Sight Reading, How To Get Good

Sight Reading and Playing By Ear

As a player, tuner and technician, I talk to people everywhere, every day, about their own piano playing…what genre of music they like to play, what level they can play at, what types of playing they cannot currently do well, but hope to eventually acheive. By far, the biggest topic that comes up is not whether they can improve their playing skills overall – they all know that with more practice they’ll play much better – but how to effectively improve either their sight-reading or their ability to “play by ear.” We’ll discuss these in the next two posts

Sight-reading, just like it sounds, is the ability to read the music notation on the page with the same quickness & fluidity one could read the words of any book. Specifically, sight-reading refers to being able to read a formerly-unseen piece of music so fluidly that you never need to stop the flow of your playing in order to “figure out what note that is” or “what these symbols mean,” you just keep playing without pause. Many players can do this with very elementary-level songs (like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,) but fall apart when a piece with lots of quick-succeeding notes for both hands is placed before them (like a Chopin Waltz or a Bach Invention.) They feel they must pick the piece apart, one note at a time, so they get bored, frustrated, and give up.

But the solution to painlessly increasing anyone’s sight-reading ability is fairly simple.

When you were young, there was a point where reading the words in a book was just as tedious. You had to sound-out each letter, put it together with the other sylables, and make an intelligible word and sentence out of each line. Now you don’t even pause for a second when reading. How did that transformation happen? Simple – you built your reading level S-L-O-W-L-Y.

The problem is, many are enamored with certain lovely but difficult pieces of music and want to be able to play them NOW. It’s only natural. I wanted to be able to read through and play Chopin’s “Fantasie Impromptu” since I first heard it, at age 8. It’s stunningly beautiful (hear it soon if you haven’t) but quite challenging – lots of fast moving notes and long stretches in both hands, lots of “accidentals” (extra shaprs & flats.) The first few times I tried it, well, I just flat out gave up.

Here’s what I had to do, and what you must also do. Get a metronome that will keep any speed of timing you set. Now get some books of pieces you’ve never seen or played before, from really easy-to-play levels (Grade 1 – 3) up to the more difficult pieces. Start playing the easiest pieces, at the indicated metronome speed, without looking down at your hands…just keep your eyes on the music. If you find you pause or drop out of playing at that speed, because you can’t recognize the notes fast enough, that’s your current highest level of sightreading. Important: if you do recognize the notes but simply made a few mistakes in playing, don’t stop, keep playing; that’s still acceptable sight-reading.

The trick is pick pieces at just the level where you can keep your eyes on the music, not look down at your hands, and keep going without pause, at a speed close to the piece’s recommended speed. Once you can do that fairly well with Level 1 pieces, try Level 2, set the metronome a little slower, and keep going even when you make a mistake or even drop out on of your hands for a full measure or two.

So let’s say you can read through Grade 2 pieces at full speed,  with no pause or glance at your fingers, but you start to pause and stumble with Grade 3 pieces. Simply spend 20-30 minutes a day playing only Grade 3 pieces, slowing the metronome down just to the point where you won’t pause or drop out. Soon you’ll be able to read all Grade 3 pieces at full speed. Now go onto the next grade level and repeat the process. It will take several months, perhaps more than a year, but soon you will find you read through even the most densley-packed, full of 8th and 16th note two handed pieces, that you’ve never seen before, at speed or nearly up to speed, with virtually no drop outs or mistakes. Now you are a very good sightreader, which vastly increases your music choices and level of enoyment!

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