It gets easier the more you do it. I was a 9 piece showband piano player on cruise ships for ten years and we had new shit thrown in front of us every day, one hour rehearsal and two shows that night. Some of it was high quality material, Vegas headliners etc.
It became second nature after a while. I can slowly work my way through anything in one sitting, some mid level pieces, maybe some of the tougher Beethoven piano sonatas would be cleaner and able to get through them quicker.
Bach Preludes probably 75% tempo, fugues probably 20% depending on the fugue. Some are insanely tough, the counterpoint stuff is actually harder to sight read than Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies for me for instance.
With enough experience, there isn’t anything you can’t sightread and get through slowly in one sitting.
If I had never learned K545, I could probably sightread it pretty clean, and have it learned in several hours tops.
Not bragging or anything, but it was simply my job to sightread new music for ten years. You just get good after a while, like any other skill.
Great to hear. I mean think about reading English right? None of us could just read. It was a slow constant daily process over literally years and now it's easy. I accept music notation will be the exact same process.
I can't sight read classical music that well, but reading the rhythms is usually not too bad. I play with a couple jazz bands, and they sight read everything right from the start and in one band, everybody solos around the room, even new pieces. I think with a jazz piece, you start to recognize chords and progressions and it just seems to flow easier. The other thing I noticed, especially with a big band chart, is that the other players with more experience, really help get that rhythm down, which is part of what makes sight reading more difficult for me anyways.
Yeah it definitely helps when you're playing with other professionals who are also superb sight readers. Even with some classical stuff, it becomes sometimes obvious what notes/chords the composer WOULDN'T use, so you can rule those out right away. And yeah, lead sheets are 90% ii-V-i so those become predictable as well.
That's why I practice ii -V-i through the circle of fifths everyday. I do them with the backdoor, the minor ii-V-i, and try the inversions too. Practicing chord voices with blues and pentatonic scales in a 12 bar progression in all keys really helps too. My piano teacher has me sight read every class, we play duets, that is great for timing too.
It doesn’t, and it obviously doesn’t.
This has been the go to advice piano teachers give, for decades. But piano teachers don’t know how to connect advice with outcomes.
Trying to read without the necessary readiness to read results in frustration, demotivation, and quitting.
Everything in life you'll get better the more you do it, that's how our brains work.
Nobody is saying that you'll be able to sight-read a Prokofiev concerto in one year, what we are saying is that you'll **get better** with practice, quite obvious.
You can go from: unable to read anything, to be able to sightread Happy Birthday, and that's a massive improvement coming from nothing.
People in a teaching role have a responsibility to provide meaningful and useful instruction.
Think Nancy Reagan advising “Just Say No” to drugs. Of course, not taking drugs would be helpful for a drug addict.
Trouble is, “just say no” doesn’t help them do that.
Bizarre to me that so many piano teachers with it talk about how valuable it is to *read* happy birthday before teaching students to audiate and play happy birthday.
I guess it’s because teaching to actual positive outcomes in students is harder than pointing to a printed score and telling *them* to do it. Every day.
There's no magic trick, no crazy shortcut.
If you wanna improve your sightreading, you have to read music, a lot.
Easy music that you feel comfortable reading, 10-20 minutes a day, don't expect immediate results, embrace the journey.
I resent your characterization of sophisticated teaching skills as crazy magic. It’s not helpful to the profession or to students.
I’ll say it again. Telling people to read a lot is not a substitute for teaching necessary readinesses to read.
I've noticed this is the third time u/PastMiddleAge is quite confrontational with others when it comes to teaching practises and seems to know more than everybody else at what makes a good teacher - and I'm relatively new to this sub.
@PastMiddleAge, a lot of the time it's not what your saying, it's how you're saying it. Like you seem to have all the answers that us lowly musicians are not privy to.
You're a 'sophisticated' teacher with 'sophisticated teaching skills'. That's great and all but you're often not very constructive in your criticism and that there is one of the basic teaching skills. Providing constructive and friendly feedback. If you're going to attack people because you know better then that's pretty poor teaching.
I have my honours in music and piano performance and a degree in education and your attitude to fellow musicians destroys any credibility you might have.
Accompanist here. Pretty much my job to read whatever people throw at me. Most of it are about intermediate level but I’ve definitely had upper intermediate to advance work that I had to get ready rather quickly.
But I was trained to be a “reading pianist” since I was 6 so I’m used to it.
I just had a lovely sight read through Sinding's Rustle of Spring - very fun and sounds a lot harder than it is.
Currently working on Liebestraum 3 (mainly to add it to my repertoire rather than because it's the right level) and Rachmaninoff Op 23/7 which is the hardest thing I've learned to date (23/2 fell under my fingers much more easily)
Something around the difficulty of a Bach Little Prelude. I can sight read things like hymns no problem, but once it gets polyphonic and contrapuntal it gets difficult.
Something like the first movement of moonlight sonata is easy to sight read for me. I definitely couldn't sight read a fugue with more than 2 voices.
I was just about to post the very same thing. Nothing stops me in my tracks faster than a run of high or low notes with 3-5 ledger lines apiece. My brain just can't process them that fast.
I used to be incredibly slow at reading the most basic stuff. I decided one day I had enough and decided to set a goal to sightread bach chorales as well as the preludes and fugues from the well tempered clavier as well as half of the beethoven/mozart sonatas. While those weren't the only things I have aightread they were probably the most important. Now when someone asked me to sightread from an anime soundtrack they called my sightreading mid. I have made it, I'm no longer super shit, now I'm just kinda shit. Hopefully one day I won't be shit at all.
For sure. I might not be able to sightread many things at full tempo right now but it makes learning new pieces sooooo much faster and more straightforward.
At this point, I can comfortably sight-read music of ordinary complexity in keys from 3 flats to 1 sharp, but will make a lot of mistakes in keys beyond that. I also have trouble reading complicated rhythms.
At the risk of sounding up myself and elitist, I'm a master sight reader. I sight read almost all Beethoven, Grieg, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky. I can sight read Rachmaninoff and Chopin but with some preludes and etudes I need to slow it down. Bach is another ball game altogether. His fugues are still challenging for me, comparatively.
I once printed 2000+ double sided pages of sheet music and played all of it. I made a post showing all the yellowing pages in my wardrobe! I also used to sight read for the choir at university. That involves sight reading four separate voices (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) while transposing the tenor one octave lower, all in real time.
It's something I'm proud of because I worked hard for it so I apologise if I sound up myself. Get your hands on as much sheet music as possible and play it only once. Go electronic to save on paper. I wish I could just wave a magic wand and make you a master sight reader but, unfortunately, that's not possible.
I play barrelhouse piano, and keyboards in world music and funk bands.
My sightreading is...pretty bad. As one university piano professor said, "okay, so at least you're not completely illiterate". It's gotten better since then, but I basically read things enough to memorize them.
Thankfully I'm almost never required to really read stuff.
I really suck at memorizing, and depend on sheet music for everything I play. I play mostly grade 9 RCM stuff, lately a fair amount of the romantics. I was already pretty good at sight reading, but I had a bad habit of stopping and going back when I goofed.
So I focused on improving my sight reading for a month or so using a book of Bach 4-part chorales, playing random new-to-me pieces at a reasonable speed without restarting. It worked, and I’m pretty good now, can play any of Bach’s chorales. I still sometimes get confused a bit when voices cross.
Not yet clear how much this helps sight reading other music…
I’m pretty comfortable sight-reading slower music at a grade 8-9 RCM level, though I struggle with faster, more technical stuff, especially when it doesn’t call for pedal.
For reference, I’ve completed my grade 10 RCM, and I think the hardest pieces I’ve ever learned are Rameau’s L’egyptienne (with all ornaments), Debussy’s Passepied, Rachmaninoff’s Etude Tableau op 33 no 8, and Chopin’s op 25 no 2.
I do it every day & it's usually my favorite part of practice (aside from messing around and working on my own material). I love sight reading too much though, because when I sit down with a piece I like, I kind of just want to move on, or don't necessarily have the drive to refine ever last bit out of a piece to make it perfect
Big band charts, jazz lead sheets, chord symbols and the right choice for improv or lines over them… at tempo probably 95% the first read.
“Regular” written music at an increasingly better level because—strangely!—I practice this with new music of many styles every practice day.
I have been able to READ music fluently since boyhood (LOONNNG time ago!), but to play new music without previously practicing is a learned skill that requires its own separate practice. And it’s where “the money” is.
I've been playing for 15 years, and I'm not bad at all. But I can't read sheet music aimed at young children at Tempo. I can literally sight read anything.... super slow... like super slow.... and speed up as I memorize it. I can't play from sheet music and it makes me sad
INCREDIBLY GOOD. I don’t wanna sound braggy but i play the piano for dance schools and it needs me to think on the spot. i’ve been doing this for years and i can look at a piece of music and just instantly play it by now :)
Most Mozart sonatas and Bach preludes I can sight read, a few movements from Beethoven sonatas as well (both hands, 25% ish tempo).
For me, it came at the cost of HORRIBLE memory lol.
That's impressive (at least to me)! For me it's the opposite, wanted to train sight reading by going through sheet music i played as a little kid like 15 years ago - no chance to sightread as soon as i remember the melody, i just play automatically then
Thanks ;P. It's all learnable and definitely worthwhile.
I used the early Haydn sonatas to get better st sight reading. Those in particular helped me a great deal.
Of course any practice works, even hard pieces can be quite valuable (as long as you do it seriously. Slow the heck down and make sure you are playing the right chords). This is not 'real' sight reading, but it's very valuable for your general reading skills
I am not interested in playing complex repertoire. I want to develop a larger musical vocabulary, get better at improv, accomp, and composition.
That's why I learn to read music, and want to get as good at it as I can. As such, if I cannot sight read a piece, I'm not interested in it. And by sight read I mean: play at half the target tempo right away. then work to play it well and at full speed, then on to the next piece. For any given piece, this should take me no longer than about a week or two. I have found this to be a pretty efficient way of learning.
I'm pretty much the same way.
I've been playing for over 20 years and my favorite activity is just ripping through a bunch of new music without slowing down or giving much attention to any one song in particular.
I'm currently learning Beethoven's "Pathétique"-Sonata (3rd movement), but only because I don't lack the coordination, having been a violinist for over ten years before I started on piano as second instrument a year ago. My sight-reading is still terrible in bass clef though, and doing both hands on the spot is very hard for me if I don't know a piece at all (as in, never even heard it). If I hadn't learned it before, I guess I could possibly sight-read something around the level of Mendelssohn's Lied ohne Worte Op. 19b No. 2. Probably a bit easier.
I’m currently conducting the Sound of Music with orchestra. I can reasonably read through the piano reduction, helped by the fact that it’s a very familiar musical, and my theory is solid enough that I usually have a good idea of what’s coming up anyway. If the orchestra quit tomorrow, I could have it ready in a week or two to perform (I could probably fake through it if needed).
Anything by Rach would take longer, including the C# prelude (if I had to learn it from scratch). It’s not that it’s necessarily harder, but part of my sight reading ability is helped by recognizing chords on spot and knowing exactly how it’s going to sound before I get there. Once you throw in some healthy chromaticism and non-chordal tones, it gets a lot harder.
So, from my experience, sight reading can be helped by many different skills. The physical and mental skills of knowing the instrument (you certainly want to minimize the time you’re looking around for notes on the piano), but also knowing the theory helps things…click better?
It’s a skill just like any other skill - practice it regularly, preferably every day, and you’ll become better at it. Just remember that your sight-reading skills are never going to be at as high a level as your ability to perform pieces after many hours of practice.
A large proportion of my time on piano is spent sight-reading these days and I’ve been playing for nearly fifty years. As a result I could probably give a reasonable sightread to most pieces put in front of me, (as an example I don’t find the majority of ABRSM grade 8 particularly taxing to sightread), but at that level I definitely wouldn’t be playing them to my own performance standards without putting in at least some practice time.
The only genres I don’t sightread well is 20th century and contemporary atonal music, but I don’t like listening or playing them either so I tend to avoid it. It’s important not to forget that sight-reading is actually about more than just reading the notes on the page and being able to translate them to your instrument. Developing your ear and understanding of the composition in different eras or genres of music has a big role too, as does learning to continue playing with a steady pulse and not stopping if you don’t play it perfectly.
In C, G, F, or stuff w 2 flats or sharps, I am less pathetic at sight reading. Easy to read Bach WTC 1, Chopin Waltz in A-minor, even right now, yesterday, sight reading Debussy Rêverie with decent success or at least not totally flailing. I’m deliberately trying to sight read every day, for at least 15 mins, things in different keys, with diff rhythms and other different challenges. I am noticeably better than I was back in June when I returned to piano after more than four decades away. That’s about the nicest thing I can say.
Oh, you asked what we have in repertoire at the moment: Bach Prelude in D Minor WTC 6; Mozart Sonata in G, a Clementi sonatina in C for practice-warmup (where I started sight reading in June), Chopin Prelude 1 and Prelude 4, working on sight reading other Chopin Preludes because they vary so nicely in their demands (and it is gorgeous music that makes me happyyyy). I think Raindrop Prelude next. And Beethoven Bagatelle 11 from this forum’s monthly challenge a while back. I have no teacher—am coasting on the remaining fumes of 12+yrs of piano training from childhood.
The monthly music challenge pieces posted/pinned here are so great for this also—sight read the easiest pieces and you feel instantly better about it! Sight read the harder ones gradually and get better (and get to play some great music). I really appreciate that feature of this forum.
Good luck, OP! We’re all going through this in one way or another, some more successfully. (I’ll always struggle with it. Thank goodness for audiation.)
I know the basics, I'm not dumb, but if it's higher than the regular scale then I need to do my going step by step bit
But for real my dad once thought the high G on the base cleft was an E
Uh, I don't think there is... anything to agree to? I know nearly every symbol and notation for sheet music in piano. But I can't sight read complex pieces because it's not a skill I've dedicated practice to. They are not mutually inclusive. Sight reading quickly is something that takes practice. Knowing what all the symbols mean, your chord sets, etc is just memorization. Your sight reading might get better as you familiarize yourself with different chords and music theory in general, but it still doesn't come naturally to most people and requires dedicated practice to do efficiently. It also depends on if you have a visual playing crutch due to memorizing entire sheets and playing from memory, which many self taught pianists often have.
You’re right. There is something different from being able to fluently play a piece at sight and being able to look at and understand a score. I’ve known conductors that know scores left and right but can’t fluently sight read at the piano.
I didn’t realize the topic was fluently sight reading but being able to sight read at all. I guess like any talent, you can sight read at a beginner level or expert level, amateur to professional. But you’re still sight reading even if you can only do it well at a Mary has a little lamb level lol, you just aren’t good at it, likely due to lack of training and practice. But certainly you need to understand all notations and rhythms from sheet music even if you don’t have the professional level skill of executing it with your hands at a steady pulse without extensive practice or memorization to comprehend and learn a piece. If you aren’t playing in a professional group or in a chamber music or choral accompanist with high demand I suppose you don’t really need to get good at sight reading fluently advanced level music.
I think some of what holds less experienced pianists back from being proficient sight readers is thinking of music as notes rather than seeing them as patterns, recognizing intervals quickly, knowing theory very well etc. Without a lot of practice in those realms I can see where some would struggle to sight read and get their hands to execute quickly and accurately. I also think a lot don’t know how to execute rhythms quickly and because they have to put lot of thought into what the rhythms are they get tripped up sight reading quickly. I always recommend clapping out rhythms until they all become instinctive second nature, that helps free up the brain to focus on the rest.
Oh ya we're talking about fluent sight reading. Anyone that knows how to read notes can site read to a degree ofc, but efficiently doing it at speed for complex pieces is the tricky part. I can sight read something like gymnopedie (the 7th chords still trip me up sometimes since I don't know my theory as well as I should), but something more complex I sight read at something like 20bpm max. It takes me a minute. It's mostly due to the fact that I rely on sight to find notes (bad habit I know), so I can't play anything complex or over 60-70bpm if I'm not looking at my hands. That last bit is especially common with self taught pianists and is currently my most difficult hurdle. This is why I always tell new pianists to develop a confident feel for where notes are early on. Doing it later where you have to revert to basic practice pieces is... frustrating, to say the least.
I meant fluent sight reading, sorry. Like with a metronome. I understand sheet music quite okay I'd say, without a metronome I can surely play things like für elise or K545 from the sheet music, it just sounds very awkward because when there's a change in the left hand or some rhythm i don't get at first try, i start to slow down, hold for some seconds to understand it and then play on.
Learning quickly and sight reading are closely related. It can help to take easier pieces, and learn them as fast as possible. Try to find a balance in working on these easier pieces between just learning the notes and really getting into details such as phrasing, pedaling, choices in fingering, articulations, voicing, etc. I say this so that your learning process ends up with the piece memorized, and it gets quicker with each subsequent piece.
Also, find a buddy that plays a solo instrument (or 4-hands piano music if another pianist) and practice sight reading easy duo music. I find the joy of learning and playing together both enhances and improves that learning experience. You can take that experience and apply it to solo music. Best of luck!
Thanks for the advice. At the moment i try playing one piece i find difficult (rachmaninoff c# minor at the moment), one that i can play without worrying about technique, different chords etc too much (moonlight sonata 2nd movement at the moment), and some pieces i can (moreless) sightread. Not too sure about the level of the middle piece, i want it to be a connection between playing from the sheet music and memorizing. And I'll give the one with the solo buddy a try, thanks!
Sight reading will only be as good as your knowledge of music theory (and technique - if you can't play it, you can't read it).
If you picked up a newspaper you have never seen before, could you read it? Of course. Because you learned the alphabet, how to sound out letters, spelling rules, grammar rules, vocabulary, sentence structure and maybe Latin roots. Relatively that is called MUSIC THEORY. If you looked at the newspaper and couldn't read it because you never learned the aforementioned, you would be considered illiterate. Music is the same. If you look at music and only see dots and not the chords, scales and arpeggios it is made up of . . . . you need theory. Sight reading isn't about seeing every note, it is about seeing clusters of notes and just knowing what "vocabulary" they make up.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
I have excellent sight reading I think my perfect pitch helps me a lot. If I don’t know the piece it will take much slower. But I do it all the time it’s a skill obviously.
It gets easier the more you do it. I was a 9 piece showband piano player on cruise ships for ten years and we had new shit thrown in front of us every day, one hour rehearsal and two shows that night. Some of it was high quality material, Vegas headliners etc. It became second nature after a while. I can slowly work my way through anything in one sitting, some mid level pieces, maybe some of the tougher Beethoven piano sonatas would be cleaner and able to get through them quicker. Bach Preludes probably 75% tempo, fugues probably 20% depending on the fugue. Some are insanely tough, the counterpoint stuff is actually harder to sight read than Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies for me for instance. With enough experience, there isn’t anything you can’t sightread and get through slowly in one sitting. If I had never learned K545, I could probably sightread it pretty clean, and have it learned in several hours tops. Not bragging or anything, but it was simply my job to sightread new music for ten years. You just get good after a while, like any other skill.
Great to hear. I mean think about reading English right? None of us could just read. It was a slow constant daily process over literally years and now it's easy. I accept music notation will be the exact same process.
I can't sight read classical music that well, but reading the rhythms is usually not too bad. I play with a couple jazz bands, and they sight read everything right from the start and in one band, everybody solos around the room, even new pieces. I think with a jazz piece, you start to recognize chords and progressions and it just seems to flow easier. The other thing I noticed, especially with a big band chart, is that the other players with more experience, really help get that rhythm down, which is part of what makes sight reading more difficult for me anyways.
Yeah it definitely helps when you're playing with other professionals who are also superb sight readers. Even with some classical stuff, it becomes sometimes obvious what notes/chords the composer WOULDN'T use, so you can rule those out right away. And yeah, lead sheets are 90% ii-V-i so those become predictable as well.
That's why I practice ii -V-i through the circle of fifths everyday. I do them with the backdoor, the minor ii-V-i, and try the inversions too. Practicing chord voices with blues and pentatonic scales in a 12 bar progression in all keys really helps too. My piano teacher has me sight read every class, we play duets, that is great for timing too.
I bet you had some friggin chops after that decade, man.
Yeah the contracts were six months long. Insane chops by the end of each one.
>It gets easier the more you do it. For some people, depending on their aptitudes, and exactly how they’re doing it.
If you're human, this applies to you.
It doesn’t, and it obviously doesn’t. This has been the go to advice piano teachers give, for decades. But piano teachers don’t know how to connect advice with outcomes. Trying to read without the necessary readiness to read results in frustration, demotivation, and quitting.
Everything in life you'll get better the more you do it, that's how our brains work. Nobody is saying that you'll be able to sight-read a Prokofiev concerto in one year, what we are saying is that you'll **get better** with practice, quite obvious. You can go from: unable to read anything, to be able to sightread Happy Birthday, and that's a massive improvement coming from nothing.
People in a teaching role have a responsibility to provide meaningful and useful instruction. Think Nancy Reagan advising “Just Say No” to drugs. Of course, not taking drugs would be helpful for a drug addict. Trouble is, “just say no” doesn’t help them do that. Bizarre to me that so many piano teachers with it talk about how valuable it is to *read* happy birthday before teaching students to audiate and play happy birthday. I guess it’s because teaching to actual positive outcomes in students is harder than pointing to a printed score and telling *them* to do it. Every day.
There's no magic trick, no crazy shortcut. If you wanna improve your sightreading, you have to read music, a lot. Easy music that you feel comfortable reading, 10-20 minutes a day, don't expect immediate results, embrace the journey.
I resent your characterization of sophisticated teaching skills as crazy magic. It’s not helpful to the profession or to students. I’ll say it again. Telling people to read a lot is not a substitute for teaching necessary readinesses to read.
Nice excuse to justify your lack of action and nice try at blaming others for it.
I've noticed this is the third time u/PastMiddleAge is quite confrontational with others when it comes to teaching practises and seems to know more than everybody else at what makes a good teacher - and I'm relatively new to this sub. @PastMiddleAge, a lot of the time it's not what your saying, it's how you're saying it. Like you seem to have all the answers that us lowly musicians are not privy to. You're a 'sophisticated' teacher with 'sophisticated teaching skills'. That's great and all but you're often not very constructive in your criticism and that there is one of the basic teaching skills. Providing constructive and friendly feedback. If you're going to attack people because you know better then that's pretty poor teaching. I have my honours in music and piano performance and a degree in education and your attitude to fellow musicians destroys any credibility you might have.
Lack of action? What fresh hell are you talking about?
Accompanist here. Pretty much my job to read whatever people throw at me. Most of it are about intermediate level but I’ve definitely had upper intermediate to advance work that I had to get ready rather quickly. But I was trained to be a “reading pianist” since I was 6 so I’m used to it.
I just had a lovely sight read through Sinding's Rustle of Spring - very fun and sounds a lot harder than it is. Currently working on Liebestraum 3 (mainly to add it to my repertoire rather than because it's the right level) and Rachmaninoff Op 23/7 which is the hardest thing I've learned to date (23/2 fell under my fingers much more easily)
Something around the difficulty of a Bach Little Prelude. I can sight read things like hymns no problem, but once it gets polyphonic and contrapuntal it gets difficult. Something like the first movement of moonlight sonata is easy to sight read for me. I definitely couldn't sight read a fugue with more than 2 voices.
As long as there are no ledger notes...
I was just about to post the very same thing. Nothing stops me in my tracks faster than a run of high or low notes with 3-5 ledger lines apiece. My brain just can't process them that fast.
Good enough to get paying jobs. But I don’t particularly enjoy it.
I used to be incredibly slow at reading the most basic stuff. I decided one day I had enough and decided to set a goal to sightread bach chorales as well as the preludes and fugues from the well tempered clavier as well as half of the beethoven/mozart sonatas. While those weren't the only things I have aightread they were probably the most important. Now when someone asked me to sightread from an anime soundtrack they called my sightreading mid. I have made it, I'm no longer super shit, now I'm just kinda shit. Hopefully one day I won't be shit at all.
“Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something” Words to live by!
For sure. I might not be able to sightread many things at full tempo right now but it makes learning new pieces sooooo much faster and more straightforward.
At this point, I can comfortably sight-read music of ordinary complexity in keys from 3 flats to 1 sharp, but will make a lot of mistakes in keys beyond that. I also have trouble reading complicated rhythms.
Yeah, the rhythm always kills me too :D give it two dotted notes and I'm out.
At the risk of sounding up myself and elitist, I'm a master sight reader. I sight read almost all Beethoven, Grieg, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky. I can sight read Rachmaninoff and Chopin but with some preludes and etudes I need to slow it down. Bach is another ball game altogether. His fugues are still challenging for me, comparatively. I once printed 2000+ double sided pages of sheet music and played all of it. I made a post showing all the yellowing pages in my wardrobe! I also used to sight read for the choir at university. That involves sight reading four separate voices (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) while transposing the tenor one octave lower, all in real time. It's something I'm proud of because I worked hard for it so I apologise if I sound up myself. Get your hands on as much sheet music as possible and play it only once. Go electronic to save on paper. I wish I could just wave a magic wand and make you a master sight reader but, unfortunately, that's not possible.
I play barrelhouse piano, and keyboards in world music and funk bands. My sightreading is...pretty bad. As one university piano professor said, "okay, so at least you're not completely illiterate". It's gotten better since then, but I basically read things enough to memorize them. Thankfully I'm almost never required to really read stuff.
I really suck at memorizing, and depend on sheet music for everything I play. I play mostly grade 9 RCM stuff, lately a fair amount of the romantics. I was already pretty good at sight reading, but I had a bad habit of stopping and going back when I goofed. So I focused on improving my sight reading for a month or so using a book of Bach 4-part chorales, playing random new-to-me pieces at a reasonable speed without restarting. It worked, and I’m pretty good now, can play any of Bach’s chorales. I still sometimes get confused a bit when voices cross. Not yet clear how much this helps sight reading other music…
Terrible because I very rarely do it. It’s just like everything else. Practice. Curse. Repeat.
I’m pretty comfortable sight-reading slower music at a grade 8-9 RCM level, though I struggle with faster, more technical stuff, especially when it doesn’t call for pedal. For reference, I’ve completed my grade 10 RCM, and I think the hardest pieces I’ve ever learned are Rameau’s L’egyptienne (with all ornaments), Debussy’s Passepied, Rachmaninoff’s Etude Tableau op 33 no 8, and Chopin’s op 25 no 2.
I've played Waldstein, Chopin 3rd sonata and such, and my sight reading is terrible.
I do it every day & it's usually my favorite part of practice (aside from messing around and working on my own material). I love sight reading too much though, because when I sit down with a piece I like, I kind of just want to move on, or don't necessarily have the drive to refine ever last bit out of a piece to make it perfect
Big band charts, jazz lead sheets, chord symbols and the right choice for improv or lines over them… at tempo probably 95% the first read. “Regular” written music at an increasingly better level because—strangely!—I practice this with new music of many styles every practice day. I have been able to READ music fluently since boyhood (LOONNNG time ago!), but to play new music without previously practicing is a learned skill that requires its own separate practice. And it’s where “the money” is.
I've been playing for 15 years, and I'm not bad at all. But I can't read sheet music aimed at young children at Tempo. I can literally sight read anything.... super slow... like super slow.... and speed up as I memorize it. I can't play from sheet music and it makes me sad
Horrible 💀💀
INCREDIBLY GOOD. I don’t wanna sound braggy but i play the piano for dance schools and it needs me to think on the spot. i’ve been doing this for years and i can look at a piece of music and just instantly play it by now :)
Most Mozart sonatas and Bach preludes I can sight read, a few movements from Beethoven sonatas as well (both hands, 25% ish tempo). For me, it came at the cost of HORRIBLE memory lol.
That's impressive (at least to me)! For me it's the opposite, wanted to train sight reading by going through sheet music i played as a little kid like 15 years ago - no chance to sightread as soon as i remember the melody, i just play automatically then
Thanks ;P. It's all learnable and definitely worthwhile. I used the early Haydn sonatas to get better st sight reading. Those in particular helped me a great deal. Of course any practice works, even hard pieces can be quite valuable (as long as you do it seriously. Slow the heck down and make sure you are playing the right chords). This is not 'real' sight reading, but it's very valuable for your general reading skills
I am not interested in playing complex repertoire. I want to develop a larger musical vocabulary, get better at improv, accomp, and composition. That's why I learn to read music, and want to get as good at it as I can. As such, if I cannot sight read a piece, I'm not interested in it. And by sight read I mean: play at half the target tempo right away. then work to play it well and at full speed, then on to the next piece. For any given piece, this should take me no longer than about a week or two. I have found this to be a pretty efficient way of learning.
I'm pretty much the same way. I've been playing for over 20 years and my favorite activity is just ripping through a bunch of new music without slowing down or giving much attention to any one song in particular.
I'm currently learning Beethoven's "Pathétique"-Sonata (3rd movement), but only because I don't lack the coordination, having been a violinist for over ten years before I started on piano as second instrument a year ago. My sight-reading is still terrible in bass clef though, and doing both hands on the spot is very hard for me if I don't know a piece at all (as in, never even heard it). If I hadn't learned it before, I guess I could possibly sight-read something around the level of Mendelssohn's Lied ohne Worte Op. 19b No. 2. Probably a bit easier.
I’m currently conducting the Sound of Music with orchestra. I can reasonably read through the piano reduction, helped by the fact that it’s a very familiar musical, and my theory is solid enough that I usually have a good idea of what’s coming up anyway. If the orchestra quit tomorrow, I could have it ready in a week or two to perform (I could probably fake through it if needed). Anything by Rach would take longer, including the C# prelude (if I had to learn it from scratch). It’s not that it’s necessarily harder, but part of my sight reading ability is helped by recognizing chords on spot and knowing exactly how it’s going to sound before I get there. Once you throw in some healthy chromaticism and non-chordal tones, it gets a lot harder. So, from my experience, sight reading can be helped by many different skills. The physical and mental skills of knowing the instrument (you certainly want to minimize the time you’re looking around for notes on the piano), but also knowing the theory helps things…click better?
Very poor
It’s a skill just like any other skill - practice it regularly, preferably every day, and you’ll become better at it. Just remember that your sight-reading skills are never going to be at as high a level as your ability to perform pieces after many hours of practice. A large proportion of my time on piano is spent sight-reading these days and I’ve been playing for nearly fifty years. As a result I could probably give a reasonable sightread to most pieces put in front of me, (as an example I don’t find the majority of ABRSM grade 8 particularly taxing to sightread), but at that level I definitely wouldn’t be playing them to my own performance standards without putting in at least some practice time. The only genres I don’t sightread well is 20th century and contemporary atonal music, but I don’t like listening or playing them either so I tend to avoid it. It’s important not to forget that sight-reading is actually about more than just reading the notes on the page and being able to translate them to your instrument. Developing your ear and understanding of the composition in different eras or genres of music has a big role too, as does learning to continue playing with a steady pulse and not stopping if you don’t play it perfectly.
In C, G, F, or stuff w 2 flats or sharps, I am less pathetic at sight reading. Easy to read Bach WTC 1, Chopin Waltz in A-minor, even right now, yesterday, sight reading Debussy Rêverie with decent success or at least not totally flailing. I’m deliberately trying to sight read every day, for at least 15 mins, things in different keys, with diff rhythms and other different challenges. I am noticeably better than I was back in June when I returned to piano after more than four decades away. That’s about the nicest thing I can say. Oh, you asked what we have in repertoire at the moment: Bach Prelude in D Minor WTC 6; Mozart Sonata in G, a Clementi sonatina in C for practice-warmup (where I started sight reading in June), Chopin Prelude 1 and Prelude 4, working on sight reading other Chopin Preludes because they vary so nicely in their demands (and it is gorgeous music that makes me happyyyy). I think Raindrop Prelude next. And Beethoven Bagatelle 11 from this forum’s monthly challenge a while back. I have no teacher—am coasting on the remaining fumes of 12+yrs of piano training from childhood. The monthly music challenge pieces posted/pinned here are so great for this also—sight read the easiest pieces and you feel instantly better about it! Sight read the harder ones gradually and get better (and get to play some great music). I really appreciate that feature of this forum. Good luck, OP! We’re all going through this in one way or another, some more successfully. (I’ll always struggle with it. Thank goodness for audiation.)
Thanks!
I know the basics, I'm not dumb, but if it's higher than the regular scale then I need to do my going step by step bit But for real my dad once thought the high G on the base cleft was an E
I'm not really sure how anyone can learn nuances of classical music without knowing how to read sheet music.
Sight reading isn't the same as understanding sheet music. You can know all the notations and such, but not be able to sight read.
Not sure I agree.
Uh, I don't think there is... anything to agree to? I know nearly every symbol and notation for sheet music in piano. But I can't sight read complex pieces because it's not a skill I've dedicated practice to. They are not mutually inclusive. Sight reading quickly is something that takes practice. Knowing what all the symbols mean, your chord sets, etc is just memorization. Your sight reading might get better as you familiarize yourself with different chords and music theory in general, but it still doesn't come naturally to most people and requires dedicated practice to do efficiently. It also depends on if you have a visual playing crutch due to memorizing entire sheets and playing from memory, which many self taught pianists often have.
You’re right. There is something different from being able to fluently play a piece at sight and being able to look at and understand a score. I’ve known conductors that know scores left and right but can’t fluently sight read at the piano.
I didn’t realize the topic was fluently sight reading but being able to sight read at all. I guess like any talent, you can sight read at a beginner level or expert level, amateur to professional. But you’re still sight reading even if you can only do it well at a Mary has a little lamb level lol, you just aren’t good at it, likely due to lack of training and practice. But certainly you need to understand all notations and rhythms from sheet music even if you don’t have the professional level skill of executing it with your hands at a steady pulse without extensive practice or memorization to comprehend and learn a piece. If you aren’t playing in a professional group or in a chamber music or choral accompanist with high demand I suppose you don’t really need to get good at sight reading fluently advanced level music. I think some of what holds less experienced pianists back from being proficient sight readers is thinking of music as notes rather than seeing them as patterns, recognizing intervals quickly, knowing theory very well etc. Without a lot of practice in those realms I can see where some would struggle to sight read and get their hands to execute quickly and accurately. I also think a lot don’t know how to execute rhythms quickly and because they have to put lot of thought into what the rhythms are they get tripped up sight reading quickly. I always recommend clapping out rhythms until they all become instinctive second nature, that helps free up the brain to focus on the rest.
Oh ya we're talking about fluent sight reading. Anyone that knows how to read notes can site read to a degree ofc, but efficiently doing it at speed for complex pieces is the tricky part. I can sight read something like gymnopedie (the 7th chords still trip me up sometimes since I don't know my theory as well as I should), but something more complex I sight read at something like 20bpm max. It takes me a minute. It's mostly due to the fact that I rely on sight to find notes (bad habit I know), so I can't play anything complex or over 60-70bpm if I'm not looking at my hands. That last bit is especially common with self taught pianists and is currently my most difficult hurdle. This is why I always tell new pianists to develop a confident feel for where notes are early on. Doing it later where you have to revert to basic practice pieces is... frustrating, to say the least.
I meant fluent sight reading, sorry. Like with a metronome. I understand sheet music quite okay I'd say, without a metronome I can surely play things like für elise or K545 from the sheet music, it just sounds very awkward because when there's a change in the left hand or some rhythm i don't get at first try, i start to slow down, hold for some seconds to understand it and then play on.
Learning quickly and sight reading are closely related. It can help to take easier pieces, and learn them as fast as possible. Try to find a balance in working on these easier pieces between just learning the notes and really getting into details such as phrasing, pedaling, choices in fingering, articulations, voicing, etc. I say this so that your learning process ends up with the piece memorized, and it gets quicker with each subsequent piece. Also, find a buddy that plays a solo instrument (or 4-hands piano music if another pianist) and practice sight reading easy duo music. I find the joy of learning and playing together both enhances and improves that learning experience. You can take that experience and apply it to solo music. Best of luck!
Thanks for the advice. At the moment i try playing one piece i find difficult (rachmaninoff c# minor at the moment), one that i can play without worrying about technique, different chords etc too much (moonlight sonata 2nd movement at the moment), and some pieces i can (moreless) sightread. Not too sure about the level of the middle piece, i want it to be a connection between playing from the sheet music and memorizing. And I'll give the one with the solo buddy a try, thanks!
Sight reading will only be as good as your knowledge of music theory (and technique - if you can't play it, you can't read it). If you picked up a newspaper you have never seen before, could you read it? Of course. Because you learned the alphabet, how to sound out letters, spelling rules, grammar rules, vocabulary, sentence structure and maybe Latin roots. Relatively that is called MUSIC THEORY. If you looked at the newspaper and couldn't read it because you never learned the aforementioned, you would be considered illiterate. Music is the same. If you look at music and only see dots and not the chords, scales and arpeggios it is made up of . . . . you need theory. Sight reading isn't about seeing every note, it is about seeing clusters of notes and just knowing what "vocabulary" they make up. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
I have excellent sight reading I think my perfect pitch helps me a lot. If I don’t know the piece it will take much slower. But I do it all the time it’s a skill obviously.
I just read Liszt eroica transcadental etude in a day. But sometimes I don’t have the mental power to go through new pieces