6 Principles to Improve Your Sight-reading Skills

hi there this is Dr Ting Ting Zhang I'm a classical pianist and piano educator welcome to my channel recently I made a video on how to practice sight reading I explained and demonstrated a standard procedure check out the link below if you haven't watched it that video is a basic guide on practicing sight reading there are more things I want to talk about so in today's video let's take one step further I want to share six principles that can help improve your sight reading skills later in the video I also have suggestions for advanced level pianists who want to take their sight reading to the next level improving site reading skills essentially is to develop good reading habits in my years of teaching I noticed there are some common mistakes that students make all the time if you are self-taught you're probably not aware of them this is why I will start with two most common mistakes these are the things we should try to avoid during sight reading if you found yourself doing them in the past it's time to break that habit number One never go back to fix wrong notes or wrong Rhythm during sight reading you must learn to ignore your mistakes and keep going to finish the piece this is a fundamental difference between sight reading and practicing when you practice a piece you need to repeat the same place over and over in order to play it smoothly or fix any problems you might have in other words to perfect it sight reading however is not about playing the piece perfectly it's about getting a general idea of the piece on your first try and during that process try to be as accurate as you can but you will have flaws here and there the most important thing is to keep the flow of the music do not pause or stop in the middle playing a few run notes is no big deal but if you constantly stop go back or repeat the same measure instead of moving forward then it becomes a big problem so let's resist the tendency to go back and accept our imperfections inside reading number two try not to look down at your hands during sight reading instead keep your eyes on the music the reason is simple it helps to maintain the momentum of your playing when you look up and down between the music and the keyboard the shift of your tension will distract you or even interrupt your playing and it's very easy to lose your place in both so let me show you the right way to sight read here I have a Clementi sonatina this is the one in C major offers 36 number three by the way this is an intermediate level piece I'm going to go slowly because that's how you do for sight reading [Music] [Applause] see you only look down occasionally when there's a hand position change and I would say 80 of the time your eyes should remain on music I understand this can be challenging for some of you because you have to be familiar with the keyboard to feel secure enough not to look down at your fingers while playing right it definitely takes time to build that security and confidence but it's the right thing to do in most beginning to early intermediate level pieces the notes are very close to one another mostly moving in steps and skips so you don't need to look down at the keyboard to find every single note for intermediate to advanced level pianists since you have been playing piano for quite some time your fingers know the keyboard so trust your fingers and let them do the job the only time they need your visual guidance is when there's a big leap or a transition for instance in this piece between measure four and five the right hand moves down slightly so you want to look at the keys and make sure it goes to the right place and here and then the other place is between measure eight and nine see the right hand moves down a lot almost an octave you definitely need to look down at the keys but then after that your eyes just go back to the page and then finally there's another place see here we have a big transition this is the Cadence of C major and then we're going to G major so you definitely want to look down and make sure your hands are going to the right place now let's move on to the right things number one always look ahead when you play this is the most important principle of sight reading let me explain how it works when you play the first measure ideally your eyes should be looking at the next measure so you're reading one measure ahead or at least a half a measure ahead of what you're playing this is what professional pianists do when they sight read and why is that if your eyes don't move fast enough when you get to the end of a measure you will inevitably stop on the bar line because you don't know what to play next you haven't looked yet so your eyes must move at a faster speed than your fingers to avoid pausing or stopping after every measure I know this is not easy especially For Less experienced pianos sometimes when they look ahead they mess up the current measure they are playing this problem is very common one is because they don't know the notes well enough so they move very slowly from note to note the other is that you have to understand side reading is a complicated task it requires a high level of coordination between our brain eyes and hands it takes time and lots of practice to train different parts of our body to work together it's easier for kids than adults so if you learn piano as an adult please be patient it will take you some time to get used to looking ahead while playing the solution to this problem is to always play Slowly for sight reading so that you give yourself plenty of time to play and look at the same time gradually this will become a habit your eyes will automatically look for coming notes for you number two try to read the notes in groups instead of one by one it will be even better if you can scan the entire measure all at once this goes hand in hand with the principle I've just discussed because you can read the notes faster you will be able to look ahead more easily over the years of my teaching I have an interesting observation I found students who are very good at site reading are also fast and efficient readers in real life that's because music reading and Tax rating have many similarities an efficient reader doesn't read word by word he sees the whole sentence he might even skip a few words but can still comprehend the text well because he kind of predicts what is coming this is exactly the scale we need in music reading let me give you an example let's look at another sonatina by Clementi this one is in G major Opus 36 number two by the way these are great teaching pieces for intermediate level students at the beginning I'm looking at four notes at a time and then recognize the first measure is just G major broken chord and then when we get to measure five this is just the second inversion of G major and then I see there are some scales coming [Music] okay just by scanning this measure I see the left hand has the D major scale so I'm not going to read every single note [Music] after that it's just a repeat [Applause] slightly different you see of course this comes with experience but you can train yourself to do the same three years of learning and playing you're developing the ability to recognize the patterns the freight structures the chord progressions Etc all these knowledge and experience will help you comprehend and anticipate what is coming in the music so when you practice sight reading be more aware of these things and really try to read the notes in groups even if you're still a beginner you should try to look at three or four notes at a time instead of each individual note that's how you start building a good habit number three know your music theory it's not so obvious that theory would affect your sight reading proficiency but it really does for instance when you sideway the piece with multiple sharps or flats it can be difficult to remember to play all of them if you're not familiar with the key signatures or skills also in my last video I talked about finding patterns and doing a little analysis before site reading a piece without any knowledge of Music Theory it would be impossible to recognize the tonic chord dominant sevens or Cadence this is why I strongly recommend learning some basic Theory as well as practicing the major and minor skills arpeggios Triads seventh chords and inversions on a regular basis not only do they develop your Technique but also improve your sight reading another principle is when learning a new piece try to play hands together the very first time the only exception is when learning Bach because it's polyphonic there are multiple voices it's always better to play hand separately at first but for all other pieces you should try both hands I know some students would like to start with one hand at a time that's a good strategy for practicing but not so good for side reading we pianists need to train ourselves to read two steps at the same time even if you feel it's difficult and it takes a long time to finish reading the piece you need to step out of your comfort zone and push yourself in the right direction I always tell my students if your reading is slow don't say read the whole piece break it down do a small part at a time for example you can start with four measures or eight measures then expanded to 16 measures do it incrementally sight reading takes a lot of brain power and your mind will get tired after a while so limit your reading to 10 or 15 minutes at a time depending on your level and attention span stay focused and keep yourself engaged are the way to go alright before I move on to the suggestions for advanced level pianos I just want to say it takes time to get better at sight reading some people are unnaturally faster some need to put in more effort keep in mind when you practice sight reading two things really matter one is quantity the other is consistency quantity means you need to sight read a good number of pieces before seeing any Improvement by the way don't sign read the same piece more than three times newness is the key you want to play it leave it then move on to something else consistency obviously means you need to keep doing it cite read regularly say two to three times a week and keep up the routine for three to six months I guarantee you will see the progress another thing to consider is to pick something easier than your actual level because the goal of sight reading practice is to develop good habits you want to implement all the things we discussed earlier when a piece is too difficult you're simply overwhelmed most likely you will be making many mistakes and you won't be able to look ahead or read the notes in groups so for Less experienced pianists you actually will be making more progress by sight reading easier pieces finally for advanced pianos and college piano major students if you want to take your site reading skills to the next level I recommend you collaborate with other instrumentalists and singers as often as possible one thing I noticed when I was in music school is that students who played a lot of accompaniments are all excellent at site reading that's because they constantly practice sight reading and many piano accompaniments or orchestra reductions are very tricky sometimes they are even harder than solo pieces so if you want to continue getting better at sight reading you should do the same I always encourage my Advanced students to play chamber music with their schoolmates or a company for their school musicals you will grow so much from these experiences plus it's always fun to collaborate with other musicians another thing that will help is to learn more contemporary pieces such as builds of Lickety cutter correliano and so on many of the 20th century pieces are a tonal and have complicated rhythms they are very challenging to learn however if you get yourself some exposures in these repertoires you will expand your Horizon and push your sight reading skills to a whole new level then when you come back to the more traditional repertoire you will feel it's a piece of cake thank you for watching Chinese ideas and let me know how they work for you meanwhile if you still have any questions regarding sight reading or piano playing in general feel free to comment below and don't forget to subscribe I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Tingting Zhang

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Keywords: 6 Principles to improve your sight reading skills, how to improve sight reading, ways to improve piano sight reading, how to practice sightreading, how to improve sightreading, piano sightreading, intermediate level piano sightreading, advanced piano sightreading, 6 tips on piano sight reading, Tingting Zhang piano studio, teaching sight-reading, how to teach piano sight reading, Dr. tingting zhang pianist, develop good sightreading skills

Id: 2swt4N-O5G4

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 21 2023