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.

5 X 5 approach

I have shared this following approach to practice already in some of your lessons, and I wanted to introduce it to everyone else here.

This concept was inspired by a fitness video I saw.  The guy had a workout called 5 by 5.  He took 5 challenging bodyweight exercises and recommended doing 5 sets of 5 reps.

One thing that always stuck from my own piano education is the rule that if you can do something 5 times correctly, you have learned it.

I would further add that if you can do something 5 times correctly, and continue to do that every day until you've done it for 5 consecutive days, then you REALLY should have it down.

The Five Rules

The rules are really simple.

1.  Whatever you practice, do it 5 times in a row correctly.

2.  Correctly means 100% accuracy.  If you missed one note or one finger, it was not correct.

3.  If you mess up, the count starts over.  Go through what you're practicing 4 times without a mistake and miss a fingering on the 5th attempt?  Sorry, but you have to start all over.

4.  This means that accuracy and precision are by far the most important things.  Speed does not matter at all.  Go absolutely as slow as you need!

5.  Repeat 5 days in a row, and marvel at how much easier it gets each time.  Speed will come without effort.

Ways to incorporate 5 X 5 practice

• Take any challenging technique (a new scale, chord progression) and practice it as slowly as needed.  Just ensure that every note you play is correct...no matter how slow.  Do it 5 times in a row.  Don't allow it to speed up for the first 2 days.  On days 3 and 4, allow it to gradually speed up each repetition.  Day 5, it should be feeling easy.  Get your 5 times in carefully, then test yourself for speed.
• Take any particularly difficult part of a piece you're working on, practice the very end of the section 5 times, work back a measure to get into it and do that 5 times.  Keep doing that until you're starting from the beginning of the section.  Again, it must always be correct, and you need to do this 5 days in a row.  It should get easier each day.
• If you're working on something like reading notes on a staff, you could go to MusicTheory.com's note exercise, change the settings so that you're working on only the notes you're trying to learn, and see how many notes you can correctly identify in a 5 minute session.  Write down your score (number correct).  Do another 5 minute session the next 4 days, and see if the number you can correctly identify goes up.

Use your imagination when applying this.  It works because it demands perfection first, and repetition second.  Be patient early on.  You will undoubtedly mess up and have to start over your count, and it will feel like it's taking forever.  However, you will eventually get good at this type of practice and see it as nothing more than a tool that will reliably make you a better pianist.

Welcome 2015, Becoming Observant

Yes, I am still here.  In 2014, I was involved with 9 shows.  That was more than I did in 2012-13 combined.  Also, I spent the year teaching at a local community college.  Needless to say, many things fell by the wayside including this blog, but I'm not at all short on things I want to share, so I hope to be giving you more frequent things to read.  I am doing fewer shows and only teaching privately, so hopefully this will help.

Coming soon: I will talk about suggested goals for this year.  In the meantime, you may want to read what I suggested for last year.

IMPROVING OBSERVATION

One general way that nearly all of my students need to improve on for becoming better music students is to sharpen their powers of observation.  In music, you need to notice several things:

• Familiar chord progressions and voicings
• Key signatures
• Melodic patterns
• Repeated sections and their variations
• Textual instructions (slow down, up an octave)
• Dynamics
• Fingerings

...and so on.  I can't tell you how much lesson time is spent pointing out to a student that they simply need to look more carefully at what they're playing.  They know what the note is, but they don't notice it until I say "check it again."  They get to a repeated section of something they played well the first time and approach it like it's new material.  Musicians are people who are very observant.  They notice things they see and things they hear.  When my wife logs off on her wii, she tends to do it at the same rhythm to get 3 distinct patterns of 2 notes, 1 note, and 2 more notes.  I went to the piano and found that they make a great waltz.  Did you know that cylindrical fluorescent lightbulbs constantly hum on a Bb?  Have you ever listened to the rhythm of a car alarm, or the complicated songs of birds?

There's late '90s British television show called Spaced that has this one scene that nails how many musicians think.  This minor character, Tyres, is visiting his friends.  He's usually wearing headphones, frequently visits a lot of clubs, and basically transforms everything into music.  Watch what happens inside his head as soon as the phone starts ringing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ0zGZ2t7xE

One exercise I've always suggested to people for improving observations is to select a mundane object, like a clock on the wall, and write down 20 things about it.  Today, I found this article about How to Boost Your Observation Skills and Pay Attention.  Please read it, as I think you will find a lot that will help you with your music and with life away from your instrument as well.

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.

Resuming this Blog, Recital Reminder

Updated to include the date

Students and other readers,
First of all, please accept my apology for letting this blog go for so long.  I won't divulge all that's been going on, but being busy is a part of the long time between posts, but only a part.  The other part is simply "out of sight, out of mind".  I'm hoping to work blogging into a schedule, so that I get you one post a week.  Thank you if you're still following this.

With that said, the first thing is to remind everyone that our Spring Recital is Sunday, May 4 at Pfafftown Baptist Church, 4336 Transou Road, Pfafftown, NC 27040.  The recital begins at 3:00pm.  I encourage those participating to arrive early enough to assure you can be there AND relaxed/acclimated by 3:00pm.  It will not be a long recital, but thanks to all of you who are participating.

I've typed up three posts here before that I encourage EVERYONE to please read again.  Click on each link below to review.

Recital Etiquette, Where to Sit, Etc

More recital basics.

and finally:
How to ensure you'll play your best.