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I am a jazz piano student. Here in Iceland there are grades that you can take while studying the piano. There are seven grades that you can finish. Recently I took a test that allowed me to go to the next piano grade (grade 6).

The thing that I failed almost entirely on while taking the test was sight-reading. Do you know any good sight-reading exercises for both hands?

I know i can easily find some Bach preludes etc. But I wondered if there is something free material on the internet that begins easy and then the difficulty increases.

Could somebody knowledgeable add approaches to sight reading to that question?

Reading and transposition go hand in hand.
Improving your reading and transposition skill is all about improving your musical perception. The ideal way to approach reading and transposition is to view musical lines of notes as waves of sound. If transposing, a contour or shape that must be intervalically preserved regardless of the starting point. For example, regardless of which rung of a 12 rung ladder you place any object on, the object itself remains unchanged, only the object's relative position to the rest of the room has changed. It's still the same ladder, the same room, and the same object.

When we first start to read text as children, we identify individual letters, then how these letters form a word, which we identify. Then the words form a sentence and convey an idea. At some point, when we're fluent readers, we no longer see the individual letters or words. The shape and content of the sentence's components take on a macro-meaning, and at some further point, we visualize the words, seeing the action described by the words. To improve reading, one must strive to emulate this visual process aurally. To hear the music on the page based on these intersecting contours rather than identify notes and string them together individually.

Most don't read music this way, but they should. They should see the melodies and harmonies by their contours, not reading individual notes. Once you can view music as a series of contoured, interconnected lines, a fabric, then preserving this contour is an easy task, regardless of which rung of the 12 rung ladder is the starting point and reading along with the ability to instantly transpose are acheived!

Reading and transposition, along with the ability to do so instantly, whether a song, a melody, a riff, a chord progression, etc., is the key to unlocking creative limitation and becoming a superior musician and excellent reader.

Um, Disciple, I have to criticize your remarks. You have not answered the question about how to learn sight reading very directly, and your remarks about transposition aren't helpful at all - you're just saying how wonderful it is to be able to transpose, not how to approach learning it. I have encountered this kind of response on PW before, and while I don't want to be harsh, I think it is worth pointing out this problem.

As to the question of how to learn sight-reading and transposition, I have some suggestions that I have used, and they have helped, although I'm not great at this:

1. Get a copy of "Super Sight-Reading Secrets" by Howard Richman. It contains a series of exercises that help approach the problem systematically. This book has been discussed on PW before, and it does not produce miracles, but it's a reasonable start.
2. Buy a copy of the Riemenschneider edition of Bach chorales. Play one or two pages of them at sight per day, slowly and in steady rhythm. This teaches you to solve an admittedly narrow class of sight-reading problems, but it's helpful, too. After I went through this book about ten times, I started to know the chorales so well that they no longer constituted sight-reading practice, so my teacher suggested transposing them at sight. So now I do that every day, and I'm getting better.
3. Get a a book of music that is much too simple for you now - your old method books might be helpful, but preferably you'll use something unknown. Play through the music at sight, as slowly as required to get the right notes. Using easy music reduces the problems unrelated to sight-reading and helps you concentrate on that.

The general principle is: force yourself to do this as slowly as necessary to avoid mistakes, do it a few minutes a day, and be patient. I think it will get easier.

...then go stick your head in the oven.

Disciple, strangely enough I actually understand you. That's where I'm coming from.I lived most of my life untaught, reading "waves of sound" and patterns by extrapolating from the tonic and seeing/hearing patterns, and I could transpose that way after a fashion too. You look at the notes, they sound for you, and off you go, correcting a white key into a black key if it "sounds wrong" or diddling similarly with other instruments. You can do the same in writing. But I have learned since to read notes as notes, know note names, key signatures, and that I'm sharping an F when I'm sharping it. I spent a year learning rudimentary theory so now I can (among other things) transcribe the usual way and I appreciate the difference. Maybe those who are locked into a very mechanical process need to learn to hear waves, but I'm on the other side and I appreciate the clarity the formal way gives me. The notes still sing to me.

What I was looking for was something like what I read in a piano book for musicians of other instruments that was passed on to me. It taught, for example, that before you begin to play you: examine the key signature, scan the music anticipating where on the keyboard your hand would go, hear the music in your head ahead of time, scan the fingering, and then start to sight read. It had little 5-measure practice passages.

I could imagine for example that it is good to have practiced scales, chords, and arpeggios in different keys so that you have those patterns in your fingers. Are there strategies or preparations for sight reading, other than just working through a choral or similar book?

Paul:
That may answer my question.
Neato! A pile of piano books were passed on to me at Christmas, and that was one of them. You don't forget the word Riemenschneider. I'm working on the Czerny preparatory exercises. Actually I'm not at sight reading yet, but I suppose I'm doing some in the process.

Disciple: Yes - I have that part and it's a great thing to be able to do. Now I'm getting the other half. Sometimes those contours suggest "variations" that aren't there so it's good to learn to slow down as well.

Thanks to both of you.

KeyboardKlutz!

...then go stick your head in the oven.

Nice to see you back! You've made me laugh! Things like the recommendations above only work if you are there in the music making capacity....and then again, if you were there, you could probably write those books yourself.

If, if, if, people studying the piano by improving their sight reading would simply stay in the Basic Notation - Basic Skills arena long enough, most of the grief that haunts their lives would be only little slip ups of digit confusion or missteps NOT mistakes.

All the "horses" seem off and running at the horse race, and the gun hasn't been fired yet and the gate is still closed. (Whoa!)

I think it's nearly impossible for a teacher to corral an adult learner and keep their focus on the places it needs to be focussed on for the steady development of the potential musician.

Keyboard Klutz, maybe I should go stick my head in an oven?

Regards!

Betty

Not till you've played all your Bach chorales first!

Of course my remarks aren't helpful if you view them with the usual music convention that stifles reading ability.

Yes. It is wonderful, and a very practical outcome if you embark along the same type of path you did when you learned to use [b]words, combine them into sentences, and organize those into paragraphs to convey "thought images" that carry the action.

Let me ask you this. What determines fluent literacy? The ability to recognize words and use them, or the ability to organize text in your mind so that individual word recognition isn't necessary, the words translated into action in your mind? How do you perceive my written words? As mere words, or as ideas?

This is where the term, "the mind's eye" comes from and in order to acheive musical literacy, you must move beyond individual notes. If all music were just one note, moving beyond the individualistic approach, the same approach we use when we first learn to read text, sounding out the consonants and vowels, would be unnecessary.

The mind's ear must be trained to see these contours on the staff as sounds in space that combine to form an idea.

Why are you doing this seated at the piano? What about Solfeggio? What about just reading and hearing the printed page? Sightreading is a mental endeavor, not physical.

Keep in mind that once you sightread through a piece of music repeating that will no longer produce the same effect. You will know what comes next because you've heard it before and some degree of muscular memory will aid your second read through, not because of any gain in reading skill.

Disciple, since I have spanned both worlds I would be interested in your comments to what I wrote.

Another question - have you at any time also had formal training in music theory or instrumental playing. Is what you do currently based only on what you describe? I find that while I naturally do what you describe, I need the other part which I did not learn at all. As I get the formal training, the spontaneous part does not die - I get control. There are two halves that complete each other.

My teacher (house pianist at a jazz club) told me that for him, sight reading and playing by ear sometimes become the same thing: he reads, hears the music in his mind, then plays that music.

Ed

Keystring,

If you want to flame me, I don't mind it being in public. I would prefer that you share it in the thread here rather than make it a private communication between us. Especially since what the controversy is happened here in the forum. I'm sure we can be polite about it. I think this would be interesting to other forum members who post.

Thank you.

Betty

http://www.geocities.com/mecmirror/sight.htm

http://www.soundfeelings.com/free/music-reading.htm

I use a hymnal, but that recently got rather easy, so I'm using some large books of ragtime. Good fun!

That's the general idea. The notes should jump off the pages to you as sounds, much the same way that written words jump off the pages to you as ideas and mind pictures.

Unless you strive to acheive this same result with music as words, which comes as second nature to most literate individuals, sight-reading, even proficient sight-reading, will never become more than translation.

By that I mean the way most second language learners never quite move beyond having to think of a word in their first language and then translate it into their second language.

I'm extremely well-studied in composition, theory, and piano, many genres, from Classical to Jazz to funk/R&B.
When I play, I want to be a listener too. I want to enjoy joining the flow and altering the course of the flow based on the limits of my virtuosic ceiling, theoretically and technically.
To do this, I must leave my training behind so my training itself isn't doing the playing.
The sound is everything, not the theory behind it when playing in the moment and even the instrument itself contributes to the feedback. There are things that I would play on a 9 foot grand that I might not play on a 6 foot grand because the sound wouldn't be the same, each succession contingent upon the last. I would play a Baldwin differently than a Yamaha because the sound would be so drastically different, even the articulation would differ drastically, a Yamaha able to speak twice as fast as a Baldwin action and with far more high end formants.
I'm eager to abandon what I've played before because I need to hear something new, or I would simply put on an old recording of something or replay one in my head!
In essense, your training, your skills and knowledge gets you to the doorway of instant composition but if you try to take those tools through with you, you won't make it through the door. At that point you leave the tools and let your ear and mind take over. The tools will be still be there with you in spirit, but will augment, not hinder your creativity and flow.

Disciple did a great job of describing the goal and process of an advanced sight reader. And Betty did an excellent job of describing the problem of why many never seem to be able to reach that goal. Betty also tells us indirectly what one needs to do to improve sight reading.

I will say that it does not matter what you sight read, although as Betty says reading basic material is best. I say what's most important that you do it daily for a good period of time. That's how we learned to read words and sentences in Kindergarten, a few hours every day of basic reading and that continued for years onward!!!

Of course the usual super basic stuff helps if you don't know what you are doing; such as learn to visualy recognize steps, 3rd skips, 4th skips, 5th skips etc...develop expert ability to tap all notated rhythmic divisions and combinations...look a little ahead in order to see the shapes that Disciple speaks of...know theory so you can observe the harmony you are in... Basically you have to put in the daily practice time of practicing sight reading with basic material. There are no short cuts.

Yes! This is 50% of it. The other 50% is learning how to translate sound from the page into our minds and into the air as easily as we can translate text! And it can be done and best be done away from the piano relying on our minds to hear the printed page and voices to solfegg or scat it.

Keep in mind, most musicians hear on a purely linear level, one voice at a time. Just like most people think linearly, one concept at a time, and become confused when trying to sustain two different conscious streams of thought.

You can train your mind to think two, three, four, five, six, and far more unrelated conscious streams of thought simultaneously!

Try it. Start with one idea and then think about and superimpose something else over that, and then add more.

We all have far, far more mental capacity than we think and children don't place learning constraints on themselves as adults do. They constantly challenge their minds and are quite comfortable doing so until adult matters distract them from using their full capacities.

We can rekindle that by exercising our minds with any ideas and musical ideas away from our instruments, where it does the most good because it takes the manual element completely out of it.

Even when playing 8 note locked hands chords, most musicians, even the seasoned vets, hear and conceive linearly, their training and harmonic knowledge filling in what their minds aren't providing.

Learning to use your brain polyphonically must be done away from the piano first, then applied manually.

I respect what you have to say, Disciple, but there is a certain amount of problems with attempting to understand what you're saying as an adult beginner.

It sounds like you've been studying music intensely for a very, very long time, and probably since early childhood.

As I'm sure you're quite aware, when people begin later in life the challenges start to become insurmountable unless there is an incredible amount of focus and energy put entirely into the pursuance of musicianship.

Your concept of seeing music as multiple lines is simple enough for you to say, and makes sense, but if someone unskilled at sight-reading were to attempt what you're asking I'm sure most of the notes being played would be totally off from what is on the written score.

I have a lot of trouble focusing, and sight-reading is the biggest barrier because of the enormous requirements it places upon the reader. Unlike written word, the reader of music must also keep track of the various rhythms that have been notated.

Advanced concepts given by someone who has been steeped in music their entire lives really does not help the novice much.

I really don't know what else to say. Those who have been studying music their entire lives do just about anything on their instrument with ease. Putting an adult mind up to the task of becoming a professional level pianist is nearly impossible.

-Colin

Excellent post, thank you Disciple! I am going to practice what you recommend, thinking of multiple subjects simultaneously, that is something I neglect and it's doable with practice. I am an advanced player with 40 years of experience. However, I suspect though that for those with little sight reading skill it is a little like asking a kindergartener to comprehend Shakespeare when they cannot even easily read "See spot run." Hopefully, they will eventually hear what they are reading after enough exposure (practicing doing it), as with learning to read in kindergarten one can eventually hear the words in ones mind without actually speaking them (like your mention of hearing the phrases away from the piano while sight reading). But for many adult beginners there isn't enough time in their life for such excellent mastery.