How to improve your Sightreading (and why it is important)
Today we will talk about ways that you can start improving your sightreading, and WHY it is important!
Take a look at these Sightreading exercises
Sight Reading Exercises, Op.45 (Arnoldo Sartorio)
Follow this event link to tune in!
https://app.tonebase.co/piano/live/player/pno-improve-your-sightreading
We are going to be using this thread to gather suggestions and questions!
- What questions do you have on this topic?
- Any particular area you would like me to focus on?
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Inner hearing of what you see on the page seems most important to me. Is there a way to improve this ability?
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I鈥檇 be interested in exercises which train the eye (and the brain!) to keep looking ahead at the next notes and phrases while sightreading.
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For me sight reading beyond the need to practice everyday, is necessary to practice rhythm, solfege, inner hearing, looking ahead, Knowledge of piano keys and etc...
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Sight reading is my nemesis! I would love guidance to help me:
- Recognise patterns quickly;
- Remember notes at a glance so that I can read ahead;
- Know where my hands/fingers are without having to look at them;
- Increase my speed of sight reading;
- Avoid looking at my hands as much as possible.
I'm focusing on sight reading at the moment, because it is the main thing that holds back my progress.
Also, are there any books that would help when practicing sight reading, perhaps with easy pieces rather than the traditional sight reading excerpts?
Really looking forward to this live stream, thank you!
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I started sight reading Grade 1, 5 min a day, after Dominic鈥檚 talk on how to practice. This would be a great sequel. Thank you
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I could use some tips on how to make bass clef sight-reading as easy as my treble clef reading. I come from a violin background and am "treble-clef dominant". A ToneBase member recommended the iOS app Tenuto, which has drills for note recognition, but it would be nice to have tips for at-the-keyboard sight-reading.
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I'm interested in your thoughts on the use of iPads for electronic scores as it relates to sight-reading. I had two iPads briefly and found the use of forScore's Cue software to link them like a regular book more satisfying to my brain, but this may be influenced by my age and the use of regular paper scores for many years. Thanks for the topic.
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Thanks for the topic, it was really interesting! I would like to give it a try to use an ipad for my music. Any guidance related to that is most wellcome.
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Mariela I am also thinking of investing in a larger iPad for my music. I have been using my older iPad with forScore. Dominic has a recorded session on ToneBase discussing everything iPad for music. Following his advice, I am using an iPad, an Apple Pencil, and a bluetooth foot page turner (I have the one from Donner), all of which seems to work well so far except for the smaller screen size of my iPad. I would need to upgrade both the iPad and pencil if I want to have my notes bigger.
I like being able to use layers for comments, notes, and fingerings, in color or otherwise, over my score on an iPad. I can turn off layers as I work on different aspects. Highlighting is also nice.
Paper's virtue is its simplicity, but doesn't allow for the level of annotation, and being able to revert to the original score.
A lot of music is freely available for download from IMSLP among other sites, so I can explore easily on the iPad before committing to a piece. With paper I end up wasting pages on music I am just exploring.
The 12.9" currently available is nice, the screen is still a tad smaller than a typical 8.5X11" sheet of paper, so scores without cropping will be a bit smaller than on paper. In forScore, you can crop out all the white-space boarders around the actual staves, so it is possible that the notes actually end up being bigger on the cropped version over the paper printout of the same score. It's hard to know for sure what and when the next upgrade for the iPad will come out, and if it will be any larger than the 12.9". I believe that Dominic finds the current size in the latest 12.9" large enough. I searched for an older model of the 12.9" to save some money since I don't need the latest cpu to read pdf's, but they seem hard to come by at a low enough price. If I decide to upgrade, I will probably spring for a newest 12.9" and the second generation Apple Pencil.
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David Thank you for the detailed information. I'll look into it!
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Dominic Cheli how about sight reading again a piece again 1y later assuming you don鈥檛 remember anything about it?
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Dominic Cheli an app that is famous for sight reading is Piano Marvel, but you need a MIDI keyboard.
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Hi Dominic Cheli ! Thanks for this video! I started to learn to play the piano recently, from scratch, with the guidance of a very good piano teacher, and she also tells me to sight read about 10 min a day. The thing that I find difficult to follow from your advice is that not stopping ever because I still take a long time identifying bass and treble cleff notes at the same time, so I pause a lot. I get that you say that if we make mistakes is not as bad as losing rithm... however... if you get A LOT of wrong notes would you still prioritise keeping time, or maybe get more comfortable first with faster identification of notes and then try to keep the rithm? Thank you very much!
