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?
18 replies
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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’d 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’s 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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Dominic Cheli how about sight reading again a piece again 1y later assuming you don’t 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!
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Oh, can I share my own experience?
Even after spending about 25 years in professional music education, I was never a good sight-reader. Quite the opposite. Sight-reading created so much psychological discomfort that my fingers would almost stop moving. It was honestly awful. After entering the conservatory, I avoided it whenever I could, simply because I didn't want to go through that experience.
For about fifteen years, I hardly did any sight-reading at all.
Then, in my mid-thirties, I took a job where sight-reading was unavoidable. I opened a book of advanced Czerny études... expecting the same struggle.
Instead, something completely different happened.
My fingers just kept going. There was no mental blockage. I could anticipate the music as I was playing it, and because nothing was obstructing my thoughts, my hands felt remarkably free and fluent.
It was one of those moments you never forget.
Only afterwards did I understand what had changed:
During those fifteen years, I hadn't been practicing sight-reading at all. I had simply spent thousands of hours studying new repertoire through audiation - hearing every note internally, its tone quality, harmonic direction, dynamics, voicing, connecting the music through inner singing, and organizing the music into the breath of phrasing and form.
Somehow, that process had trained my sight-reading without me ever intending it to.
The difference between the person who avoided sight-reading and the one who returned to it fifteen years later was extraordinary. It completely changed the way I think about where fluent reading actually comes from.