Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum The case against sight reading....

Hi Bruce!

With easy pieces, I go rather quickly from playing them badly to playing them well. I work on them maybe fifteen minutes per day, and have them at performance level usually in less than a week. I feel that it is a learning experience because there may have been some struggles, usually with rhythm or with coordination, and usually it both takes me a bit of time to figure out how I should play and then to practise to play this well.

With pieces at my level, this is quite different. Hands separately for several sessions, one phrase at the time. Sometimes one motif at the time - or even less. Lots of focused practising of difficult spots. Dynamics, phrasing, it all needs work. Then a phase in which I alternate hands separate and hands together. Finally the polishing phase. Half an hour per day for three to five weeks (more or less). And my teacher is usually satisfied with my work, if not the first time I submit a piece, then the second time. So I don't think these pieces are above my level.

Cannot edit any more. But on second thought, usually not quite that much. Two to three weeks maybe?

I think you should consider learning pieces in between these two levels. The first seems inappropriately easy and the second may be too hard. All this should be discussed with your teacher if you have one.

Advanced pieces I don't expect to get to a performance level reading the first time. Every piece has a learning curve from a few days to a few months.

Fortunately a majority of pieces a student would play other students & teachers already posted recordings online. We don't need to learn "Minuet in G" from scratch. We can listen to other recordings first to get some idea how fast the tempo should be, the dynamics & phrasing, etc.

My last piece the counting is in 12/8 but has a regular pulse. Once you get the beat, it's straightforward. The piece has a lot of sustained notes. You see long notes with shorter notes over them. Have 4 fingers available when holding a long note.

I love the term "quick studies." It hits the nail on the head. Everyone should have quick studies as part of their practice routine.

Hi Stubbie,
Pianoloverus already responded on the definition. But in practice, I dont see that much difference between a piece you sight-read the first time and the pieces you read the subsequent times. Of course you have a little more familiarity with it but as long as you havent really practised it but simply reading it, there isnt that much difference.

Another very different case is when you read for playing a piece which you have practiced for a certain time for performance.

So indeed for me signt-reading or reading a piece, whether that is the first time or not, is about the same, as long as it is not a piece that has not been worked out. I dont see anything wrong about re-reading pieces that have been sight-read some time ago, as long as you dont do it every day ....

For the purpose of the OP, sight-reading or simply reading would yield about the same benefits. Sight-reading is just a little more difficult as you tackle pieces you never saw before.

I agree. When people say they want to practice sight reading and then state they will only read a piece once as if additional read throughs will not benefit their sight reading, I think that's a misconception. It will be easier to read the notes and rhythms the second or tenth time one reads a piece, but one will still be practicing their note and rhythm recognition for quite a while after the initial sight reading.

Yes! I agree. It just requires practice and practice and practice. And for adults, probably even more practice. But it is a very useful skill to acquire, and certainly worth all the effort.

I absolutely agree with this and would recommend it strongly.

This issue stems from piano exam syllabi.

I’m not an expert sight reader but I don’t think I agree about not recognizing the notes with your conscious mind. Doing that you are going to make a lot of mistakes. You have to recognize each note OR groups of notes (chords for example) or typical patterns of notes explicitly. But you have to be able to recognize notes and groups of notes quickly through practice and experience. The idea at least in my experience is that you are always looking ahead and studying the next note as you played the ones you saw a moment ago. You can’t do this unless you are able to read notes fluently and recognize them quickly. This takes “conscious” effort and practice. Like the runner analogy you can’t run fast if you are still looking at your feet, you are always looking forward. (But running actually is a bad analogy because for the most part it is an unconscious endeavor initiated by central pattern generators in your spinal cord and modulated by your brain- a topic for another forum ha.).

Pianoloverus' definition (and mine as well) is that sight-reading is what happens the first time through. If you're sightreading for an exam or sightreading in order to accompany someone (with no prior warning), your goal is to play through without stopping. If you are sightreading on your own, you can take as many breaks as you wish. But after that first time, you are reading the piece. For you, sightreading and reading are "about the same" (but the 'about' implies they are not the same); I see no good reason to blend the terms. No wonder so many posters are talking past each other when it comes to discussing the subject!

My 2 cents ...

For me there are two levels to sight-reading.
1. Recognizing the note patterns
2. Recognizing the meaning (aka context)
... not necessarily in that order and many times applied at the same time ...

I started blues/jazz/improv lessons later in life and that filled in a lot of the gaps in "recognizing the meaning/context" of the music. This helped immensely for sight-reading because I now subconsciously upload the "expected" musical landscape of a piece before I play it. So instead of just reading notes, I'm looking/expecting note/harmonic/melodic/rhythmic patterns that I already know in that context. And somewhere between the classical note-reading and blues/jazz musical context practice, I found that sight-reading became a much more fun game to play (and I was one of those who found sight-reading and reading in general to be very painful).

So it's important to consider if your current approach may be lacking emphasis on many important musical skills (whether you're on the blues/jazz or classical side).

---
An academic example of "note patterns" vs. "meaning/context" using the word "PROFESSOR".

1. Note Patterns - we can all recognize the letters in the word "PROFESSOR", but all by itself it's just a word, we need more meaning/context in order to "play", improvise and communicate with it.

2. Meaning/Context - here are two examples with further refined "meaning/context", some will recognize the examples, while others may be at a complete loss. But if any two people recognize the same underlying meaning/context of the words, they can start having a conversation that goes light-years beyond anyone who only understands the "words".

a. Professor and Mary Anne
b. Professor and Jax

There are too many levels of music and too many levels of piano ability to simplify this discussion with a yes or a no.
For instance, I can sight read just about anything from a Fake Book and make it sound good the first time through...as long as I am vaguely familiar with the song to start with.

I can't sight read a Chopin Polonaise, I have to practice the bejeezus out of it to even get remotely close.
But unless you are talking about taking an exam, which I have no interest in, WHO CARES?
Play what you want, practice the stuff you don't know yet but want to get better at. Isn't that what learning the piano is???

ANd just for a weird side note, I stay subscribed to Piano Marvel because they have a very easy and quick way to see if I am progressing in my learning endeavors. It's the sight-reading tests. I take it about every six months just to see if my score has improved once or twice a year. It doesn't do a thing for me except tell me if I am getting better or at a plateau.

Hi, I dont dispute what the definition is. I am just saying that there isnt much of a difference, especially for beginners. If you cant read a piece then you wont be able to sight-read it either. The "first time" thing is for definition purists but practically there isnt any difference. The important is to read pieces which you havent practiced.

Looking around, I see that 'sight-reading' is a very popular term and easy to apply to any type of reading.

Sometimes this forum is quite laughable. Instead of sight reading easy pieces for fifteen minutes every day, my experience is that I learn more when I practise easy pieces for fifteen minutes every day.
How did this discussion degenerate to disputing if I practise pieces that are too difficult for me?

Of course, I should never have replied to those questions in the first place, my bad.

Exactly! (apart from me dropping sight reading)

I agree. I feel I've gotten more reading improvement from read-playing (Shirokura's term from a recent post).

I still like my 15-minute sight reading sessions, but now think of them as 'new music discovery' sessions. In the level 1 piano solo books, I can get through 3 or 4 pieces in a session. I mark the pieces I like with a yellow post-it flag for later inclusion in my home version of 40 pieces a year. I've been working a few of them up for possible inclusion of the beginner pieces themed recital.

I'd say too that depending on your goal after that first reading, staying in tempo may not even be desirable. If you're just practicing sight reading, then fine, you can keep going through mistakes, whatever. But if it's a piece you want to learn that you're seeing for the first time, IMO it's better to take it slowly enough to get things right.