Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner You're either a good sightreader or you're not.

+1
I use the words: Deliberate Practice but same same . . .

Actually, it's really not the same, because one can practise deliberately all day long and if that person isn't practising correctly (which is THE key here) then it won't matter one iota.

The thread title is clearly wrong IMO. Sight reading doesn't come in only good or bad degrees. Like any other skill it comes in a continuum of abilities.

I'd say some of the ingredients that determine one's sight reading ability are:

1. natural talent

2. Practice. This doesn't only mean "Now I'll sit down and practice sight reading for 30 minutes". In fact, I think most good sight readers got there partly by wanting to play through music a lot and never thinking of this as practicing sight reading.

3. All the other skills that go into making one a good pianist in general(technical skill, understanding of harmony, and every other aspect of musicianship). If one sees a fast scalar passage but cannot play it(technical ability), then one's sighteading ability is lowered. If one doesn't recognize some other note pattern/chordal structure due to lack of understanding of harmony then one's sight reading ability is lowered.


I'd say almost anyone can improve their sight reading, but it's not correct to say anyone can become "good" or "excellent". For starters, there is no agreed upon definition of those words. Also, one's natural ability might be a limiting factor no matter how one chooses to define those words.

I like this phrase, whether it be for sight reading or the discovery of learning a new piece.

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I disagree.

Care to elaborate on why you disagree? It seems that most of the posters here are pretty much saying exactly what Dave Horne said.

I'm sure Debrussy will respond but my reply would be this.

There's a big difference between saying sight reading can be developed/improved vs. saying one can become "good". For starters, everyone will have a different definition fo "good".

Just like any other activity, natural ability has some role in how far once can go. Most people can improve in tennis with practice/instruction/knowledge, but not everyone can become a Roger Federer(or choose any level of ability instead).

i agree

Probably couldn't have put it much better.

I would really love to see some proper research done on this. It's easy to say that if you practice you will get better, because then when someone is still finding it difficult 10 years down the line you can just tell them they didn't practice enough or in the right way.

I think some people's brains work in a particular way that it is more natural for them to take in this sort of information.

I have been reading words my entire life, but it still takes me a few weeks to get through the Count of Monte Cristo whereas some people can do it an a couple of days. Some people can come up with all sorts of anagrams in countdown in a few seconds whereas I struggle to find even a four letter one. It takes me ages to solve mazes, I've never come close to solving a rubix cube. I can't do sudoku. I can't play chess. Where's wally(waldo) gives me a headache. Sure if I practiced these things effectively I'm sure I'd improve, but I'm just not biologically fortunate enough to master them. When you've seen a 14 year old create a piano reduction of a 12 stave orchestral score (with tenor clefs and transposing instruments) in real time you realise just how much of a canyon there is between being able to fumble through chopin mazurkas and being a truly great sightreader.

That is how I see it anyway. Don't think me a pessimist, just a realist.

Then I have failed in my attempt to communicate, Deliberate Practice - as coined by Prof Anders Ericsson (the research behind the 10.000 hour idea) - imply's "correct" practice.
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html

amongst my literature in my studies of Music Psychology at Uppsala University; Andreas C. Lehmann and Reinhard Kopiez (The Oxford handbook of music psychology) have written a chapter about Sight-Reading.
Summary:
"Sight-reading provides a complex problem solving situation with an intricate interplay of bottom-up mechanisms (driven by the input stimulus of the score and auditory feedback) and top-down processes (driven by expectations and cognitions).
It is conceivable that limitations on the general playing of an instrument or a lack of technical proficiency exist that may consequentially impact the ability to sight-read: One can never sight-read beyond the level of rehearsed performance, but how close to it one sight-reads seems to be very much a matter of training.
Sight-reading ability at lower skill levels may partly emerge from general instrumental skill increase whereas expert sight reading necessitates extensive deliberate efforts to improve performance.
By engaging in many hours of related experience, for example as an accompanist (in the case of pianists), sight-readers develop particular cognitive adaptations, such as efficient encoding, building of expectations and plausible inferencing, and memory skills. These help them cope with the real-time demands of reconstructing on the fly the score along with a preliminary expressive interpretation.

If you want to become better at running up steps with a 50 lb. knapsack on your back, practice running up steps with a 50 lb. knapsack on your back.

That wasn't so difficult.

Better does not necessarily equal good.

Not until you actually start doing it.

"As experiences narrated in this thread alone have already shown, many good sight-readers have become good at it because 1) they worked at it and 2) they were often in situations where they had to do it. "

This seems pretty solid, and yet I think it worth examining because it seems to say that lots of practice will of necessity lead to great sight reading skill...as if that's the case for everyone.

Look, there's a natural and understandable human tendency to want to think that hard work will always get rewarded. But let's ask the very best sight readers about their experiences as youngsters. (The only one I know of here is Jeffrey Jones, but I'm certain there are others). I'm guessing they were typically better sight readers than others of an equivalent age and experience to a noticeable degree.

My mind is open. I've no axe to grind here. If I'm wrong I'll be happy to admit it.

Edit: Just to add, none of this is to say of course that people can't become good sight readers with enough effort. I'm just saying that natural ability is a factor, especially for those who read superbly.

Fair enough...how about "anyone can become a better sight reader"? And believe me, I am *not* talented at sight reading at all. I worked very hard and if you knew me as a child, I would have been a lost cause in most people's estimations.

But saying "either you are good at something or not" like the OP implies, that negates all the hard work that someone has put into something. You can say "Either you're a good tennis player or not" and claim that not everyone can be a Roger Federer discounts the fact that Federer works VERY hard over a period of years to get himself to this place, and continues to work hard to stay there. So I don't think that everyone can become a Horowitz, but that doesn't mean that someone with a 'lesser' ability or talent can't work hard and achieve some level of proficiency at the piano.

Yes, that's exactly what I said my post.


Again, exactly what I said. The OP's statement was wrong because it implied there are only two levels of sight reading rather than a continuum and because he implied that talent was the only thing that mattered. I included both natural ability and practice in my list of what determined sight reading skill.

The only thing I would say differently is that I think many people who are good sight readers never thought of learning this skill as hard work or practicing their sight reading. They wanted to hear and play piano music so they did a lot of sight reading.

I think talent is part of the equation in doing anything well unless the "anything" is something as simple as doing your laundry or boiling an egg.

Pianolover, my intention wasn't to narrow the so-called 'spectrum' if you will - Of course I understand that there will always be people of different abilities, and their strengths and weaknesses will be different. I simply used the term 'good' in order to make a general broad statement in the title of this thread. It wouldn't make sense to make the title 'You're either a better sightreader or you're not'. The talk about 'becoming better' is part of this topic of this thread, as you can see in the responses.

I understand that there will be different interpretations of the word 'good'. But I believe that the general belief of being a 'good' sightreader is one who can play a piece of music at first glance, with the correct rhythms and pitches at least half performance speed. Of course a few wrong notes is permittable.

But back to what I was saying, I totally welcome (and expect) mention of a whole 'spectrum' of ability on this thread.

Since the level of difficulty for "a piece of music" varies to highest degree imaginable, I don't see that as a reasonable definition of a good sight reader. Also, I don't know where you go the "at least half performance speed" part. There is no standard definition of a good sight reader.