Sight-reading to perfecting a piece

[possom]

Following on from the thread about sight-reading and aural, I wondered if anyone else finds themselves in the same position as me or can help.

As a good sight-reader how do you get past the "I can play all the notes" stage and progress to really perfecting a piece? I think with me it's probably a combination of boredom and lack of discipline that I attempt a new piece a few times, find that I can play it and then leave it alone. Not very good when you're meant to be preparing for a diploma. I think a lack of playing in public also attributes to this. This would also explain my lack of memorising.

Maybe I could do a sponsored "play a piece by memory in public" ;D

[petite joueuse]

I'll join you! Know exactly what you mean!

[caz]

Oh I _so_ know what you mean! Even for recitals I like to pick things that I can almost play already - can't remember the last time I learned something really tricky from scratch...

[meepmeep]

I tend to assume if I can't sight-read something, I can't play it, which is really dumb and when I give in to it makes me very despondant. Don't know how you get past it apart from having to, or if you reeeeeeally love a piece and therefore it's less of a chore to put the effort in...?

[Dulciana]

It's the "having to" that makes you do it - what's the point in perfecting something to just play it to yourself? I always try to play something new for the pupils' concerts. It used to be twice a year, but I got together with another teacher, who also does it, and now some of our older pupils host "events" in their houses too. It's great, and keeps us all on our toes. So if you want to find an excuse to perfect something, cook some sausage rolls and throw a concert!

[chocolatedog]

I quite often start on a piece and get the notes learned, and then put it away and start on something else. Then when I decide I might do a recital I get out the half-learned pieces and work on them again so I often don't tend to do pieces from scratch to perfect.........

[Steve Hopwood]

chocolatedog said:

I quite often start on a piece and get the notes learned, and then put it away and start on something else. Then when I decide I might do a recital I get out the half-learned pieces and work on them again so I often don't tend to do pieces from scratch to perfect.........

There cannot be many that do take a piece from scratch to performance in one go. Most music takes living with until it becomes comfortable. Pieces improve that little bit more every time we return to them. The only time I take pieces from scratch to performance without giving them breaks is when I am accompanying and have the music for a short period before performance - typically, a music festival or low-level concert where the accompaniments are easy.

I apply this to the kids as well. I like them to have a break from pieces being learned for assessment. If we start preparing them earlier than normal, I like them to take two breaks.

[stumac]

Ashkenazy was reputed to be able to study a score, and then go to the piano and play it from memory, without ever having practised it at all apart from in his head, and give a very good performance.

He probably didn't play his best doing it that way, but it was still probably way above most people's standards.

I suppose he's just a top flight concert pianist does and that's just what they can do!

....but back to the world of mere mortals.....

[AnotherPianist]

This is an advantage of being a bad sightreader . In fact sightreading isn't so much a part of learning a piece to me, I've heard people learn pieces via sightreading and then polish them up and I'm quite envious of that because they can 'play through' them very quickly. To me though, I have to do most of the polishing work before I can even play through it, the result is that when I can get through the piece I can usually play it in a reasonably polished fashion.

This is not to say I can polish pieces more quickly than people who sightread well but by the time that I get to the stage where I can play it through, which they reach more quickly, I've already done quite a bit of the work in polishing it, and it takes me longer to get to the play though stage to compensate. It gets rid of some of the problem of lack of motivation to polish, as a certain degree of polishing is necessary to learn the piece; but I still do have to spend some time just polishing. I can't do the thing of playing through and slowing down for the bits I can't do, I find it takes too long to get through it and I just get frustrated, so instead I do detailed practise on those bits because I know I'll have to.

So in many ways it's a good problem that you all have as it means you're all good at sightreading . I don't get sightreading practise from pieces because of the way I learn them, usually hands separately first, and I'm not good at it so I have to explicitly practise sightreading, it's a can't do it so can't learn to do it situation . Anyway, I think it's just down to different ways of learning, maybe the solution, and it's not one I often suggest, is to learn harder pieces that you can't sightread .

[possom]

Some really good points there, thanks everyone

I've realised that if I am accompanying someone I will play a piece regularly for a couple of weeks so that it's note perfect (hopefully) for the event, although that might not qualify as "practice".

AnotherPianist, that's a good point, maybe I should get something out that I can't sight-read well and force myself to learn it properly, it's that lack of discipline that i'm having issues with. I admire people who can't sight-read and have to really practice to learn a piece because it must be so much more rewarding.

Also the "having to" aspect seems to have disappeared as I don't have the chance to play solo in public (due to lack of trying ), hmmmm may have to look into that.

[Steve Hopwood]

anotherpianist said:

This is an advantage of being a bad sightreader . In fact sightreading isn't so much a part of learning a piece to me, I've heard people learn pieces via sightreading and then polish them up and I'm quite envious of that because they can 'play through' them very quickly. To me though, I have to do most of the polishing work before I can even play through it, the result is that when I can get through the piece I can usually play it in a reasonably polished fashion.

I reflected on this as I taught Kate and Sally tonight. Kate is 14; coincidentally she is also Heidi's singing duet partner. Strictly speaking, this is irrelevant. but background is always nice. Sally is Kate's mum - late 40's early 50's by my guess. They have there lesson together.

Sally reads fluently. I present her with a new piece and go through it with her in the lesson and she is off. She is usually playing it with reasonable fluency by the end of the lesson. That is about as far as she gets. Sally practices - I know because Kate grizzles about how much practice her mum does. After 2\3 weeks on a piece, it is time to move on.Sally will become impatient with her lack of progress, so further time spent on the piece will be counter-productive.

By comparison, daughter Kate cannot read for toffee. She learns by memorising the score. In her lessons, I often find myself telling her which notes to play - even writing them on the score. After a few weeks, Kate has a workable performance that she can polish musically to great effect.

Who gets the most out of what they do? I would answer, 'both'.

Sally learns quickly and moves on quickly; she 'perfects' nothing, but surely could if she really wanted to. She memorises not a thing. Put an 'old' piece in front of her and she will not even remember playing it.

Kate can still play pieces she learned months ago. Recently, she decided she wanted to read more fluently and now attempts sight-reading exercises (ok, so we treat them like quick studies, but never mind) with enthusiasm. She still learns by memorising, but has also seen the advantages of using the score to enhance her memory.

To us teachers, dealing with these people is about adopting Jo's 'child centered approach' (substitute 'pupil' for child here). To students, it helps you if you can celebrate and use the strengths you have whilst working to improve those areas in which you are weak but where improving weaknesses will help.

Hmmm. Not entirely sure that last para made sense. I know what I mean. ;D

Thanks for a great contibution, AP.

Steve

[Dulciana]

It all depends, at the end of the day, on what your reasons are for playing at all. Do you want to perform and impress? Do you want to do justice to the music for its own sake? Or do you find playing an enjoyable way to while away the time, irrespective of whether or not anyone else will ever be listening? Are you looking for a sense of achievement, or is your hobby akin to doing a crossword?

(Totally useless post here!)

[AnotherPianist]

stevehopwood said:

Sally reads fluently....By comparison, daughter Kate cannot read for toffee. She learns by memorising the score.

Interesting that it should be that way round, I've heard theories on TOP and subscribed to them at some points, that adults are more likely to learn by memorising than children. Adults spot it as an easy 'short cut' whereas children learn as they're told. I was therefore pleased to note that it was the adult student that was learning by sightreading. (Of course I've been told in the past, wonder if you can guess by whom, that learning to sightread as a child is the only way to ever be truly fluent at it....).

stevehopwood said:

Who gets the most out of what they do? I would answer, 'both'.

I'd agree with that, I guess the way I learn is good for me with my perfectionist nature . I always hate saying that I'm a perfectionist though, or that I tend to polish things, because I think everone will listen to my recordings (or my playing live) and think well they're not perfect, which I know they aren't, so she is just talking rubbish and can't sightread or polish . I am as fussy as I possibly can be though about what I'm happy to play publically or when I consider something 'finished'. As an aside when trying to put up recordings on the site I always think I can do it better so I'll not put that one up; the only way to put it up is to record it, wait until I can no longer play it anywhere near as well and then I think that'll have to do since I can't do any better now .

I'd like to be able to sightread more though and be less fussy about what I'd play, it would really help me to be able to do some accompanying with any sort of efficiency, where the polish of the performance isn't so important.

stevehopwood said:

Thanks for a great contibution, AP.

Thanks .

[stumac]

I used to be very much like AP (whose playing sounds pretty darn near pefect to me), but there are signs my mind is slowly learning to extract information from the score rather than having to memorise the whole lot!

I actually felt really pleased with myself the first time I played a piece that I *hadn't* memorised. By that I mean I could only play it with the music in front of me, I'd still spent weeks polishing it but for some reason it just didn't stick in my mind.

Got a few pieces now that I can only play from the score, which was unthinkable a couple of years ago. In fact there are now some pieces that I just can't learn, no matter how hard I try.


I have a feeling that people who learn as adults will never develope the real fluency of being able to play at sight, or will only develop it very slowly, and that that is the real advantage of learning young. If you learn to read music at the same time as learning to read you're tapping into a developing brain and getting the process properly hard wired into place.

I know people who had piano lessons as kids, and literally havn't played for 10 - 15 years but tcan still play a simple pieces at sight far better than I can.

[AnotherPianist]

stumac said:

I used to be very much like AP (whose playing sounds pretty darn near pefect to me), but there are signs my mind is slowly learning to extract information from the score rather than having to memorise the whole lot!

I've spent the entire time I've been officially learning the piano trying not to learn that way. When I initially started playing I could learn repertoire around grade 6 level but it all had to be memorised, I couldn't read the score efficeintly. Now, like you I'm much better at reading than I was and can learn more by reading and less by memorising. I too, was delighted when I first managed to play something that I hadn't memorised: now there's usually a (fairly short) time where I can play the piece through with the score but not without.

In order to get out of the having to memorise and not read I went right back to grade 1 and started again (well not really again since I'd not had lessons before just messed around learning a few pieces). This is why it frustrates me so much when people who can play a few grade X pieces, or even just one sometimes, believe they're grade X standard, there's so much more to it than that: I can tell you I've improved a heck of a lot in the last 5 years but according to their definition I'd still be on the same grade! The truth is I'm only really there now. Sometimes listening to Steve say everyone learns different ways heartens me; I used to assume the way I learn was 'wrong' and was doing everything to avoid it. Now I'm keen to learn to sightread; but am also happy to have some of the learn and polish aspect to my playing too .

Granted I still memorise things quite easliy (I think memorisation is actually linked to the ability to play by ear as one can extract a lot from the sound) but that's because it comes naturally to me, not because I have to because I can't read it (as it used to be). Memorising isn't always because one can't read: YAP is a very good memoriser too and he's a very good sightreader.

stumac said:

I have a feeling that people who learn as adults will never develope the real fluency of being able to play at sight, or will only develop it very slowly,

I'd still maintain that this isn't true, mainly because I want it not to be .

Sorry for the slight diversion from topic....