HOW TO BE A SIGHT READING PRO (PART ONE) | EFFICIENT PRACTICE TIPS

do you want to be a better sight reader but you don't really know where to start after this video you're going to be on your way to being a sight reading pro hey guys it's maria welcome back to my channel i post videos every single thursday giving you guys the best tips and tools for being more effective in your practice sessions and helping you achieve your musical goals so if you're new consider subscribing this week i'm back with another episode of the efficient practice series last week we talked about how to find time to practice so if you haven't seen that video it will be linked up here but this week we're talking about sight reading a lot of you guys have been asking for sight reading tips and anyone who knows me knows that i am obsessed with sight reading i love the thrill of not knowing what piece i'm gonna be playing or what it sounds like i also love the lack of accountability because you can't get in trouble if you didn't practice a piece that you're sight reading and i always just love the challenge so this video is gonna be part one to the sight reading tips we're gonna start off by talking about one very important but often overlooked thing about sight reading then i'm gonna get into three actionable tips that you guys can use right now to become better sight readers and make sure you stick around till the end of the video because i'm going to be sight reading a real piece that i've never seen before using these tips so let's get into the video alright so before we get into any of these tips it's important to remember that in order to get better at anything including sight reading you actually have to put in the work and practice you can't learn to ride a bike by watching a video or however the saying goes and you can't learn to sight read by watching a video either so the first thing you have to do is to build sight reading into your daily warm-up routine pretty much this is a non-negotiable the only exception i can think of is if you're a music school or wherever and you're so swamped with different pieces just you have to play and learn um for different occasions that a you don't have time to change up your warm-up routine maybe you don't even have time for a warm-up routine and second you don't need to practice your sight reading because you're already practicing your sight reading by learning all these new pieces two composers that are fantastic to start consciously practice your sighting with um are clementi and scarlotti and that's because they are so diatonic which means not much chromaticism and they're very not dense in texture so if you're just getting started definitely don't want to go with my enough or tchaikovsky or even beethoven because they're polyphonically a lot more complex composers like scarlotti and clementi are so fantastic for beginner sight readers and even advanced site readers because they are so simple to play i'm not saying that they're easier to play than some romantic composers of course each composer comes with their own set of difficulties but they are fantastic for sight reading because they are simple in texture and they're diatonic which means that you can self-correct as you go along because it's easier to tell whether or not you're playing the right notes so now that we got that out of the way let's talk about some actual tips you can use today to become a better sight reader tip number one is before you even start look at your key signature and time signature and this seems really simple but i would be a millionaire if i got a penny for every single time i saw someone play with all the wrong accidentals or even in the wrong meter yikes and the more you sight read the more you can get to know your own tendencies for example i know when i have d sharps and a sharps in the key signature for some reason i always forget to play d sharps in a sharps nothing else so i already know if i see a piece with d sharp and a sharp in the key signature i'm gonna write it in big letters on top of my score so there is no way i'm gonna forget knowing your time signature is arguably even more important because it gives you a framework um for your rhythm and your pulse basically it lines all your beats up um and i'll talk about why rhythm is so important for sight reading in my next tip tip number two and i cannot stress this enough pick a sustainable tempo i've been teaching for seven years now and i think it's safe to say no matter what age or what level we all want to sight read fast but picking a fast tempo is not always the way to go in fact it usually isn't the way to go rhythm is so important in sight reading because the whole point of being a good sight reader is so you can do fun things like sit down with your family or friends on a whim and play an awesome piece of music without having to rehearse for hours and hours and hours beforehand and let me tell you if you didn't know already that the only thing that's holding two sight readers together is pulse just imagine two people trying to play together but they're taking random pauses at different times and they have two different tempos going on in fact i think i'm gonna try to reenact that for you just so you understand how awful that would be [Music] so [Music] so [Music] and if that's not enough let me give you an example of a professional situation where rhythm insight reading is important for all those professional and aspiring professional musicians out there imagine that you're playing with a singer or an instrumentalist and you have bad rhythm you're not actually playing together with them you're taking random pauses uh that's not gonna make the soloist feel comfortable which means they're not gonna give their best performance and they're not gonna call you back to work with you again either rhythm is everything so again before you start sight reading a piece scan it over check for any difficult passages that you might need to take a slower tempo for and pick your overall tempo based on those more difficult passages of course eventually you're gonna be able to sight read fast in a fast tempo but for now you have to get into the habit of choosing a sustainable tempo and sustainable pulse and my third tip is to look ahead and this is more about your eyes than your hands but it's super important to be looking ahead of where you're playing this gives you a buffer in case anything goes wrong or you encounter some difficult passages if you're looking ahead you have that second or extra few seconds to figure out what fingering you're gonna use or if the tempo is too fast how you're gonna simplify the passage whereas if the first time you're seeing a difficult passage your hands are already playing it or supposed to play it you're kind of screwed i've heard a lot of people and students tell me that it's impossible to look ahead of where you're playing because you just start to play you know what's a bar ahead or whatever but it just takes practice so please be patient and it's very similar to speed reading when i was in high school i'm not a speed reader but when i was in high school i wanted to figure out how to be a faster reader because i was a slow reader and i kind of still am so i read in an article that speed reading is basically just training your eyes and your brain to register groups of words rather than one word at a time which is what i was doing and in music site reading it's the same thing you have to process groups of notes or groups of bars even sometimes instead of individual notes and that way since you're looking at such a bigger chunk of music you're not only looking at the part you're playing right now but also what's coming up so now that we're done with all of those tips let's go over to our trusted piano so i can show you guys how i sight read a piece that i've never seen before oh let's let's do it so in front of me i have a clementi sonata that i swear i've never seen before first thing we see is presto so i'm obviously not gonna play presto because tip number two is choose a sustainable tempo let's take a look at the key signature and time signature we have f sharp and c sharp and we have two two so this is in two scan it to see what we have here so the left hand has a triplet triplet triplet type of pattern and the right hand kind of also does let's just do it [Music] [Music] so i thought let's try a beethoven that i have not really hurt that much um i might recognize it as i play it but it's not cheating because i clearly have not played it before or even looked at the score before um so lego multicomprio is not happening right now we have flats three flats b e and a and it's in six eight which basically means a two let's scan it first this is scary to me everything else doesn't seem so bad here the hands are out of sync so that might be an issue but again if i was sight reading this with someone i would just choose one hand over the other wish me luck well i do recognize this [Music] so [Music] so that's it for this video guys thank you so much for watching i hope you found this video helpful if you did be sure to give it a thumbs up subscribe to this channel and don't forget to comment down below with any practice questions at all that you might have so i can cover them in future videos if you want to watch some more of my videos you can do that right here and i'll see you guys next week bye

Channel: With Mariya

Views: 49,545

Keywords: sight reading tips for piano, best sight reading tips for piano, how to sight read like a pro, how to sight read music like a pro, how to sight read music better, sight reading tips from a music school student, learn music fast like a pro, learn piano fast like a pro, how to find time to practice, how i organize my music practice, how to practice piano more effectively, Efficient musician, Practice music efficiently, Efficient practice tips music, efficient practice tips

Id: cuJoSbPJ-Ik

Length: 12min 1sec (721 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021