Improving Sight-Reading Skills

How I Train My Students to Sight-Read
With my students, I usually focus on sight-reading every few months, and more frequently with those who really need it. I do a "sight-reading intensive" for about a month, training them to incorporate daily sight-reading into their practice routine.  The aim of the intensive is to build good habits that they will continue, even after the "intensive" is over.

During the sight-reading intensive, I make them sight-read at every lesson for a month, about 5 minutes during each half hour lesson, or 10 minutes during each 45 minute lesson. At the lesson, I often use the "Line a Day" sightreading books.  These are published by Bastien and I can't say enough good things about them. 

For home practice, I loan out used books from my library that are 2 levels below their performance level. This is important!  Do not practice sight-reading at your performance level!  You should always practice sight-reading two levels below your performance level (and some students need to go 3 levels below if their sight-reading is really deficient).  Remember, it has to be easy enough to get it pretty much right on the first try. 

My students have to log in 2 songs a day on the back of their practice sheet. When they come back the next week, I test them on 2 or 3 songs from their log to make sure they truthfully practiced sight-reading.

Mental Preparation of the Score is Key
Yes! Mental preparation is more important than physical preparation. I learned this first-hand by observing the accompanist for our Symphonic Chorus in college.  I never saw her physically practice, but she was always tucked away in a study cubicle, hunkered over her choir scores.  She simply studied her music.  I imagine she also wrote in the chords.  And she was fantastic!  Boy did I learn my lesson by watching her.  Indeed, training them to study their music and analyze it before sight-reading is a must!  Our sight-reading exercises at the lesson begin with me asking the student many questions:

• What is the key signature?
• What is the time signature?
• What is the first note in the right hand?
• What is the first note in the left hand?
• (for beginners) Which hand position is this in?
• (for intermediate and advanced students) Which chords do you see in the left hand?*
• Do you see any scales in that phrase?*
• Do you see any possible trouble spots?

Then I ask them to hear the rhythm in their head before starting (even tap it on their lap).  I follow the procedure outlined in the Line-a-Day books because it is very effective (above list, minus the asterisk items, which are my additions)! Counting out loud is also a huge bonus if they can manage it.   

Sight-Read With a Metronome!
Next it's time to crack the whip! Translation: metronome. We count a measure out loud first, then proceed to sight-read.  Be careful to set the tempo to something slow like 50.  Here are my guidelines for sight-reading:

• During metronomic practice, going backward to correct your mistakes is against the law.
• Just keep one hand going if you have to! 
• Don't panic when you mess up.
• Just ad-lib. As long as it's in the scale, make something up if you have to.  But keep the beat going. I tell them that this is valuable training for playing with their future rock band (the music goes on, with or without you). They have to keep up!

You Must See the Chords in Your Music to Be a Good Sight-Reader!
I can't stress this enough!  As soon as chords start appearing in the child's music, you must train the child to recognize chords within his/ her music.  Chords are to music as words are to language.  Not seeing a chord is like reading the word "chord" as an illiterate person.  You only see the letters C-H-O-R-D, not a word.  The same thing applies in music reading.  If we don't see that C-E-G spells C major, our reading speed suffers.

Sight-Reading - Why It's Important

I have often felt that there are two types of musicians -- those who are readers and those who are not.  This division becomes quite striking when teaching piano.  Most piano methods introduce music-making through the process of reading notes.  And traditional piano teachers using these methods tend to reward the readers.  "Readers" are the machine-like data processors who can quickly gobble up notes and convert them into action at the speed of light.  But sometimes, those sight-reading whiz kids are devoid of emotion.  These students dazzle us with their speed and execution, but oftentimes, they don't move us. 

In the other camp are the intuitive, right-brained, expressive types (me).  Such students fall naturally into playing by ear, which leads to improvisation and composition.  They play with a soulful depth that has moved me to tears at many recitals.  For this type of student, however, the task of decoding notes is much more difficult than figuring it out by ear.  I used to think that these students just couldn't read.  But, since overcoming my own reading handicap, I believe the sight-reading failure of many students is simply the result of laziness; that, and lack of music theory training.

Why bother reading when your ear and intuition can figure it out faster?   With a little trial and error and a good ear, one can bypass the data-processing step altogether.  Reading notes is just one more chore.  And it slows us down.  We're impatient.  We want instant gratification.  Reading at our performance level, on the other hand, means delayed gratification; not something we're very fond of in a culture of microwaved meals and instant messaging.

It has long been my goal as a piano teacher to save these artist-students -- the aural geniuses -- from falling through the cracks.  But I don't want to give them a false sense of ego.  Not everyone can expect to have the success Paul McCartney had without reading or writing music (Beatles veteran and composer Paul McCartney does not read or write music).  They are going to need more than a good ear to make a living in music, should they choose that route.  My experience, for example, has taught me that sight-reading skills greatly increase one's marketability as a musician. Without my sight-reading skills (something I have worked very hard on), I would miss out on a significant portion of my income that comes from accompanying, musical theatre, and church music.  If you can only play by ear, your options as a perfomer will be very limited!  Furthermore, you won't be able to write down those great ideas you have because you don't understand the visual language of notation.  This is why it's important to train students to read well.

So how do you keep the mini-Mozarts from melting into a puddle of tears over their reading challenges?  First, convince them of the value of sight-reading.  You remind them that Beethoven and Chopin did not just compose; they could read and write music as well.  In fact, they wrote their own music without the help of notation software or an orchestrator.  A healthy dose of reality doesn't hurt either.  So I always share the hard-knocks tales of several "by ear" players I taught who thought pretty highly of themselves until they unsuccessfully tried out for jazz band or choir accompanying at the local high school.  Little did they know that their director would expect them to read well.  Yes, even the jazz band director wants good readers!

See my next post to learn how I teach sight-reading.