imagine doing it. What it also seems to do is subconsciously allocate the black note to a flat. If the next piece I play has three sharps, then although C# and G# were previously notes assigned to flats, they have now become sharps each with their own new name.

I also support the view that keyboard geography is most important. If you can look at the music and find the notes instinctively without having to always look at your hands, you stand a better chance of being able to sight read. It also goes in hand with reading ahead of what you are playing when you don't have to look down. My advice to Sol was to sight read a piece that you know and can play. Deliberately look at the music even if you know what comes next, and force your hands to find the right place on the keyboard. Of course you will play wrong notes at first, but practice of this will help muscle memory.

I have also had an idea that I haven't seen expressed before. What about flash cards? If sight reading single notes is a problem, then prepare some, one on each card, get your teacher or a friend to flash up the card and see how quickly you can find and play that note on the piano without looking at your hand. This does not help the rhythm, but may go a long way to helping you place your finger on exactly the right note. You could progress to two or more notes in sequence on a flash card to help with rhythm. Then you could do the same with chords. Do you encounter chords of only two notes? If so, prepare some cards with the most common pairs. Do the same for three notes. In each case, try and play the chords without looking at the piano - feel the shape of your fingers and the way they are pointing to get the right chord, so that you are learning to shape your hand according to the shape of the chord in the music. They do have recognisable shapes, just as words have recognisable shapes made up from the letters. Feel also the other notes nearby that you are not playing, because if you softly touch them they will guide you into the right shape if you know which ones they are. For example, a C major root triad followed by a C minor root triad in the left hand has just the middle note different and if you can find the first without looking then you can easily play the second.

Another exercise which might help is to play your scales in the dark. I remember doing this as a child, and finding it quite difficult, but it was something my teacher wanted me to do, at home and during lessons. It may have been mainly for learning the scale, but it certainly helps with learning keyboard geography if you can't see which finger is on which note.

I have to say that I have had more experience of accompanying in the last two years of forum membership than in most of my years of playing the piano, but I will agree that because you cannot stop when playing for someone, it might help with the process of sight reading. Anyway, it's fun!

I do wish you well, Skylark, and all other piano learners, in your quest to learn sight reading, and I hope that maybe one or more of these ideas might help.

I think that is a good point about exposure to sight reading, or playing new pieces. I passed gr7 but I was still not happy with the sightreading element of it, however, I got 16/20 (which was an improvement on the 12/20 I got for grade 6!) I basically made sure that my practice always had a chunk of sightreading. Previously I had left it untilt the end, and then I was tired, or not in the mood and it often ended up as 10 minutes. By doing the sight reading before I moved onto pieces I did it for longer.

I am fortunate that I work at a secondary school so I was able to accompany the choir on piano, and also another student with his cello piece. And I even volunteered to play 6 christmas carol's for the primary school's church service. It all helps!

When doing my sightreading it never felt like it was getting any better, but it must have been since I got higher mark on a harder grade. For me the breakthrough was when I stopped being scared of sightreading. I'm still not good at it, but at least I'm not afraid of it any more!

The answer to good sight reading is to be able to recognise musical patterns very fast. There is a way to practise that helps a lot.

As well as a lot of other things.

Thanks a lot, Stetenorve, that's very sensitive of you! The move has taken up most of our time and attention in the last months. At long last (!!) ... we moved definitively yesterday and although they still have to assemble some furniture we're now in the new house. It is a 2-floor detached house and since the groundfloor is the part we allocate to our work (language teaching) and there is also a dedicated room for the piano there, I can now practise almost at any time of day (or night, with the muffler pedal if at night ... though I'd rather sleep and relax fully from the move at that time). I haven't practised properly for about 3-4 days now but this was to be expected and I try not to feel guilty about it. As teachers, our Xmas holidays start on Dec 23rd and we'll be free until Jan 10th ... which means we'll have about 3 weeks to familiarise ourselves with the new house and so on.

Thanks NeilQ and Gedall for making those points Re note-reading, I do normally recognise notes but I haven't yet learnt to have confidence in patterns and shapes. My teacher says I think too much and I should go with my instinct more Not sure I have an instinct though The nearest analogy I can think of is with crossword puzzles - for example, if you've got a 5-letter word starting "sunn.", the word "sunny" automatically comes to mind because you instinctively know it can't be anything else. I'm not there [yet] with sightreading piano music, and maybe I'm worrying too much at this stage, particularly in view of what my teacher said about thinking too much. I'll keep up the practice and try to go with the flow more. I've started learning scales blind, geddy, and am not doing too badly on those, but I'm not there yet on chords and arps. Thanks again for all your thoughts, it's encouraging to read other people's experiences

please do tell !

I have no problems with sight reading. It takes a lot of practice of playing things at sight without stopping. Reading ahead of what you are playing also helps. Having a steady beat, maybe sight reading practice with a metronome. The other thing that I know works, I have already written in a post on this forum, and was told I was writing rubbish, so I don't feel inclined to repeat it.

Lots of scales, scale exercises, and arpeggios all different sorts, read off the page to train your eye to recognise how they look when they are written in music, to help the recognition. On my instrument (oboe) I now don't have to think about fingerings in scale passages,or parts of scales and arpeggios iin music when I am sight reading. My fingers go straight to where they need to be. I also don't read the whole scale passages, just the patterns they form in the music. I remember years ago being able to read 7 bars ahead of what I was playing.

This sounds very useful for learning to sight read on an instrument that only plays one note at a time. My teacher tells me that a lot of flute music is based around scales and arpeggios. I am learning a piece right now that has an up and a down chromatic scale in it, and she wants me to play it without looking at the music (but I read somewhere else that you don't support the view of playing scales from memory).

Unfortunately, some bits of piano music, admittedly only very occasionally ( ) require both hands together, with chords in both hands. I can't quite figure out how scales and arpeggio reading can actually help to sight read this type of music, but I am willing to admit that maybe I am missing something.

You are right, I never practise scales from memory, but if I was playing like you a chromatic scale in a piece of music, I wouldn't read every note. I would only read the pattern. It is like reading a whole word, rather than all the individual letters. I expect that there are scale patterns and arpeggios for the piano that people need to practise to help them read music faster.


I wasn't. I had just got very good at sight reading, having done a lot of practise.

In the interests of fairness, if we're having a sensible discussion, I too have to agree that learning scales and arpeggios can be useful to help sight reading. However, I think that learning only those and nothing else is somewhat like memorising large lists of words hoping that they'll be helpful in reading a newspaper. They will be, but they won't explain anything about musicality or form or harmony or any number of other things which arise in music other than just the notes.

We ended up with two threads on Sightreading Support, so seeing as this is the longer one, I've combined the other posts into this one now, and the other thread could be deleted to avoid confusion.

Thanks for all your help - you've been great.


gedall40

I agree there was some good advice, and I too am sorry it has been lost. I haven't found a way to recreate anything from subscription emails - all links lead to a "sorry" message from the mods. Maybe if you speak nicely with one of them, they could let you have the less contentious and more useful postings.

In the meantime, my suggestions in a nutshell were
keep trying to sight read, practise does help
spend time trying to improve your ability to play the keyboard without looking at your hands. This can be approached from playing some of your simple pieces that you really know by forcing yourself not to look down unless absolutely necessary
try playing scales in the dark
try flash cards of single notes, two note chords, then more notes depending on where you are up to in the pieces you are trying to sight read. HS and HT. Just having small bits to sight read may help to move on to longer bits, then complete bars, then complete pieces.
practice feeling the shape of chords because the pattern of black and white notes that they occupy in physical space is very informative if you can learn to "read" the information coming through your fingertips.
other keyboard geometry practice is good too, such as recognising intervals on the music and playing them without looking down
There might be one or two new ones here! To my way of thinking, sight reading means spending more time with your eyes on the music and less on your hands. It is not necessarily all about how many bars ahead you can be reading before playing, but how many bars you can play before needing to look down. Looking ahead is important to get the rhythm, shape, dynamics and tempo markings, but first I would suggest getting the notes right and then working on these others. As soon as you develop a feel for the keyboard your brain will have more time to process the other elements.


SueHM

To score good marks in exams, it is necessary to keep going, maintaining the rhythm at the expense of note accuracy if necessary. In practical situations like accompanying others, maintaining a bass line and harmony may be the most important things.
However, when practising, perhaps alternative approaches may be more helpful. I found some of the advice on the following link very useful - Margaret is an amazing lady whose Youtube videos cover a huge variety of topics apart from music - well worth a browse....
Madge on sight-reading


Mad Tom

There is lots of good advice above, but I managed to become a reasonable sight-reader with NO specific exercises aimed at improving my sight-reading, and I am sure that the same is true of many other pianists on the forum.

I think part of the problem is that many people expect/wish it was easier than in fact it is. It takes an intense mental effort (which our minds naturally resist - until such time as it becomes comfortable - just like learning a new, technically difficult piece) AND it takes many, many hours of practice before it becomes at all easy.

All I ever did was struggle through book after book of real piano pieces, a few hours every week. So even when I wa only at Grade 5 I was "sight-reading"my way through Beethoven's sonatas, Chopin's Waltzes and Mazurkas, the Liszt transcriptions of Beethoven's Symphonies and many many other works that were way beyond my ability to play them at all well after months of practice ... never mind sight read them. It was slow and painful at first, but by the time I had been studying the piano for 10 years or so I was a reasonable sight reader. This was, of course, alongside studying theory (harmony, counterpoint, form) and getting gradually better in terms of the pure mechanism side of technique.

From then on, as I have gradually acquired more technical skill my sight reading has improved in tandem, and that is very simple to explain ... as controlling my arms, hands, fingers takes less and less mental effort I can afford to pay more attention to the score and how it is supposed to sound.

Bottom line?

1. get real in your expectations - piano playing is NOT a skill you can learn in a few weeks, whatever some charlatan books and web sites and NLP experts might say

2. play a lot,

3. spend a lot of time working through new material

For this you have to either have an intense desire to master the skill, or (better) enjoy the work for its own sake, or (best of all) both


Matt Malloy

Sue, that video is fantastic! It should be required viewing for all music learners.

I totally agree with the bit about not being proud and dropping down a level if need be and that there are beautiful pieces at those levels. Something I've tried to drill into people on guitar for years (they all want to play Tarrega but there are lovely bits in Fernando Sor's Opus 60 that seem to get totally neglected). Get good skills at the basic levels and the harder pieces will come naturally in time. Strong foundations make for easy building.

Cheers,

Matt.


kerioboe

I am the same (but am nowhere near the level of MadTom). Like him I spent the time between my lessons playing through anything I could lay my hands on, including things which were much too difficult. For a long time I thought this was much more fun than practising the pieces I had been set for the next lesson - playing the same thing over and over again was "boring" when there was so many things to play (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) My teacher never got me to play a new piece in the lesson before I took it home to work on so she never realised quite how good my sight-reading skills were and that I was sight-reading the piece I was supposed to have practised.

Only when I changed teachers, when I was about fifteen, did I learn how to practise pieces and I do regret a little the amount of time I spent sight-reading instead of practising.


gedall40

Thank you Tom. In fact, I am also not aware of doing any specific exercises other than play pieces from sight, and as has been mentioned before, every new piece you start to learn requires you to read it in order to start playing it. This alone must be good experience.

However, the difference between Skylark and me is that I was about 9 when I was at her level. Firstly I now cannot remember how well I sight read at that age - I believe my exam marks were only passes in that topic. Secondly, I have had many years of learning new pieces and this elapsed time must have contributed to my ability to sight read. So all I am doing for Skylark is to say that I believe good sight reading depends on good knowledge of the keyboard geography, and to suggest ways that this might be obtained through specific exercises in the hope that it might shorten the time a bit. But my first bullet point is the most important, and agrees with what you have written.

The video says to focus on simple pieces, as I have suggested. But like you, I was keen to attempt all kinds of difficult pieces just for the fun of it. This came more when I was about 15 years old, so maybe I had already been through the simple sight reading stage and was ready for the difficult sight reading stage. I do think that if you choose a piece which is much too difficult for you and you are spending all your time decoding the information, then you are learning it, not sight reading it. There is nothing wrong with that, particularly if you get satisfaction out of attempting a difficult piece, it's just that I don't think it helps to speed up the process of developing good sight reading for the level you expect to take at your next exam, and that is what I was trying to address for Skylark.


oldnotes

I have always picked up new music and tried to play it straight off. Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Music borrowed from the Library and the pieces in 'The Pianist' magazine, which I have taken from issue 1.

What has improved my sightreading more than anything is playing with other musicians and accompanying singers. New pieces keep being produced and I have no option but to sight read it. Mostly this works and the results are acceptable, occasionally good, but sometimes I have to plead for practise time in order to make a decent job of it. Overall though it is very satisfying and results in real 'music making'.


corenfa

Though I've only quoted a bit of Mad Tom's post (to avoid having the whole huge chunk of quote in this post), my experience exactly parallels his.

Sorry to bang on about it but I think this exactly matches my language analogy - some of us learnt English by just speaking it a lot, and some had to learn it formally. I learnt to sight read just by playing a lot of stuff, just as I learnt to read English by reading pretty much everything I could get my hands on (note to parents: keep your medical textbooks away from children under 10, because they can give themselves nightmares). I didn't understand much of what I read or played at the time, but it eventually made sense when I would go back to read / play things that I had last read or played 10 years previous.

Whereas other people learnt English by sitting in a classroom, doing written or spoken exercises, and perhaps memorising lists of words and rules - and so other people may learn sight reading by practicing scales, arpeggios, 10 minutes a day of random new music, or other similarly directed things.

I don't know which is less or more work or which provides a better result. It's probably the intent that matters in either case.

Re sightreading, I am finding the most useful way to improve is to pick material that you can do WITHOUT TAKING YOUR EYES OFF THE SCORE, not even for a second. That is, DON'T LOOK DOWN. You may have to go down a grade or two to re learn / up / this skill, but you can catch up in levels of difficulty later.

Another hint is to TAKE MORE THAN 30 seconds, but really really to get ready ahead of time. Take a minute or even two minutes, or even indefinite minutes. You can reduce this preparation time later, when closer to the exam itself.

The other hint I would repeat is to 'follow the TRAK', as the book puts it: really understand the T tempo and R rhythmic difficulties before you start. Try out the trickiest rhythmic bits first. Find e.g. the syncopations and ties. The worst sort of error is to mix up e.g. quavers and semiquavers, so find them ahead of time. Some pieces have traps set in the middle somewhere, lulling you into starting too fast and then getting caught out. Find the fastest meanest parts and cadences and try them out ahead of time. Check for e.g. tierces de Picardie at the end.

Locate the notes on ledger lines AOT (ahead of time). The A in TRAK is (I think) find the accidentals.

The K in TRAK is of course the key. Check at once if it is the major or the relative minor. Remind yourself of the fingering of the scale and arpeggio of the tonic key. Remind yourself of the chords of the tonic, dominant, etc.

If the piece has a title, use it as a hint to style and period.

It is better to leave notes out than to stall and try to find them.

It is usually not worth trying obey the tempo mark and to set off too fast. Better to be on the slow, boring side but in time, with no hesitations or repeats. That at least is the orthodox AB view.

Skylark, why are you showing as being unregistered?

I wondered that too

http://www.abrsm.org/forum/index.php?showt...45151&st=60

Good grief I didn't sign on for a few days and everyones leaving! How sad