Improving Sight-reading

Improving Sight-Reading

Sight-reading is a valuable skill for the musician. It can help the musician to learn music more quickly, which enables them to broaden their repertoire more easily. It also makes it more feasible for them to play with others. Consequently it can facilitate greater enjoyment of music-making. There are a number of tips a teacher can give for improving sight reading.

Firstly (and fundamentally), we need to help the student to learn the notes on the staves. Drill cards and fun exercises can be used for this. Students can then be assisted in practicing finding groups of notes with set patterns (e.g. scales ascending and descending by step, notes on successive lines/spaces on the stave (i.e. thirds apart) etc.

Having developed some familiarity with the notes themselves and the intervals between them, pupils should be encouraged to keep their eyes focused on the written music and not their hands where possible. This is essential to maintain continuity of eye movement from left to right, which is essential for the interrupted perception of note groups.  Elementary exercises can be devised to assist this. For example, using the first five notes of a C major scale (CDEFG) in the right hand, we can encourage the pupil to ‘prepare’ their hand in advance with the thumb on C and fifth finger on G, telling them that they won’t need to look at either hand again for the duration of the ‘piece’ because all of their fingers are already in place. This encourages them to ‘feel’ which finger to use for each note and cultivates confidence that they can play something without looking at their hands.

The level of difficulty of the music selected should be such that it is fairly challenging but not so difficult that the pupil is unable to get through it without stopping regularly.  They should feel that it is possible for them to play it well enough for it to flow but challenging to get every note correct on the first attempt. As Newman (Newman 1984, p22) argues, appropriate sight-reading material would be such that the pupil could get four fifths of the notes correct and for the performance to be musical, reproducing as nearly as possible, the composer’s intentions.

Another essential strategy is that the pupil should try to cultivate the habit of looking ahead (i.e. beyond the notes they are currently playing).  Peake (2) cites the method of  encouraging this by using a small piece of card, just long enough and wide enough to cover a line of music. This card is used to cover up, say, the half bar that the pupil is playing. This then forces them to look ahead. Whilst playing the piece, the student can also take advantage of opportunities to look ahead when for example there is a pause in the music, or when there are long notes or rests. In my experience, students often want to go back to the beginning of a piece when they make a mistake. Covering up what they have already played encourages them to look forward rather than backwards.

I also like to encourage pupils to find out as much relevant details about a piece before the have to perform it (e.g. key signature, title of piece etc.). This is particularly useful in graded exams where a small amount of time is allocated for this purpose. I often then ask pupils to tell me what they discover whilst scanning the score, so I can assess what they understand, how quickly they grasp the score’s contents and, in hindsight after the performance, how well they can utilise the information they have acquired.

Choice of tempo is important. One of the aims of sight-reading is to keep the music going even if there is the odd incorrect note. It is therefore essential to consider a tempo that allows this, even if a little on the slow side, as this is preferable and more musically satisfying then frequent stops in the music.

Finally, I would encourage regular practice of sight-reading. In my experience as both pupil and teacher I have found that sight-reading, arguably more than any other music skill, tends to improve gradually and with practice.

Bibliography

1)      Newman, William S., ‘The Pianist’s Problems’, Da Cap Press, 1984

2)      Peake, Emma: ‘Taken as Read’, Music Teacher, July 1999