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

That's a good idea, but only if it is from a score where you only see the one line. To get the right effect, you could try downloading some single line parts from IMSLP to read through.

Someone said earlier that freedom to just play helped them. For me, the opposite is true. I was allowed to play by ear for years without any instruction on rhythm, note reading, etc. This totally screwed me up. I was not put in any public place and required to read, so maybe this helps. When I was 15 I went to a great teacher, who, for the first time, demanded that I do things her way. It was a shock because I was playing Chopin and doing it all wrong. For me, I know that I needed good instruction and guidelines from the very start. My bad habits still affect me today sometimes.

I practice at sightreading constantly to keep getting better at it--even after all these years.

I am not sure whether your intent was to be facetious, but reading the score when you "know the piece" is not, technically speaking, sight reading. I do not think that that is what others were writing about when they write about the difficulties of sight reading. Sight reading means playing from the score a piece that you have never played or seen before. The proof of this - if proof be needed - comes in the context of a practical examination which has a sight reading component. In such a context, the candidate is given a score never seen before, given a few minutes to look it over, and then is required to play it at a reasonable tempo with reasonably good dynamics. That is sight reading.

Regards,

You've lost the essence of sightreading in that case.