Music Video Lesson: Faster Sight-Reading: The One CRITICAL STEP You’re Missing

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, Robert Estrin here asking the question, are you missing this critical step for faster sight reading? You know, sight reading was an absolute nightmare for me as a child, even in high school when I was playing very advanced music, Beethoven sonatas, Chopin ballads, Liszt -Hungarian rapses, yet I couldn't read the simplest music. And I discovered how to overcome this. And I'm going to give you the final tip, if you like by the way, this kind of tutorials, check out the description if you really are interested in taking your piano playing to the next level. So I'm going to give you some critical steps and at the end I'm going to give you the one that changed my life and it could change yours too in regards to sight reading if reading music fluently is important to you.

So when you're practicing sight reading, of course you should choose accessible music.

If you're trying to read music that you're stopping and starting every measure and have no sense of rhythm because it's just too hard, obviously that's not going to do you much good. Now you might not like the idea of having such simple music, maybe elementary or beginning methods, but if that's the level you're on, that's the music you should be reading every day because guess what's going to happen? It's going to grow if you do music on your level and learn how to play with continuity, keeping the rhythm going. That's the most important aspect of reading is the continuity of the performance.

The other thing is read every day. You know, you don't have to spend hours with it, but do some each day. It's just like anything else. Think about a young child learning how to read English for the first time.

They better do it on a regular basis or they're not going to get anywhere. Well, it's no different for you. You need to read every day. You don't have to spend a lot of time with it, but make it part of your daily routine in the piano and you'll make great progress.

Another thing is you must keep your eyes on the score. Now sometimes there's leaps you go, well, how can you possibly look? Well, you want to do as much as possible by feel. If you absolutely have to look, you glance with your eyes and that's it. Never look down. The moment you look down, you're not reading anymore. You can't read what you're not looking at. Seems very simple, doesn't it? It's critical that you keep your eyes on the score as much as possible with only the most minute tiny glances when that happens. It's necessary only with your eyes.

Finally, well not finally, I've got so many more it's ridiculous.

Choose a tempo you can maintain. If you start fast and you get slower, then you get faster, you get slower, you're not getting any value out of that. Now you might want to go faster. Maybe there's parts of it you can go faster. Read it slowly a few times through then you'll be able to speed it up. I promise you. But the first time you read it, choose the tempo wisely. Look through the score. Maybe it starts with whole notes and half notes and later on there's eighth notes in it. So make sure you kind of study the score before you start so you know a tempo to choose, right? And the most critical thing I keep talking about is don't stop because reading is not practicing.

You must practice reading by going continuously no matter what and that will train you. Now after you don't want to read through again and again and again missing things without stopping but if you just want to get a feel for what a score is like, reading through even if you don't get everything absolutely perfectly is going to be more valuable than stopping and starting every measure or two because you won't get a sense of what the piece is like at all.

Another thing I've talked about this, this is so vitally important, look at groups of notes like half measures or measures depending upon the nature of the score. Just like with reading English you don't look at every letter, you look at words. It's the same thing with music. You look at chunks. I promised you the ultimate tip would come at the end. Thank you all for staying with me here.

The most important thing that's a game changer and I'll tell you how you can accomplish this is play with other musicians.

Yes, that is what did it for me. It was an epiphany.

At first you might feel that you're doing a terrible job because you're not going to get all the notes and you'll think how can this possibly be tolerable for the musicians you're playing with. The funny thing is so many instrumentalists and singers rarely get an opportunity to play with a piano and think about, you know, we have the luxury of having the complete music when we play, right? If you're playing solo music, if you're playing a clarinet or a flute or a violin, the vast majority of music you're playing is not complete without other instruments, primarily the piano. So when they have an opportunity to play with a piano, even if you're not playing perfectly, it's far and away superior just to give them a sense of what the piece is really like putting it together.

Why it's so valuable for you is that it forces you to keep going. You're not going to stop every measure to otherwise they're not going to stick around for very long. It makes you keep going. You learn to keep your eyes moving, your hands moving, listening and creating something coherent together, which is what it's really all about.

So remember, choose accessible music that you can play, not something that's so hard that you don't have a chance of making a stab at it. Do some reading every day and your reading will grow.

Keep your eyes on the score, on the music, only glance with your eyes if you absolutely have to just for a moment. Choose a tempo you can maintain. It's not going to help to get faster, slower, faster. You have no idea what you're creating then.

Of course, don't stop no matter what, no matter how much you want to correct. Don't get used to reading through. You can go and practice after you're done reading. Give yourself one chance to read through it.

Look at groups of notes, not individual notes. Get a sense of what the structure is so you can play with meaning just like I said, like words instead of letters. Get the meaning of the music.

And finally, the holy grail of developing your reading, play with other musicians. You might wonder how can you possibly do this? Who's going to want to play with you? Lots of people and if you don't have anybody you can think of, children singing nursery rhymes, it could be, or Christmas songs around holidays, anything just so you can read with other people where you can't stop. Find the simplest possible music that has accompaniments that you can play that somebody can either play with you, forehand music if you know anybody else who plays the piano, or songs, simple songs that anybody can sing and find accompaniments with them.

I promise you if you do that, just that final step with none of the other things I've mentioned in here, it will be a game changer for you. Make the effort. You might be thinking, oh I know I can't do that, nobody's, there are people they want a piano accompaniment, I promise you.

So let me know how this works for you in the comments and once again, check out in the description if you really want to learn how to read, how to learn music, how to refine music and how to perform with confidence, I'm here for you. I'm Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/faster-sight-reading-the-one-critical-step-youre-missing/

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