How to Improve Your Sight-Reading (Sight-Reading Part 2)

Okay, I didn't think the follow-up to the first part of this series would be nearly 5 months later, but there are a lot of things for 2020 that I don't think anyone expected!  Anyway, better late than never.

There are 2 points I made in the previous blog about sight-reading.

1. You can aspire to be a pianist-for-hire without becoming a true virtuoso.
2. Of all the things you need to improve to do well as a pianist-for-hire, there is nothing more important than sight-reading.

But how do you improve your sight-reading?

There are many approaches and techniques, enough so that I won't cover them here, but I'll give you some broad suggestions.

Learn your technique in your hands and on the staff.

So much of music is scales, chords, and arpeggios.  Part of sight-reading well is to be able to not only recognize what you see, but actually be able to play it when you do.  Again, there are two components.  What does the technique look like within sheet music?  And how do you play it?

Piano students more often than not underestimate the importance of technique and also the standards of good technique.  For example, take the C major scale.  Can you play it 1-octave hands separately? How about hands together?  How about 2 octaves separately and together? 4 octaves? Contrary motion? In 3rds? In 6ths? How fast can you play each one?  And that's just one scale.

Treat your technique with this recipe:

1. Master a specific technique (i.e. 1-octave scale hands together) slowly with 100% correct fingering and 100% correct notes.
2. Speed up until it's really fast.
3. Make the technique harder (i.e. 2 octave scales)
4. Repeat steps 1 through 3 over and over.

This can be a parallel development to everything else.  You don't have to be in full mastery of every technique to be a good sight-reader, but the limit of your technique will limit the difficulty of what you can play in one attempt.

Improve your recognition of rhythms, notes, intervals, and chords

As I'm telling my students all the time, it's not enough to be able to look at a note on the staff, give it some thought, and then name the right note.  Each note has to be INSTANTANEOUS in its recognition.  But the truth is, while that's an ingredient to good sight-reading, it's only one of many.  Much like reading this blog requires first knowing your alphabet, then recognizing words, the definitions of the words, the structure of a sentence, and groups of words creating a thought... your note recognition has to be combined with other elements.

• Rhythm: There are books just for rhythm that are progressive.  I would find one with a CD or online demonstration/play-along and then ALWAYS try it without listening first, then listen to check how you did, then play again.
• Notes: The best way I know to learn is online games that involve beating the clock, such as musictheory.net/exercises/note.  How many notes can you get right in a minute?  Any slower than 30 per minute, and you're taking too long to think about it.  See my recent blog post that gives a note-tutorial for musictheory.net
• Intervals: Recognition of 2nds, 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, etc is only helpful if you can do it without naming any of the notes.  If I point to two notes on the staff and ask you to name the interval, and your response is to play the notes on the piano (example: C up to an F), and then say "a 4th!", you are not independently recognizing your intervals.  Go to https://www.musictheory.net/exercises/interval.  This is a great exercise because of the ability to increase the level of difficulty.  

  

  Let me know how you do with the Accidentals of doom!

If you are beginner, not only start with Level 1, but uncheck all of the intervals except the ones on this column.  Then gradually add the rest of them.

Here is final setting.  On the play mode, leave the setting at Harmonic, but at some point try Both.  Finally, your game is ready, and looks like this.  

• Chords: Chords are your more advanced vocabulary words.  You want to learn root position chords, then inversions, then 7th chords and their inversions, then the more extended chords (especially if you're playing jazz, funk, or blues).  I won't clutter this section with more screenshots, but the setup for https://www.musictheory.net/exercises/chord is very similar to that of the intervals, with 5 letters and everything.  There is an Inversions button you can check on and off.

Raise your level of playing through experience

This is not a theory I can cite from other sources, but entirely my own observation.  Your level of ability on any instrument is defined by the average level of all the music you've practiced.  If you spend a lot of time on easy pieces that you can learn in a few days at most, then you're not pushing yourself.  It's the brain-busters, the pieces that make you question yourself, the ones you have to take 1 and 2 measures at a time over and over really slowly that make you truly grow!  You need to always have a project going that stretches you.

Get experience with sight-reading

If you decide to run a 5k race, you can go online and read all about strategy and correct form, and basically everything you need to know to run your best 5k time.  However, none of it matters unless you actually practice running.  The experience is where you improve, not the knowledge of it.  All of the things mentioned here are tools.  They equip you to do a good job, but you need to practice sight-reading and log in many, many hours of doing this very thing before you actually get good at sight-reading.

First, you need some materials.  By that, I mean that you need music just for sight-reading.  Ideally, it needs to be music that is comfortably but not excessively easier than your average playing level (see previous section on this blog).  It's not to say that you couldn't go with something only moderately easier than your average that you would continue to practice and work up, but to know if you're improving your sight-reading, the goal is this:  Find the hardest level of music (no matter how easy that is) that you can play on the first attempt with at least 80% accuracy.  The goal is then to increase the difficulty level of the music you can play this well on the first attempt.

OPTIONS FOR COLLECTING SIGHT-READING MATERIALS:  (1) You can always go to where sheet music is sold, and get method books for brands other than yours.  Most of my students are on Faber's Piano Adventures.  If you're not, then try that brand for sight-reading.  Other common choices include Bastien, Alfred's, Hal Leonard, and The Music Tree.   There are also books designed for Sight Reading (and includes this term in the title) where the exercises start very easy and get progressively more difficult as you go. (2) Shop used-book stores in the music section, or check Goodwill or other thrift stores.  Many piano students don't often hold onto their student books after a while, and this is a good place to find easier music that you haven't previously practiced.  (3) Seek out friends or family members who have taken lessons and see if you can at least borrow some of their music books.

The point is...practice for the sake of improving this skill many times a week.  Grab something you've never played, and just play without stopping.  Keep your eyes moving ahead, don't stop for mistakes, and see how you do.  Very important: Before putting the music away, look at where you had any real trouble playing it well, and evaluate why it was hard.  Did it involve notes, intervals, or chords that you found difficult to recognize quickly?  Did you take your eyes off the page?  Did you end up staring at the notes you were playing rather than looking ahead?  Did the place in question involve technique (such as a scale) that you need to improve?

The under-rated skill-builder: playing from a hymnal!

Beginning students should probably ignore this section for now, but this is a great tip for intermediate students.  This is also GREAT for jazz pianists.  Buy a hymnal with traditional homophonic hymns.  Homophonic means that the music looks mostly like this, where you have 4-notes per chord (most chords) and that each note is moving at the same rhythm (as opposed to polyphonic hymns where the soprano and alto might have different rhythms).

One thing you'll notice about this that takes some getting used to is that, because hymns are written to be sung by a group of voices rather than to be played, you have to compensate that the tenor voice (top bass clef note) is often far apart from the bass voice (bottom bass clef note), often beyond the reach of your hand.  Look at the last measure on the first line.  The last note is an octave, but the two notes before that are difficult-to-unplayable stretches for the LH.  However, in both cases, it is an easy reach to add the tenor notes to the bottom of the RH so that you are playing 3 right-hand notes vs 1 left-hand note.  You'll also notice in places like the 5th note of the 2nd line that the tenor (top bass clef) and alto (bottom treble clef) notes are the same.  Therefore, when you play it, you play the single note with one hand and ignore the other.  These are the types of things that make playing hymns sneakily difficult.  Nevertheless, they are invaluable and highly worth including in heavy doses of sight-reading for a few reasons.

First, in spite of the difficulty of learning how to play a hymn (singular), it doesn't take a lot of practice before it gets to be fairly easy to play hymns (plural).  This is because there isn't much difference between the easiest and hardest hymns to play out of one hymnal.  A few hours of practice and you'll lock in to HOW to play a hymn on the first attempt.

Second, (and jazz players, play attention!!), it is an unequaled way to gain experience in great-sounding chord voicings!!  To refresh, chords are how notes are grouped together (CEG is a C major chord), but chord voicings are how they are organized between the hands (C-G in the LH, E-C in the RH) and how one chord moves to the other in a smooth way.  Smooth voice leading in chords sounds great on any instrument, but it's actually imperative for groups of vocalists singing in harmony.  Your inner voices (altos and tenors) would have a hard time for amateurs to sing their part if it was jumping all over the place, so they tend to have a lot of repeated notes and steps with only a few skips.  Well, those same voice leadings are absolutely wonderful to use as reference when playing from a lead sheet.  It doesn't take much practice to figure out how to convert them as 7th and 9th chords.  And if you're not wanting to learn jazz from a lead-sheet, the voicings used in hymn harmonies are so often used in classical piano voicings for similar texture.  Being proficient in hymn reading will have instant benefit on reading traditional piano music!

Finally, playing hymns gives you the ultimate practice in moving 4 parts of music at once.  You cannot play hymns well if you are trying to move the top line, then the middle lines, then the bottom line chord-by-chord.  You need to learn how to put your interval and note skills in combination and see how each chord moves as an entire group, NOT just one note at a time.

I haven't yet exhausted sight-reading as a subject, so I will probably revisit this some day, but I hope all of you who aren't absolute beginners will make sight-reading a regular priority in your practice!

Sight-reading Basics Part 2 - Reading the Music

Sight-reading is an important skill for various reasons.  It's not just because, as I mentioned in my previous post, professional pianists are often asked to read music that they've never seen before at a high level; It's because EVERYBODY sight-reads.  Correction: everyone who ever learns a piece of music has to sight-read.  All sight-reading means is that it's the first time you've attempted to play a piece of music.  It's not just a skill; it's an inevitable part of the learning process.  Unless you only play by ear, you have to sight-read.

But why do I need to improve it if I don't plan to be a professional musician?

There may be multiple reasons, but there's only one that matters:  the better you sight-read, the faster you'll learn your music!!

Elite sight-readers are more than halfway done learning their music after they sight-read it one time.  Ask yourself this:  If you could take a piece that requires 4 hours of practice time and reduce it to 2, or 90 minutes, or 1 hour...isn't that worth the effort to improve your sight-reading?

In part 1, I talked about the importance of learning the keyboard well enough that you aren't having to constantly look at your hands.  Be sure you're making good progress in that area in order to fully benefit from the next segment of ways to improve your sight-reading.

Many of these hints below can be improved at www.musictheory.net/exercises.

Learn your notes

Playing and understanding a piece of music is VERY SIMILAR to reading any other language.  You have letters, words, phrases and sentences.  In music, you have notes, intervals, chords, melodic patterns, sequences, cadences and phrases.  When it comes to spoken language, you won't get far in reading anything on this blog unless you can identify each individual letter.  Written language is pretty much hopeless unless you get past "A is for Apple".  You need to learn every written note you will encounter in a piece of music for your level, and (I CAN'T EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH), You must practice note recognition until you no longer have to consciously think of the answer.  At any point in your lesson, I should be able to point to a note and ask its name, and you should be moving your mouth right away with the correct answer.  If you're pausing to think, you don't know your notes well enough to sightread at a high level.

Musictheory.net exercise:  Note Identification (go for speed, not just accuracy)

Learn your intervals and chords

If you're still reading, you obviously know your ABC's.  Do you think you'd be reading if you had to consciously identify every single individual letter?  Probably not.  I-t i-s h-a-r-d t-o r-e-a-d o-n-e l-e-t-t-e-r a-t a t-i-m-e and understand everything.  To even say you are reading, you need to recognize groups of letters as single words.  In music, this translates as intervals and chords.  These show you the shape of the patterns, things you are more likely to recognize at a playing tempo than the individual notes.  For intervals: start with generic 2nds, 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, etc and when that is easy, learn to distinguish between major, minor, perfect, augmented and diminished (depending on your level).  For chords, start with being able to identify your primary chords as well as find the bottom note in any root-position (stacked in 3rds) chord.  Then practice identifying chords in inversions, as well as playing them.  Then work to types of chords (major, minor, augmented, diminished, types of 7ths).

Musictheory.net exercises: Interval Identification and Chord Identification

Learn to incorporate key signatures

Notice I didn't say "learn your key signatures".  What good is it to know that a key signature of 3 sharps could be A major if you forget to always play F, C and G as F#, C# and G# when you come across it?  Yes, you need to know what your key signature is, but you also need to be able to apply it to your playing.

Musictheory.net exercises: Key Signature Identification (for naming what it is) and Note Identification with settings checking key signatures to be incorporated that you would likely play at some point (for applying it).

ALWAYS LOOK AHEAD

When it comes to recognizing motives, sequences, phrases and other horizontal patterns, you have to look ahead.  You're still reading this blog.  Have you understood everything to this point (minus any technical terms you haven't yet covered)?  Then that means several things:  1. You know your letters. 2.  You can quickly string those letters together to identify words.  3.  You know what at least most of those words mean, and can deduce what the others mean by the context.  4.  You...probably... are... not... reading...one...word...at...a... time.   Look at the next 5 examples.  The first is a clean 8 measure example of a piece many of you might sightread.

Original work.  No copyright is infringed.

Sorry for the lack of resolution in this example, but you should be able to make out what it is.  Here are 4 ways you might be looking at the notes as you play them.  Consider what you're playing to be on the far left of any given circle with what you're seeing as you play to be the rest of the circle.  They are ranked from worst to best.

I only bothered with the first two measures.  Basically you're looking 1 beat at a time.

2 beats at a time.  This is obviously better, but you're still going to stall or have to play very slowly.

I would say that, at the bare minimum, this is where you should start when you read through a piece.  The problem comes in going from one measure to another.  You need to keep looking ahead.  Therefore...

This is ideal.  You are looking far enough ahead.  Also, notice the overlapping circles (oops, I missed one at the end).  You KEEP looking ahead.  Now you can see chord patterns, chord changes, the shape of the phrase, rhythm patterns.  Notice the instruction at the end of the first line.  You need to look to measure 5 to see what it coming up.

Looking ahead is essential.  As I mentioned on the previous entry in this series, I am not a natural sight-reader.  Everything I'm suggesting that you do are things I do now that I have not always done.  Occasionally, I find myself struggling to play something with accuracy, even something that is a 3rd or 4th time playing, and nearly always this goes away when I realize that I am not consistently looking ahead.  ALWAYS LOOK AHEAD.  DO NOT STARE AT THE NOTE YOU ARE PLAYING.

More steps to success

1.  Until you have mastered sight-reading, always use a metronome.  Set the metronome to a conservative tempo and stick with it no matter what.  The metronome has one purpose: to remind you that the beat goes on whether you're ready to play the next beat or not.  Do not correct wrong notes.  You have the option of leaving a note out, or an entire beat, while you "look ahead" and jump back in ON TIME.  Do not pause while you figure out what you should play.  You can do that when you're actually practicing the music, but sightreading is NOT practice.  Don't treat the two elements the same way.

2.  Look at a piece before you begin.  Identify the clefs and key signatures.  Look for patterns.  Look for tricky spots.  Most importantly, mentally review the rhythm.  Go for RHYTHM FIRST when you sight-read.  Who cares if you miss some notes?  Get the rhythm!

3.   Sightread at least 2-3 sessions per week of 10-20 minutes each to practice this skill.  Choose easier music and, at least, music you are not currently learning (or may never take the time to learn).  Method books from methods you haven't played before are good.  Many people recommend hymnals.  These are great provided you have any experience at all in playing hymns, which involves a lot of quick decisions as to whether or not the tenor voice should be played with the left hand or right thumb.

4.  As the first section implies, keep studying theory.  The more information you can identify immediately about the music, the better you will play.

5.  Keep working on technique.  You shouldn't have to practice a passage based on chords, scales and arpeggios where it is clearly one of those three and not some mix.  The better your technique, the better you will sight-read.

6.  Related to my first tip.  Give yourself permission to mess up.  Just play it with a carefree attitude.  You'll be surprised how much better it sounds even with mistakes if you just keep going.

7. Just in case you missed it between this and Part 1 in this series:  KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE MUSIC.  You can't read what you don't see.  Don't look at your hands at all except when jumping, and then learn to bounce your eyes down and back.  They should never settle for even a full second on the piano.

Here are 2 links that I would recommend for those wanting more detail.

http://pianosightreading.blogspot.com/  Be sure to check out the menu on the right of all posts so that you can follow in order.  I especially recommend posts number 2, 3, 4, 8, 11, 13, 14, 28, 29 and 33.

Also, check out http://www.belmont.edu/music/PDFs/sightreading_tips.pdf for a more comprehensive list of what makes for good sight-reading.

Sight-reading Basics part 1: Learning Your Instrument

In my previous post, I offered an article on sight-reading, on some theories of what makes a person a good sight-reader.  Regardless of how natural your aptitude is, any musician can and should strive to become a sight-reader.  Personally speaking, I got through my first dozen years of lessons solely on the merits of my ability to use my ear and to memorize.  I would all but panic if you gave me something to play for the first time expecting it to be anywhere close to good if it was any more than half my current performance level.  Then came college and scholarship requirements, which included accompanying, which furthermore included a lot of sight-reading.  I would come in around week 4 of the semester and would be handed the piano part for the first time while the vocalist or other instrumentalist would already be getting up to tempo and mostly done learning their part.  By necessity, I had to get better.

It's a good thing that I did.  In my career, I've been asked to sight-read a LOT.  As a professional musician, it's probably the one aspect of my musicianship that would most cause questions as to my competence if it were still weak.  Someone who can play by ear is respected, but there is understanding if you happen to be a musician who doesn't play by ear.  If you can't sight-read well, this speaks of inexperience.  No matter how much music experience you have, you still have to practice specifically to get better at sight-reading.  It doesn't just happen.

Don't worry.  This looks impossible to me as well!

In part 2 of this series, I'll talk about some of the things I did to improve my own skills as far as reading the music and playing it.  They aren't any different than what the vast majority of teachers will tell you.  However, there's a very important skill they forget to tell you, and that's KNOWING YOUR INSTRUMENT.

One of the biggest keys to success with sight-reading is keeping your eyes on your music.  However, you can't very well keep your eyes on the music if you don't know your instrument well enough to play comfortably without looking at it.  A violinist has to know where to press each string and operate the bow without looking.  A brass player has to know valve combinations without looking.  A woodwind player needs to know two hand fingering combinations and where the holes/keys are without watching their hands.  As a pianist, you need to know the keyboard so well that by knowing where your hands are when you started, you know where every other key is at all times.

Let's start with the very basics.  Do you know your keys?  Furthermore, can you name each letter (along with sharp or flat as needed) without looking.  It all starts with the black keys.  If you know your two groups of keys well, then you can use your fingers to find the 3 black key groups and 2 black key groups to determine which of the following letters you are playing.

If you need to work on your keys, an exercise I recommend is 5 times daily to take each group, go up and down the keys PLAYING and SAYING ALOUD the letters as you play (CDE going up, EDC going down).  You can also start on any letter, play and SAY going up until you get to the letter where you started an octave higher.  (ABCDEFGA going up, AGFEDCBA going down.  Then go to BCDEFGAB, CDEFGABC, etc)

You can also make flashcards of the keys to the left by drawing a blank set of the keys, placing an X on the key you want to name and printing the letter name on the opposite side.

Also, you can go to my favorite website for helping: musictheory.net

One of the exercises is called Keyboard Note Identification.

When you go to that game, you'll see the online game which looks something like this.

Simply put, you name the key that is highlighted as fast and as correctly as you can.  Please remember that SPEED is just as important as ACCURACY.  Your goal is to get to the point where you do not have to consciously think to name the key.   Until you get to the point, you will not be able to take your eyes off the keys and know for certain what you are playing.  If you only want to work with sharps (or flats) or just want the white keys, you can go to the settings button at the top and uncheck the ones you don't want as choices.

One other exercise is to take a 5 finger position such as (C-D-E-F-G), then play up and down the pentascale without looking at your fingers.  Then move your hand so that each finger is 1 key higher than it was before and recite (D-E-F-G-A) up and down.  Then start with E, etc.  At some point, Start with C, then jump to E, then G.  Then start with C, jump to F, then B.  Keep requiring greater jumps.

Last but not least, there are the two blind key challenges.

#1:  Look up at the ceiling, or close your eyes.  Randomly play a key and name what it is with your eyes closed.  Even if you think you know what it is by the way it sounds, confirm by feeling around for the nearby black key groups.

#2:  For those with great ears, this is a bigger challenge.  Close your eyes or look up and away from the piano, choose a letter at random (such as G).  Reach down, feel your groups, and play the G correctly on first attempt without looking.

Good luck!  Learn your instrument, and you'll be ready for the next steps in the basics of sightreading.

Sight-Reading Article

In recent lessons, I've been talking a lot about the importance of sight-reading.  There are many things to cover on this topic, and I am going to take another article or two soon to discuss more about sight-reading.  In the meantime, here is an interesting but brief article on what makes someone a good sight-reader.

Residual Effects of Practice

First of all, congratulations to all who participated in the Spring Recital!  Every time you get up in front of people and perform, you should be proud, whether it was the best you ever played or not.

I am in the midst of rehearsing a show as music director and pianist, a show that is known for a difficult piano part.  Now that I've played it with the cast close to a dozen times now, I'm able to make some observations while I'm playing.

1.  At least 90% of this score was sight-readable for me.  Of the 10% I couldn't sight-read well and had to practice, I didn't have to spend more than about an hour of total practice learning 9% of it.  There's about 1% that is genuinely hard and I'm still working on getting comfortable doing.

2.  When I'm playing, I use very little movement.  My wrists and shoulder movement are exactly what I teach in lessons, but I'm not doing much of it, just enough to play it well.

3.  When I play, I know it "looks" easy.  As a matter of fact, it "feels" easy.

All of this led to a conclusion:
The benefits of ease in playing this show are the result of INTENSE PRACTICE of PREVIOUS PIECES.

If you're not struggling with a piece, you are missing out on true growth.  It'd be nice if all pieces were ones you can just look at and play on the first attempt.  Unless you're an absolute beginner, all of you have pieces like that on some level.  However, unless you experience the STRUGGLE of a difficult piece regularly, and learn to overcome it, you will not push your level of comfort to more difficult music. The great news is that what you learn in one piece will help you in future pieces!

To reach this goal of a higher level of playing, here is what I did, and recommend you do.

(1) Embrace the struggle of difficult music.  It's NOT a reflection of how little you've accomplished so far.  You are not a failure for struggling with music.  Each struggle is how you grow.  In fact, it's the only way to grow as a musician.

(2)  Learn to practice strategically, in ways that solve difficulties in efficient ways.  This includes correct practice of accuracy first leading to speed with analysis and repetition as needed.  Everything you accomplish in learning one piece will likely come in as great experience the next time you come across something similar.

(3) LEARN your TECHNIQUE!   Unless someone mistakes you for The Flash as you play your scales, chords, and arpeggios, they are not yet good enough.  There's always room for improvement.  The better you are at those, the less music will catch you unprepared.  Be consistent - the right notes with the right fingerings every single time.  Go as slow as you need, but push for speed as it becomes easy.

(4) Keep improving your knowledge of theory.  When I play, I KNOW my notes.  I don't even think about them.  I KNOW my keys.  I KNOW my key signatures.  I don't miss sharps and flats because I remember them and apply them while I play.  I'm also aware of repeated sections.  I also am thinking about the chords I'm playing.  The more I KNOW, the better I play it.

(5) Practice sightreading.  Take easier music and work on seeing the music ahead of where you're playing, of playing without having to look at your hands.  Sightreading can include playing old pieces you either didn't learn well, or have forgotten.

(6) Memorize regularly, even a few measures.  When playing from music, page turns sometimes demand remembering what's around the corner, so it's helpful to be able to keep playing off the page without making a big struggle of it.

When you begin to feel frustrated with the struggle of a piece, remember that these are merely dues you pay for getting to the next level.  The hard work you spend on a piece will not be spent in vain, even if you forget how to play that particular piece.  Each accomplishment in piano will pay dividends later on.