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A year or so ago, when I was obsessively reading every sight reading thread I could dig out of the archives. I noticed that many proficient sight readers mentioned having a phase in their lives when they read through vast quantities of sheet music, basically because the music was easily accessible and they had the time to explore it. If this was true of you, when during your development did this happen?

Another common formative pattern I noticed was an opportunity/requirement to accompany a friend, sibling, or group of singers. If this was true of you, did you do it because you wanted to, or because you got drafted, or some combination of the two?

Mostly I'm just curious whether either of these experiences help to develop your sight reading skills, or what other experiences in your musical development influenced you to become a good sight reader.

I think it is like learning to read normal books.
Read a lot of music and you will be able to sight-read one day.

I was thrown into playing the pipe organ in church - BAM!

Also, I would always "read ahead" in the Piano Adventures books that my piano teacher used to teach me the piano - which I think helped in the sight reading regard.

Exploring through Liszt's transcendental etudes made me really good at reading scores as well as huge masses of accidentals, octaves, patterns.

Accompanying sure does help. Choirs are great, because they throw music at you quite often, and because it's not challenging to read (well.. not THAT challenging, in my experience), it's great to start with it.

Being volunteered for accompanying the church choir at their Wednesday rehearsals does wonders for your reading at any age, and at any stage of development.

Also, reading tons of music at a comfortable level is invaluable.

If you can dig yourself up a book of the piano parts to the Schubert songs, you'll do yourself a world of good.

I was a freak of nature. I learned the basics, learned all the scales and keys, and within a couple years I could sight-read like nobody's business. Now as an adult, I can play music at the level of a Brahms intermezzo flawlessly having never heard or seen it before. The Rosenberg sonata I recorded for the Unsung Heroes recital, I had only played through twice before I committed it to record...

I really have to be patient when teaching, because I have no idea how hard it actually is for most people to sight read..

Wow cool, I imagine that's like when the rest of us try to show someone who has never played a musical instrument something on the piano. You have to be very patient.

I'm curious though, has anything else always come super easy to you like math? I'm curious about what other types of learning are similar to the piano for you.

To stay on topic. Yes, sight reading comes mostly from playing through tons of music. I can't play the same piece of music over and over because by the time I learn it, I am so sick of it I never want to hear it again. So I am stuck with mostly sight reading and note playing.

How do you get a piece to performance standard?

I'm not THAT good a sight reader, but I do think that I became rather good, only because I was never studying enough. I simply hated Czerny and I was given no reason to study it really (bad teachers...), so in all I was forced to pretty much sight read every etude I got!

I think I have become a good sight-reader because there is so much I would like to learn...

Things which helped me become a proficient sight-reader included:

[1] Having a pile of music on the piano when I was a child. My father was my first teacher - he didn't tell me to read it all, but I did.
[2] Finding myself from the age of 12 playing hymns at church (on a wheezy little harmonium), and accompanying the choir. I did it because I liked it, and because I was rather chuffed to find that people thought I was good enough to do it.
[3] I wrote music. Trying to get your ideas down accurately really sharpens your reading skills.
[4] When I didn't do brilliantly in the sight-reading component of my first piano exam (it was harder than hymns, after all), my teacher (not my father by this stage) told me to just read through as much music as I could. I spent a few happy weeks playing right through the Mendelssohn Songs Without Words. From that I started reading everything I could lay my hands on, and I more or less haven't stopped since. It's that lure of I wonder what's on the next page?

Hymns, Ragtime and Sonatinas - very good training aids for sight-reading.
You'll get to a point where it's like reading aloud - as easy as pie. Some words require some practice in pronouncing them, but most are easy sailing.

I agree with Currawong - it's also very, very fun to encounter new music and find out what happens next.
It's also pretty helpful when trying to find a new sheet music purchase - you can demo it on the spot and see if you'll like it.

The scary thing is that some very competent pianists are very incompentent when it comes to sight-reading. I've never understood how this can happen.

The big trick to sight-reading is to
GROUP THE INDIVIDUAL NOTES
into easily identifiable note patterns

Avoid, like the plague, the dull routine of reading individual notes successively ...
this worn approach indelibly hobbles the mind-set of the pianist

Here’s how to play Schumann’s Kinderscenen Opus 15
Von fremden Ländern und Menschen
(Foreign Lands and People)




The 2/4 signature is a quick clue to split the measures in two ...
now play the first 5 notes until memory accepts as autopilot
then the 5 notes to complete measure 1
play the complete measure to autopilot
(One down and seven to go)

tackle measure 2 in the same way ... memorizing the two halves
play the 2 measures to autopilot

Interestingly Schumann repeats his opening Theme to measures 3 and 4 (half way home and only four to go)

Hoping the suggestion helps ... the time-honoured tip that sight-reading gets better with time is only true when the modus operandi involves the grouping of notes ... reading in terms of individual notes should be taboo.

I agree with btb here. It's all about recognizing patterns quickly, not reading the notes. With sight reading, therefore, you also must keep your eyes looking ahead as you are playing in the present, so that your mind has time to identify and respond to the patterns it sees. It is very easy/comfortable to watch a note as you play it, but then time goes by and then your brain actually has to think faster for the next part, or you end up pausing or stuttering.

I take a blank sheet of paper and ask a student to look at the first measure before playing, then I cover it up with the paper and ask them to play it. About halfway through the measure I'll cover up the next measure, so they had better have looked at it already! I continue like this throughout the whole piece.

I'm a quick learner in general. I picked up French very easily and still retain most of the grammatical rules and conjugation rules. I was good at math. Applied sciences were a bit trickier for me; when it came to subjects that require critical analysis, it took me a lot longer to find my stride. Literature study didn't really click with me until I was an undergrad in college.



That shouldn't be a problem. I can and do work on the same piece for months or even years at a time. It stays fresh as long as you are in the mindset that every performance is brand new and has never been done before.

I wonder: for those who sightreading came naturally, do you have trouble memorizing? I was a poor reader as a child and so I memorized very quickly.

No, I've always been able to memorize quickly as well. The quick memorization is always full of mistakes, though; if I want to do it right, I have to teach the piece to myself by rote, passage by passage, but it usually doesn't take too long. For some reason Liszt has always been the easiest composer for me to memorize.

My sight-reading capability came from reading orchestral full score, when I was learning harmonization, orchestration and counterpoint.

If you understand musical structure, sight-reading is easy because you are reading music not note-by-note, but at a higher structural level.

It is the same as those who speed-read. They don't read the alphabets. They don't even read the individual words. They scan through key words, and understand the passage from the context.

On memorization: I can memorize a play within 3-4 readings...yet it would take me /weeks/ longer to memorize a piece of music.