Group 3
One of the most valued skills in music is having the ability to sightread with ease. That is because it aids in so many things: learning music quickly, being able to play with friends/colleagues on minimal practice time, and most importantly, being able to evaluate a new piece and its possibilities!
Join Leann as she leads a new Two Week Intensive designed to improve your sightreading through focused advice, tips, exercises, and more! Let’s start playing NEW music!
- Course Period: October 17th - 28th
- Class Size: max. 4 Groups á 10 Participants
- Optional check-In via Zoom: October 24th at 3pm Pacific time!
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89265945226?pwd=NS9iTEd0aFJ2ME03TUs1Y2tTaExYZz09
Assignment 1
Assignment 2
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Hello, Group 3 friends! I look forward to doing the sight reading exercises with you.
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Hello everyone! Another great two weeks challenge! Hope everybody will enjoy it!
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Aline Valade hi Alina! Nice meeting you here on this 2 week intensive :)
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Hello Lean, what a magnificent two weeks of challenge that you offer to us with side reading. I already do side reading. As soon that I start to do that my learning at the piano change a lot. I even drag my score in the subway and I read them, visualizing the keyboard by seeing the notes on the piano. It helps me a lot to learn my pieces faster. And I even started to sign parts of music that I want to learn. But I'm sure I'll learn more with you. Thank You for this great oppotunity.
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Aline Valade it sounds like you already have experienced how much sight-reading can make a difference in practicing and learning repertoire! I look forward to helping you take it to the next level :)
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Hi Leann, and Group 3 team mates,
Thanks very much, Leann, for letting us have the check-points for looking through a piece before we sightread it. Whether under exam conditions or when friends have requested for a random piece they have turned the page to, having a mental list of things to look out for really helps when under pressure. So I've noted down my analysis this time around.
Since I have not played much Scarlatti and there are 550+ of his sonatas, I used a random number picker to pick between 1 and 550, to be sure that it would be a piece I haven't played before. It picked K160, and I have made notes. I will try to play this later on.
Hope everyone is well and having fun with the assignment. I would love to hear your comments and thoughts.
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Natalie Peh what a cool way to represent your analysis! I think you pulled out a lot of wonderful observations. I particularly liked how you distilled the scale from the texture in the last line. Having ideas about the harmony and hidden lines can allow for some “improvisation” while Sightreading, if the speed is too fast to play exactly what is on the page. You might even make some choices prior to Sightreading the page about simplifications you might make to those denser sections to facilitate staying in tempo without any hesitations? :)
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Leann Osterkamp Hi Leann, thanks so much for the advice. I'm so glad for this exercise, it is useful and I think I will try and do this from time to time.
I was agonising about how to stay true to the tempo marking. I looked through the score again, planning out where I could simplify. The simple improvisation was also quite an interesting exercise.
Then there was trying to summon up all the courage to sightread D. Scarlatti's composition and posting a video of it!!! So, here is my mistakes-ridden and not-quite-Allegro reading, warts and all ;)
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Natalie Peh nice work!
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Leann Osterkamp thanks!
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Natalie Peh This is impressive, Natalie. I hear the music, the beauty, not the warts.
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Adena Franz thanks, Adena. I think I may try to learn this sonata, it’s a nice one
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Here’s my honest-to-goodness attempt at sightreading.
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Adena Franz great job! That is a tricky page to sightread! All of your checklist looks great. The hard part about this piece is that it is more contrapuntal and you have to keep your eye on multiple voices at once. If I were you, I might try to just play the very top melody and pick select other notes (notes on downbeats, that are necessary to the harmony, etc) on my first reading. Maybe leave out one of the middle voices?. That way you will get a deeper understanding of the melody in time and a sense of the harmony/counterpoint, but won’t have to hesitate or be too overwhelmed, which takes away our ability to “take in” the music :)
good work!
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Adena Franz Good job, Adena!
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Thank you Leann! I so appreciate your feedback and look forward to the zoom with you next Monday.
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Re assignment 2: As Leann said that German is a beautiful language in which to sing, I pulled out an ancient hymnbook (Gesangbuch) and sang the 1st 8 1/2 measures while sightreading. It certainly helps to know scales and the I, IV and V chords, as well as basic progressions.
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Adena Franz wonderful job! I’m so excited to see the skills you absorbed from this week! Perfect length of piece to practice, good chordal work, and terrific playing!
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Adena Franz great, that you can sing while sight-reading the piece!
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Natalie Peh Thanks Natalie. It was unsettling as the brain vacillated between paying attention to the words and singing on key, and the notes my fingers had to play. Another stretch for the grey cells!
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Leann Osterkamp Thanks so very much for both the assignment videos. It has been liberating to simplify the score for sight reading it, and sounds so much better too!
