Are there any other habits you have noticed that you have while sight-reading? Any other sight-reading tips for pianists, which you have found useful? I am an excellent sight-reader as I have always been exposed to it. Since a very young age, my father, who is an amateur violinist, used to put new scores on the piano stand for me to play various duets with him and I must say that it was a phenomenal school. Sight reading ability depends on a set of foundational skills that are sometimes called musicianship. We hope that you now feel a little more confident and ready to jump into sight reading practice. Make sure you have plenty of pieces of music in different styles ready to practice with. With patience and focus, you’ll start to see huge progress in your ability as a musician.

Sight Reading for Beginners-All you need to make Progress Sight Reading for Beginners-All you need to make Progress

When you are a beginner, sight reading is difficult as there’s an awful lot to think about and process. You’ve got the notes to read, the fingers to co-ordinate, you’ve got to maintain a steady pulse etc. A crotchet (quarter note) is one regardless of which beat it is in the bar. It doesn’t matter if it’s on the second beat or the fourth, it still takes the value of one. So count everything individually. By using the metronome you are gradually building up the skills and helping your brain decode everything, one step at a time. If you’ve gotten fairly good at sight reading and want a challenge, you might want to test out your skills.

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Whether this is right or wrong is not for me to say; it’s just how it is. However, it means that pianists need to specifically work hard on their sight reading, in a way that is just part and parcel of the learning experience of a string player or a wind player. When the music stops, you’ve got to keep clapping and count through four bars of silence. That’s 16 claps that you’ve got to maintain at the same tempo, and on the 17th clap shout “NOW”. For many students, this means stepping out of their comfort zone. However, one of the hardest things about sight reading is maintaining fluency. It’s, therefore, easier to count each note as a single unit makes sight reading rhythm that bit more manageable.

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If you want to make it a bit more challenging, you could try playing a scale using these rhythms. For example, if you were practising violin sight reading, you could play D major as shown below. Now you can have fun playing spot the difference”: Imogen Heap shares photos of her in the studio working on Taylor Swift’s new version of Clean, taken from the re-recorded 1989 album This article may contain compensated links. Please read my disclaimerpolicy for more info. What is sight reading? If you maintain the same tempo, you should snap your fingers at precisely the same time as you did on the recording.

The act of playing a piece of music at first sight; without ever having seen or practiced it before.” To prepare yourself for this learning journey, make sure you have a steady supply of new music. This might sound like it would be difficult, expensive, or both. But there are plenty of resources offering free or cheap new pieces. Hopefully, this article has given you plenty of ideas of how you can up-level your sight reading skills. The most important thing about improving sight reading is consistency. Like everything in music if you practice little and often you’ll soon make progress. A description of the beats of music. (What pitches occur on each beat? How are the beats grouped into meter? What happens between the beats?)