Sightreading: Reading Ahead

[AnotherPianist]

I need to improve my sightreading because I want to be good at it. I've been practising recently and trying to get enough material to just keep reading through.

One thing that people say is that an important thing is to read ahead. I agree, I can see how it helps and I can see, on the rare occasions that things are going well I notice I am doing it slightly (usually followed by going wrong because I realise ). Anyway, I'm struggling to read ahead because I start off reading ahead and then I catch up to myself, I just can't make myself do it: I can't practise it because I can't do it. I've tried getting YAP to hide the music with a bit of paper so I have to read ahead (albeit once ), but I just end up not being able to continue because I haven't read the bar that I'm supposed to be playing, perhaps more persistance is needed on this one ;D.

Is there anything I can do to make myself able to read ahead so that I can practise it? I've tried going back to easier pieces which seems to help slightly but then I just don't need to look ahead but try and force myself and still catch up with myself.

Any tips from the good sightreaders out there how to go about it? Also any general sightreading tips (I know loads of practise ) are gratefully recieved .

[princessmoose]

This is interesting. I've never thought about how I sight read, I just do it! That's really helpful I know... I would say I am ok at sight reading, not amazingly brilliant though. I'll try to think about what I do next time I sight read something. I think the problem with being a good sight reader is that, one can get a piece to a certain level and then not have the motivation to improve it further.. (well that's me anyway).

Ok, I've given you not advice, I'll be back with some soon!

[chocolatedog]

I think good sightreaders take in groups of notes at a time, and part of it also is experience, eg in Mozart for example you can sometimes anticipate what's coming as certain chords appear in certain progressions - it's good fun, especially over a page turn to see if you can guess what's coming next!

[anacrusis]

The slip of paper thing is a very good idea- you and YAP will need to experiment to get the right amount of reading ahead-ness though.
I'm sure part of sightreading is developing those shortcuts between note and fingers - on the basic level on which my kids still operate, this meant playing a third because it was a third, and never mind the names of the notes involved. Scale-y bits run up or down, chords all have a well-defined shape, and reading forward allows you to start thinking about shaping your hand for the next bit - after all, you've already got the current bit done...
the other thing is to think of sensible chunks of the music - you don't need to identify every note of a coming scale individually- it can be read as one unit. With time, you can read typical chord sequences as a unit too, and extend your reading-ahead that way. My guess is that you have a sound enough grounding in all the technical stuff to be thinking in keys and not having to think back to which notes should be sharp or flat all the time- that was another bugbear for my kids.
Reading back, this sounds waffly, and most of it has been said by CD anyway. Sorry!

[Steve Hopwood]

The best sight reader I know is John Wilson, recently retired head of accompaniment at RNCM.

He taught us that sight reading is actually about short term memory of chunks of music - in his case a couple of lines in a simple score and a bar in a complex one. As CD says, sight reading is about taking in note groupings.

He also claimed that there is no conscious thought going into gppd sight reading. Notes go from the eyes to the fingers without interference from the brain. Try brainless sight reading. ;D

My reading improves dramatically when I count. One of my lot commented last week that my sight reading of a new exam piece suddenly improved half way through. I hadn't been counting until that point. Strange.

Steve

[petite joueuse]

stevehopwood said:

My reading improves dramatically when I count. One of my lot commented last week that my sight reading of a new exam piece suddenly improved half way through. I hadn't been counting until that point. Strange.

Steve

My reading improves dramatically when I look at the key signature at the start rather than at the end on line 1 or 2. Things ususally settle down by line 3

[digby]

stevehopwood said:

. Try brainless sight reading. ;D

My reading improves dramatically when I count. One of my lot commented last week that my sight reading of a new exam piece suddenly improved half way through. I hadn't been counting until that point. Strange.

Steve

I'm good at brainless, Still not great at sightreading though

[princessmoose]

Can you recognise patterns in the music, such as scale patterns, arpeggios, scales in 3rds etc? I find that when I see things like that my fingers just automatically go to play it without me needing to study the notes for ages.

[AnotherPianist]

Thanks for all the tips so far; keep them coming . I can read chords a shapes which helps but I'm not as good at horizontal patterns I can do scale type things but only if they're quite regular (as in not one note down by two to the next and then a 3 note scale from there). I do read a lot more by shape now which is good . I'll try thinking less too . The thing that seems to get me is just too many notes happening at once in quick succession, my brain can't keep up .

[possom]

I have always found sight-reading easy (20/21 at AB grade 8 ), sorry, had to get that in, it's the only mark i've ever been proud of!!! ;D

I initially taught myself to read music and never read notes as letters, instead I learnt to recognise the intervals and patterns of chords over time and therefore my fingers will be playing a certain pattern whilst i'm looking at the next one, also it's very important to think in a certain key which then limits the amount of notes and patterns you're going to play, accidentals etc. then add to the basics of what you're already doing (I think ).