Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Some advice for a troubled pianist

Hi
I have posted here because I am in need of some advice. I started to learn piano at the age of 6, I am 16 now. I grew up with a very talented extremely dedicated teacher, who somehow instilled some motivation in me at a very young age. I managed to do quite well for myself, managing superior level marks in all my competitions and receiving a scholarship. But although I may have sounded good I still had troubles with sight reading, most of this due to my lack of willpower and motivation in reading random pieces. This is where my problem started. Filling In The Notes. From around 5th grade I started to have some troubles with notes, and I began to fill them in, much to the horror of my teacher. But she could not stop me I was stubborn and I would fill the notes in learn the piece and erase the notes before my weekly session. To make a very long story short, through some great tragedy including the death of my teacher here I am. Trying to conquer Rachmaninoff preludes, Chopin’s ballades, and having significant troubles with the sight reading, and my motivation depleted. I will not quit piano, not after this much, and I enjoy music. But can I just play without having to sight-read? Is there some way to study music so that I can compose and improv with more proficiency, without having to sight-read? Because when I play in my very recent very amateur band, I really have so much fun. But I’m not saying playing classical is not fun, in fact of all forms of music, I believe playing classical piano is the most gratifying powerful feeling anyone could ever have. It’s just that I’m on an edge; on one side is a huge huge commitment towards sight reading, practicing tunnel vision and what not, which I probably won’t be able to cope. On the other side is the possibility of losing 10 years of hard work, and commitment, which is something I will probably never forgive myself for. Can I, with my current teacher, work out some way of bettering myself for band style composition, without having to sight-read? Because my theory and chord knowledge is purely mechanical, I just memorized it to pass the exam. I haven't yet fully grasped the whole picture of theory. Or should I continue to try to plow through my pieces,concertos with some difficulty and stress with the sight-reading.

I am sorry for the long post, I’ve just had some pent up stuff that I wanted to let go, hopefully some of you guys can make some sense of it and help me out.

Thanks
-dr gradus: which was the last piece my first piano teacher gave me before she died.

I'm not really sure whether it is relevant, but i did hear once that Lionel Bart couldn't read or write music and he was a great composer

Could you enlighten me with explaining what 'filling in a note' is?

I'm sorry, i probably should've been more clear. Writing in the note names next to the notes on the staff.

Owwww haha really So you have played for 10 years, play chopin ballade's and rachmaninoff prelude's, but you don't know the names of the notes. That's almost an achievment itself, since you must accidentilly have found out about some of those. You do know the easy tricks like FACE right?

I would see the sight-reading as an important skill to have, because it also helps you

-Learn pieces much faster
-Recover pieces that you once knew really well, but just need a little help from the score with
-Just have fun playing Haydn pieces etc.

If I were you, I would pay some serious attention to learning the sight reading, you will notice that you get the hang of it quite fast, and then the work you have planned for later will go quicker anyway. 2 birds 1 stone (or as we Dutch say '2 flies in 1 smack'.)

I am not sure what exactly you are asking. Sight reading usually refers to playing music from a score you have not seen before. I get the impression that you are saying that you have trouble reading standard music notation. If that is the case and you do not want to learn to read better then it boils down to what you really want to do in music. If all you want to do is to play solo rep from memory then there is not much problem. You can even transcribe music into a notation that you can read while you learn it. If that is what you mean by "filling in the notes" then you are already doing it. However, if you ever want to do any ensemble work or go on to college level music education I am afraid there is nothing to do but buckle down and learn it.

Depends on what you want to play. I don't bother with sheet music at all these days, but I play jazz.

Don't think of it as losing 10 years of study. I played only classical with sheet music for over 10 years, but made the switch after I realized I liked jazz. Play what you like.

Sorry to hear about the death of your teacher.

With some practice and patience you may find that learning to play wihtout filling in the notes is not that hard. Maybe in the beginning you shouldn't even worry about trying to play a piece without lots of stops and starts. Just make not filling in the notes your only goal for a while.

Although it may be theoretically possible to do many things in music without learning how play without filling in the notes, it surely will make any musical endeavor much harder.

I would guess in the beginning everyone "fills in the notes" but in their mind as opposed to using a pencil.

As has been mentioned, the term "sight reading" usually refers to the skill of playing a piece "at sight;" reading the music of a piece you have never played before and playing it as you read.

I gather that this is not what you are talking about. Unless you have some particular learning disability, it is hard for me to understand how someone can have played the piano for ten years, who is now beginning some advanced repertoire and still can't read the music without filling in the notes.

If, indeed, you want to be able to read music as you play - and not necessarily sight read (in the traditional sense of sight read), then you have to discipline yourself to doing it. Start with easy pieces where you know most of the notes already, where the reading is easy enough that it doesn't require you to write in the names of the notes and progress from there.

Still, it baffles me how someone can have played for this long and claims that he cannot read the notes in a score.

Regards,

When my brother used to play our previous teacher would try different coloured notes as my brother is slightly dyslexic. i do not know much about it but it may be of help to you if you were interested.

My guess is that at one point in time you figured that writing in the note names was easier than learning how to read the notes directly off of the staff, which is why you were stubborn and resisted learning the skill before. Now you realize this is not true, especially at your level, but it is NOT too late to learn. While there is a learning curve (i.e. it will take you longer to learn to read directly from the staff than to write the notes in for one piece), the learning is not hard. Start with some flash cards, or online flashcards for note naming and intervals. Both of these are essential for fluent reading. Then go on to BruceD's suggestion:

Dr. Gradus, I am sorry for the loss of your teacher.

I think perhaps you are making reading music a lot harder than it needs to be. I was a terrible reader when I was a child, and that stayed with me for quite a while until I discovered that it wasn't about reading all the pitches! Whenever I have students that write in the note names (and if they erase them in shame I can usually still see them) I explain to them that it's actually detrimental to read every note that you play. Let me explain.

We need to know specific note names to help figure out what notes to start on and also to read notes that might be a far leap away (more than an octave usually) from the previous note. However, that's pretty much it. All the other reading I do is reading the intervals. This means reading the lines and spaces. If I'm playing a line note and the next note is on the next space higher, I play the next note higher. If it goes to the next line, then I know I'm skipping that space note and also therefore skipping a key on the piano. All line-line intervals are odd (3rd, 5th, 7th) and all line-space or space-line intervals are even (2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th).

Same thing for reading chords. If it's line-line-line then you know it's a root position chord, so you just read either the top or bottom note (or the interval from the previous note to the chord) and build from there. Or think of it as a 3rd on top of a 3rd. A first inversion chord contains a 3rd on the bottom and a 4th on top, and a 2nd inversion chord is a 4th on the bottom and a 3rd on the top. Even if you're not sure what "root" "first inversion" or "second inversion" means, you don't need to know. Just stack the intervals. Don't bother reading every note of the chord unless it's an unfamiliar pattern/chord like you might find in Debussy or Ravel.

If you learn to read the intervals and memorize what each one looks like it becomes very easy. It will also help your "sight reading." Don't fret about reading each note, you could obviously figure it out if you had to, but you don't.

As I sheepishly raise my hand.

Dr. Gradus, you sound like me as a teen, although at 16 I was more on the level of the Waltzes than the Ballades and I never wrote in notes, just learned pieces by brute force. Coincidentally, I also played Children's Corner at your age too. You're probably more of an aural learner than a visual learner.

The upside of being a poor reader is that you probably have a terrific ear and memorize quickly out of necessity. As Morodiene said, reading is not as complicated as you're making it. You don't have to read every single note, just as you don't read every single letter when reading a book.

Learn your intervals by sight. Learn some landmark notes, like treble C (second space down in treble clef) and bass C (second space up in bass clef), high C (second ledger line above treble clef), low C (second ledger line below bass clef).

When you first look at a new piece, note the time sig, the key sig, and give the whole piece a quick scan. Knowing the key signature can give you an idea of what to expect. For example, if you know you're in the key of G major, then you know you'll likely see many G chords, along with C chords ( the IV chord or "subdominant"), and D chords ( the V or "dominant"). Knowing a little theory will help you tremendously because it will help you see patterns.

Do you have a Community College nearby that might offer a Basic Theory class? I know there are several summer camps for teens too that offer daily theory classes. There's also a software package that one of my teacher friends just purchased that's like a video game to help students learn note reading. I'll look into it and let you know what it's called.

It's very admirable that you can play such large works at your age. If you love these big pieces, by all means learn them. However, as one who was once in your shoes I would recommend that you include some much easier works in your daily practice as well. Take these simpler pieces slow to give your brain time to process what it's seeing. I promise you that it will eventually become second nature to you.

Ten years of playing seems like a long time to you, but you still have a lifetime of learning ahead of you, as do we all. Ten years from now, you'll be amazed by how far you've come.

My condolences on the loss of your teacher.

I never thought of that Morodiene, but you are absolutely right, most of the time you just know where the note's are by interval!

This type of post appears often. You have nothing to concern yourself
with really. Bad sight-reading is very common among classically-trained
pianists, since the emphasis is so much on playing from memory.
Some top concert pianists, most notably Emmanuel Ax, can't
sight-read at all--however they can learn anything and then play it
note perfect from memory in front of thousands of people.
I see nothing wrong with writing in the letter names of the notes.

Posts like this often come about as a result of the poster witnessing
a supposed amazing sight-reading demonstration by a player who is
is much worse than him. Someone, who can't match his classical
playing, picks up a score in front of him and proceeds to play it
at sight, something the poster couldn't do. This makes the poster
start to doubt his worth as a pianist, because he can't sight-read
well. However, one needs to be very wary of such sight-reading
demonstrations. Often this is nothing more than a carnival sideshow
type trick, that is, the supposedly good sight-reader was familiar
with the score and had practiced it before. This is one of the oldest
and dirtiest tricks in piano, and what's most disturbing about it is
that it only works when the sight-reader is a person the poster
trusts: a friend, a family member, a trusted teacher. It doesn't work
when a stranger does it, because of the natural wariness people have
of strangers.

aaaaaaaaaaand we're back. (sorry I just zoned out)

as to the simple problem of not being able to sight-read, a must for every serious pianist, there is a very simple solution: do it, as weak as it may sound, it's the only solution: put any music on the piano, read through it, go on and on and on, I remember those nights while playing all, and I mean ALL the Mozart and Beethoven sonatas with my violonist-classmate, as 16 year olds, we thought that was a normal thing, how times change...it made me a sidereader, can read music faster than the newspaper, comes in very handy when asked to replace a sick collegue, haha, or to get to know new music!

You could play all Mozart and Beethoven sonata's at age 16 ?? wow I think even Barenboim was 17

I didn't say How we played them, but generally, yes, at that age I played all B and M and Ch, looking out for more adventurous stuff like Debussy, Sciabin, Ravel, those were the days my friend....

Thats amazing!