How to be a Good Sight-Reader

 Sight reading is an essential skill for any musician. If playing as part of a group, it is common to be given new music ‘cold’ at the start of a rehearsal and it is vital that you can keep going in time with the rest of the ensemble, with reasonably accurately rhythm and dynamics (more so than pitch), in the correct key. Imagine the cacophony of noise that would result if the whole ensemble had a stop/start approach to sight reading in order to correct their mistakes and were therefore consistently playing different parts of the piece at the same time, dodgy rhythms, incorrect dynamics so they stood out when they should have been accompanying, little or no concept of key, and many wrong notes! Now imagine that rhythms are correct, players keep going and play through their mistakes, key is grasped, even though there are wrong notes along the way – suddenly you can hear the piece come together – the wrong notes are quickly passed over and don’t really matter too much at this stage!

Even as a solo instrumentalist, sight reading is vital as it can give you a feel for a new piece before you start to unpick it to learn in detail. It teaches you what to look for when studying a piece; key, patterns, time signature, rhythms, dynamics, articulation – all the things you are looking for when sight reading, are the same things that you look for when starting a new piece. Understanding what makes a piece of music requires exactly the same analysis skills as sight reading does. The good news is that sight reading is a skill that can be learnt, just like all other aspects of musicianship, all it requires is understanding and practice!

 

 Sight reading – the basics

In order to be able to start to work on sight reading, the following skills need to be worked at first:-

• Rhythm – identifying and clapping the rhythms in the piece. French rhythm names are very helpful here
• Note reading – a good grasp of the notes over the range within the piece
• Identification and understanding of dynamics, musical expressions, and articulation markings
• Being adept at independent finger use, and understanding of fingering requirements
• Understanding of key signatures, and accidentals within the piece
• Time signatures – knowledge of the different feel of different time signatures and the ability to put this into your playing
• Understanding of chord patterns – while this isn’t needed for lower exam grade sight reading, this is essential if we think of sight reading as a skill in the broader sense. Pop tunes, film music as well as much classical music require knowledge of chords for left hand accompaniment parts.

As you can see – there is a lot to put in place before we even start to think about sight reading a piece! Among the resources I use to help build these skills is an excellent series of books by Samantha Coates; ‘How to Blitz Sight-reading’, which breaks down each of the areas into bite-sized chunks to practise, with stickers as rewards.

    Sight Reading for Exams

When we get to the stage of focussed practising of sight reading pieces for exam purposes, analysis sheets are useful to help focus on areas that need attention. I use a tick box sheet for my pupils, for them to consider different aspects of their sight reading (adapted from one from The Curious Piano Teachers). This helps pupils to direct their practise towards the areas that need the most attention. For exam purposes, it is generally accepted that the level of a sight reading piece that an instrumentalist should be able to play is two grades below their actual level, so grade 3 pianists are expected to be able to sight read grade 1 level pieces. This is a useful rule of thumb when practising sight reading, as any music will do for practise – that old exam pieces book, or tutor book can provide a wealth of alternative sight reading practise, as can playing anything at all of that level which can be more fun than just ploughing through sample exam sight-reading pieces! How about playing through some pieces from musicals for example? It really is all about the quantity of playing, but in a mindful way so that pupils assess what was easy or hard and think about that next time!

 

    Improving Sight Reading – Analysis Sheet

    What makes really good sight readers stand out?

All good sight readers have the basics already discussed totally cracked; understanding rhythm, pitch, key, patterns, dynamics and articulation markings, but there are additional things that take them to the next level:-

• They can very quickly scan the music looking for all of these, together with repeated sections, or the tune appearing in another key & how it changes along the way.
• Complicated sections are edited when they play them – chords simplified, octaves played as single notes, keeping going with the bass part while sorting out the right hand, playing the correct rhythm even if the pitch isn’t accurate all the time
• Educated guesses become important, especially for large jumps and multiple leger lines – often these will be octaves, and there’s no time to confirm this by working it out!
• Good sight readers use their knowledge of structure, chords and harmony to predict what is going to happen next, particularly important over a page turn, but also to predict what key the original melody is likely to return in.
• Fake showmanship or fudging is also essential! Keep a poker face and the listeners will usually believe you are playing what is actually on the page – don’t draw attention to errors!

(Ref:-  ‘Five things all good sight readers do’ – Samantha Coates)

The eventual aim with sight reading is to give a fluent performance. This is something that requires practise – the skills can and will develop over time, but won’t just happen by accident! The good news is that this is achievable, and that developing sight reading skills will enrich a pupil’s piano playing as they will be able pick up pieces they want to play and have a good go at them, getting a feel for the music and having fun with it – the piano world is at their fingertips and sight reading is one way to help unlock it!