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Most of the teachers in my area teach this way, and they do not have a clue what is wrong.

Have you seen Thompson's "Teaching Little Fingers to Play?"

This is without doubt one of the worst books ever written, yet it is still very popular. Every note has a finger number. And each page shows a picture of what finger goes where. Guaranteed to kill reading...

Sorry Gary, maybe your post is too long to read, then usually people just skip it.

hihi, I am a ADHD teacher!!

Agree.

No. Can you link a PDF?

I can't imagine teachers being that rude to each other. (Also puzzled about the 'too long' posts.)

I am sorry for being rude to you, but that is not my intention. It is just that I cannot concentrate in reading and comprehending when the post is too long...

Thompson's books are awful. I had a student for two years when she was in pre-k and kindergarten. I had her in Faber's My First Piano Adventures; she was a very bright little girl and had just started level 1 when I stopped teaching her. Last year, when she was in 1st grade she moved away for the year and studied with a different teacher; now she's back with me. Her teacher last year put her in Thompson's. She came back to me playing much more advanced pieces than I had her playing. I was so happy with her progress until I noticed all the finger numbers! When I jumped back to Faber, she no longer recognized even middle c on the staff.

This had nothing to do with you, nor was it about rudeness. I was simply saying that I had made the same point, slightly different words:


Hardly anything long...

I did love the elves from the old edition, though.

"What is correct"?

I think in a more common sense context "correct" is the results that most educated people in the field want. Stats mean nothing if you take into account wrecking ball, but if you do put the stats into a classically educated crowd then you might be on to something.

So what is correct is what the classical crowd is looking for.

For a silly break down:

1. To all students: To produce people who enjoy classical music and are not turned off by the elitism found here (<-not in Pianoworld).
2. To most students: To produce people who can play a little music and understand the value of it. Just take a look at the ABF and you'll see what I mean!
3. To a few students: To produce well rounded professionals. Those who will go on to teach, lecture, perform slightly and/or be in an orchestra (the last one doesn't really apply to piano, but...).
4. To a handful of students: To produce awesome professionals capable of a career.

I think that the above comes to terms with what people can do.

In that context I think that most students (but not all) would benefit a bit from sight reading skills, but if we are to face the truth, few would actually need it along the lines. I mean, very few of us have come face to face with a brand new score to learn or play right there! Professionals do, amateurs don't really. Or not?

PS. Finger numbers: grrrr... Last night I was with a 9 year old student. Very bright, fun to be with, etc. So last week I assigned a work that had the hand position starting from D, instead of C. teeheehee... She couldn't get one note right! She was SO used (hard wired?) to the 3rd (middle) finger being in E, so she kept banging on F instead! Twas a nice evening lesson I think. Ended up putting on adagio for strings by Barber because she asked if I had anything "adagio" (because it's slow, she said) to assign!

EDIT: A dramatic cutscene and sorry for the continuous edits...

I found this over facebook: http://www.quickmeme.com/p/3vpacv I think it's quite relevant.

But aren't you making a differentiation between reading ability and sight-reading ability?

I don't do that.

I teach every student I work with that there is a direct link between getting results fast when learning new music and reading ability, because reading ability is what allows you to get each section to as close to target speed as possible in the last amount of time - assuming we are talking about mastering something that is notated.

I see an absolute connection between quick learning and reading fluency, and there is not a great reader on the planet who cannot also sight-read well.

The two things are not different, just different degrees or a different focus.

It's sort of like saying that the only people who need to read text fluently are actors, because they can learn their scripts faster, and the rest of us will never use fluent reading.

Gary: I think that I meant a slightly different thing. Not that most students do not need it "at all", but it's not needed at a high enough level, to warrant a failed exam because of that alone...

Reading an language text is different because of a couple of things, than reading a music text. First of all is the getting used symptom: You get to read English and tons of that everywhere you go. I'd argue that 50% of our time we get to check a text (in any language). When you read a book, the news, watching the telly, the internet, in the cans, the manuals, everywhere... The same doesn't apply to a music text.

Secondly the involvement in playing an instrument demands an enormous amount of coordination and skills, that reading doesn't.

So, for me sight reading involves performing at the same time, while reading doesn't (it involves studying more or less). So the demands are very different.

* I think *

That is seriously tragic. I can see myself crying about that after the lesson was over.

I think we visited JT problems before. One of my recent transfers is about to be done with her JT book, and I can't wait to see what'll happen once I get her to a method book that has minimal finger numbers.

But what about kids who can read (cognitively process) notes really fast, but their hands are just so uncoordinated, or seriously lacking in fine-motor skills, that playing the correct key on the piano is well-nigh impossible?

Also, sight reading has a multitasking and a rhythm component, and any weakness in those areas will strongly affect sight reading.

What do you think?

I agree that there's two aspects in reading or sight reading: the rhythm and the pitch. If one is deficient, then sight reading will suffer, and learning pieces will take longer.

It has seemed to me that reading and sightreading differ in the degree of connection to strict time.

When sightreading one cannot disconnect; the show has to go on. When learning a piece by reading most people feel less requirement to stay strictly with time (outside of the Caruso followers maybe)

I'm curious about those who learn a piece by listening without reading; I never do that myself so I have no experience base.

Last night I subbed with a good local community band on trombone. (I accidentaly sent an email to the wrong person and volunteered to play their Christmas concert, for a band I'd never played with. Oh, well.) All the pieces in a two hour rehearsal were new to me, so it was two straight hours of sightreading at performance tempo. That's really fun, but demands your concentration not slip. I needed a beer after that.

But if I'd been given the music to prepare, my approach would have been a bit different.

Still, if you can decipher pitch and rhythm faster, then you will learn a piece faster even when not "sight reading" but learning a new piece. The two are linked and they can help one another, although the requirements for each are slightly different.

PS: I find sight reading singing much easier than piano, one note at a time is easy, even if you add words

We are talking past each other. I don't disagree.

But their are parallels and pitfalls. Think back to a time when most people did not read, when it was considered something special, before the printing press maybe.

Then think of people who learned to read by reading the Bible over and over, stuff like that.

Some of these people eventually had a good bit of the Bible memorized, but that did not mean that they read the Bible fluently. They may have, but not necessarily.

Now, if you have something MOSTLY memorized but still read it a little, you may hold a book while reading and appear to be reading very fluently simply because the text is mostly in your head, most of the way.

There was also a time when people of all ages were forced to "recite", and that meant memorizing poems, parts of plays, and so on. Obviously when people "recite" well that does not show how quickly they read, right? We would also want to find out what a "cold reading" sounds like, much like an actor who is handed a script and is asked to being reading it, on the spot.

Reading music is a bit like the actor who wants to pick up a script and begin rehearsing immediately. Obvious someone who has an endless amount of time to study the script will eventually be just as fluent when playing the role, but it should take a lot longer to get there, all things being equal - which they never are.

That's a bit how I see piano. If your goal is to open a score and get it as close to right the first time, the emphasis will be on reading, and that will carry over to sight-reading. I don't think that is something that is just important for professional musicians, mostly because there is no division between amateur and professional while a student is developing. He or she doesn't know where it is going to end.

I started accompanying in high school. I did not know I would do it. I did not prepare to do it. I was just a quick reader, and not every students could find an accompanyist.

At close to same time I found out that a voice teacher in town was advertising for a student accompanist. He wanted cheap labor, of course. I got the job sight-reading selections from "The Messiah". I did not know the music.

I got the ability in reading by reading everything, same was as English. I could not pass by a score, or a pop tune in sheet music form. I simply played everything that was around, and the fact that I murdered a lot of the music is part of it.

Most students never get there, but a huge reason WHY they do not get there is a fear of making mistakes, being criticized, not being perfect. That is probably why my number one focus in teaching is not producing young players who play impressively but rather young players who are extremely versatile, who learn easily and fast, and how may later, if they so wish, branch out into any number of areas...

I'd like to replace "sight reading" in the sense of an accompanist facing a new score and an eager choir or soloist all at the same time with something more basic - instead: being able to go through a new score at an easier pace, to get a sense of the piece without having to resort to a recording. I'd like to add the ability to read music and everything related to that.

The biggest thing in my mind beyond reading is simply skills. That a student gets the skills and the knowledge that they need so they can play piano, and do so after leaving lessons. But that goes beyond the quoted topic.

I'm looking at your breakdown. The one thing that I would question is the division along the idea of careers. Yes, a professional performer who goes on stage as a soloist needs the skills or he'll never get there. But someone who has those skills doesn't necessarily have to become a performer.

My interest is above all in the first stages of learning. At that point you don't know whether that student will be in your category 1, 2, 3, or 4 (in terms of skills, with or without the career). But if they don't get solid foundations, then they are compromised for anything they might reach after that. If the student is shortcutted through pieces, or given only a few pieces in order to shine at performance in exams or recitals, if that student ends up missing skills, then he'll struggle later. The tragic thing is that the student won't know why, and will think there is something wrong with him. That becomes your transfer student that the next teacher sees with dismay.