Practice Sight Reading Piano Music

Did you know, you are sight reading right this instant? You've learned, since a child, to quickly recognize patterns of letters, and can read a book without thinking too hard about it. It makes life easier, doesn't it? Learning to sight read piano music is a comparable discipline that will greatly enhance your skill as a piano or keyboard player. Like learning to read words, it will take time and practice, but it's a skill you will appreciate your entire life.

Steps

Access a Range of Musical Sources

  1. Train online with sites that are refreshed often. You want new material available regularly, so that the training materials don't become stale. Also, look for a site that has graduated exercises so that you don't become bored once a level becomes too easy for you. Yes, as hard as it might seem at first, it's a skill that you can learn! There are many just a Google search away.
  2. Purchase a "Method" book. There are number of books specifically designed to teach sight reading, and take you through practice exercises methodically—each exercise building on the previous exercise, and adding a little something new each time. Here are couple highly-recommended titles:
    • Improve your Sight-Reading! Piano, Level 1 from Alfred Music Publishing. There are a total of eight volumes, which take you from beginner to advanced.
    • Primer Level Sightreading Book from Hal Leonard Publishing. For more advanced readers, there are two additional volumes.
  3. Keep it fresh. The biggest key to successful sight reading is that you only read and play the music once. You can buy a number of music books, borrow them from the library, or print out piano music from a website. Those will all work, but may result in a haphazard learning process.
    • Think of it like this: when you learned to read, you started with "See Spot run. Run, Spot, run!" You didn't immediately jump to "O joy, O new vertigo of difference, O my platonic reader-writer racked by a most platonic insomnia..."[1] For the best results, focus on music within your skill range.

Practice Reading and Playing

  1. Sit at the piano or keyboard with your music in front of you. Make sure your posture is good, and the music is positioned so that it's not a strain to read it. Take a look at the notes and rhythms, and try to understand the piece a little bit before actually playing any part of it.
    • At the very beginning stages, it's helpful to practice the rhythm before you add in the melody. Tap your foot, or use a metronome, and clap out the rhythmic values. Maintain good sight-reading discipline, and don't stop if you make a mistake.
    • You should be able to internalize rhythmic reading relatively quickly. Once you are beyond the very basic stages, it's better to integrate both rhythm and melody at the same time.
  2. Make note of the details. Look at the key signature, any changes of clefs, and the dynamics of the piece. If you can, look for chords, and determine what they are.
    • Look for the trickiest part of the piece, for example, sixteenth notes (semi-quavers), or a place with a lot of accidentals that are difficult to digest, and determine a speed at which you think you can play even the trickiest parts. It is very important to not stop and restart when you make a mistake.—Just keep playing.
    • Look for patterns while you are playing, and always try to read a minimum of one measure ahead.
  3. Play the piece. After reading through the exercise, it's time to make some noise. Count out the tempo aloud, and make sure you are counting slow enough so that you can realistically play all the notes.
    • You may miss a couple of notes, but it's more important that you keep your tempo accurate.
  4. Keep practicing in this manner as often as you can. Feel free to go back and study the pieces you played in more depth. The more you practice, the better your sight reading skills will become.

Tips

  • A very good skill to learn when sight reading is recovering from mistakes. You will make them. Don't let them fluster you and just keep playing. It is almost guaranteed that if the listener isn't familiar with the music, and you don't give it away, they'll never know.
  • Use the STARS method to help you remember what to look for before you start playing a new piece:
    • S = Signature (key)
    • T= Tempo
    • A= Accidentals (sharps and flats)
    • R= Rhythms
    • S = Style
  • Do not judge yourself or your ability as you sight read. Remember, you are simply trying to improve your reading skills. Since sight reading involves playing continuously (not stopping as if you were practicing to perfect the piece), your focus is important. Getting angry at yourself or putting yourself down to any degree merely distracts you from the main goal. Smile and play with intent.
  • One of the hardest parts of sight reading music is getting the rhythm correct. It helps to count out loud, "One and two and three and four and..." Of course the numbers that you count depends on the piece.
  • Train your eyes to read ahead of your fingers. Aim to look at least a measure ahead, by starting smaller with a beat ahead and then keep increasing the distance ahead.
  • Check for sharps or flats, key changes, or changes in the time signature. If you are dealing with any large jumps (i.e. octave jumps), also beware of those. Double and triple check any note that isn't in the staff.
  • Learn your intervals. A musical interval is the distance between two notes. For example, the interval between C and D is a 2nd. The interval between C and E is a 3rd, and the interval between C and G is a 5th. There is an easy giveaway when looking at the score:
    • When two notes are both on lines, the intervals are a 3rd, 5th, 7th, etc. Count the staff lines and spaces if you're not sure: two line notes separated by one space = a 3rd; two line notes separated by two spaces and a line = a 5th; etc.
    • The same is true when two notes are both on spaces. They are the same—odd numbered—intervals. The difference is that you're counting 2 space notes separated by one line for a 3rd, and 2 space notes divided by a space and 2 lines for a 5th, etc.
    • When one note is on a space, and the other on a line, the intervals are even-numbered. One space note followed by one line note, with no lines or spaces in between, is a 2nd; one space note and one line note separated by a line and a space is a 4th, etc.
    • Intervals are somewhat more complex than this, but to become familiar with sight reading, these basics will get you started.
  • Another very good (and far more enjoyable) way to practice sight reading is to play duets with a friend, as both pianists will be forced to keep in time, play continuously and with correct notes as far as possible.
  • You can, if you do not have a piano nearby, read the music notes without even playing. Look at their positions and remember what they look like. Commit it to memory.
  • Remember to practice playing without looking at the keys, just feel them! Also memorise the common positions for a note. For example, on a treble clef, a note on the middle line is always B. Its good to learn mnemonics but they slow you down.
  • When there is a long scale in your piece, do doubles (ex. first note with second 2 x third note with fourth note 2x).

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Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
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