How to Practice Sight Reading? ~A Step-by-Step Guide

hello everyone welcome to another teaching video if you're new to my channel my name is Ting Ting Zhang I'm a classical pianist and piano educator with over 20 years of teaching experience today's video was inspired by you my viewers I have gotten many inquiries on how to practice sight reading and how to get better at sight reading indeed Psy reading is an essential skill for learning music it's particularly challenging for pianists because we need to read two steps at the same time in addition to reading between 10 lines and eight spaces there are also larger line notes both upper and lower combine those with key signatures accidentals and various rhythms things can get pretty intense therefore it's really important for every piano student to learn the right way to sight read and develop a good side reading skill as early as possible in this video I will explain and demonstrate a standard procedure of sight reading which includes three steps for those of you who haven't had the opportunity to learn how to sign read you can follow these steps and use them as a guide whenever you practice eye reading I think it's always better to discuss these Concepts and steps through musical examples so that later you can apply what you've learned here to other pieces you want to study I selected two pieces for my demo and they're both suitable for late beginning to early intermediate level students first let's look at a piece from cherny Opus 5.99 number 40. journey is known for his finger exercises but I found these exercises are also great for building sight reading skills first of all they're short it won't take you a lot of time to read through secondly the hand position is fairly simple it doesn't move a lot so you will get a lot of practice reading the notes between base C and high C this three octave range thirdly there are always some kind of patterns you can find in the piece and the notes are not far from one another usually are just in steps or skips these are all good features for Less experienced pianists now let's look at a piece we'll slightly the first half eight measures only I find this is a good portion for beginners try not to sight read too much at a time because your mind will get tired after a while okay here comes step number one do not play right away take your time to look at the music first the question is what do we look at you want to start from the very beginning the cleft signs key signatures time signature then moving on to the notes find your beginning hand positions both left hand and right hand in this case the right hand plays on treble clef and left in place on bass clef it's all very standard sometimes you will see left hand starting on treble clef be careful with that but that's not the case here for the key signature we have one flat B flat you should figure out what key this piece is written in usually key signatures are very good Clues but if you don't remember you can also look at the beginning and the ending hand positions because most pieces start and finish on tonic note that's the first note of the key in this case let's take a look left hand we have so the three notes are F A and C when you block them that's the F major chord what about right hand it starts on treble C and then F A and then the high C so basically these are the same nodes as left hand but just are in different order it's the second inversion of the F major chord let me show you here is the root position so we have F at the bottom when we invert a chord we move the bottom node to the top so it becomes a C and F when we invert the chord again a goes to the top so it becomes c f and a so that's the right hand beginning position I think we're almost sure this piece is in F major now you can look at the last measure to double check so the last measure left in place that's F in a and right hand has three F's so it's confirmed we're in the key of F major now you can put your hands on the keyboard but we're not ready to play yet because I'm going to give you a list of things you should be looking at before playing the piece number one patterns anything that is repetitive or similar watch for that number two the range of the piece what is the highest note and what is the lowest note this way you know how far you need to move number three look for jobs or changes of the hand position you should know where that change happens and be prepared for it number four articulations such as Legato staccato slurs and so on number five the black Keynotes these include key signatures and accidentals find where they are and try to remember them number six fingerings in most pieces you will see some fingerings they help to guide you through situations where fingers need to cross over or the hand needs to move so try to follow them now I'm going to show you how to look for these things in this piece first the patterns see the first two measures are exactly the same left hand place the F major chord and then the right hand has this broken chord pattern then in measure three the left hand needs to go down to base C so there's a change in the chord by the way this is the dominant seventh chord even if you don't know what chord it is that's fine just remember to move down and then from measure four through six left hand goes back to the tonic Accord until measure seven where you need to move up because we have a few larger line notes there [Music] now for a right hand let's see so beginning we have this broken core pattern and the pattern repeats in measure one two five and six in terms of the range of the piece let's take a look the highest note in right hand appears in measure seven e that is the letter line note and then the lowest note is treble C so it's a little over one octave this means between measure six and seven will have a small change in hand position and you need to prepare to move okay and then for left hand the lowest note is base C it's right here in measure three and the highest note is f in measure seven that's the letter line note so what does this tell you both hands need to move up going from measure six to seven so take a mental note since this will be the hardest spot in this passage see in measure six this is your hand position and then we need to slightly move higher to here next thing on the list articulations right here mostly plays Legato with a few staccato notes versus the left hand Place stigato only then for the key signature B flat the first B-flat appears in measure three in fact both hands have to play B flat be careful with that and then in measures seven we also have B however the flat is canceled so you only need to play the Black key note for one measure that's not too bad finally I see we have some fingerings and we will try to follow them as we play see when you take the time looking at these details and doing a little analysis you get a much better idea of the piece in the end you will play more accurately than just jumping in and playing blindly now that you're done reading you can move on to step number two ghost play what does that mean cosplay means to play the notes silently like this move your fingers on the keys without making a sound in your daily practice this step sometimes can be skipped if you feel pretty good about your initial reading through then you can just start and play normally however if you're not so sure with your reading ghost play is a very helpful step in your preparation in fact when my students take side reading tests for their music examinations I always tell them to cosplay before they officially sight read Because when you only have one chance for the test you need this extra step to increase your accuracy and boost your confidence by the way ghost play shouldn't take very long try to do it in 30 seconds to one minute um depending on the length of the piece all right step number three after all these preparations you probably cannot wait to try the piece but hold on there's one more important thing to do before you start playing you need to establish your Tempo and count I always tell my students to count one measure before they start so that they know exactly what tempo they're going to play otherwise they might start too fast or too slow and have to change in the middle of the piece please keep in mind it's always better to play Slowly for sight reading even if the piece is marked Allegro nobody expects you to play a real Allegro at your first attempt so take your time do not rush for this piece the time signature is 2-4 that means we count quarter note as one beat and there are two beats in each measure for beginners however I suggest you count eighth note as one beat so you will have four beats per measure this way you give yourself plenty of time to go slowly so let's try it now one two three four [Music] and next measure be prepared for that B flat both hands would be flat and then go back to the beginning hip position okay now that's my shirt be prepared to move foreign [Music] next I'd like to share another music example with you and let's practice on these ideas this time I picked a piece from Berg Mueller 25 Progressive pieces of his 100. I love teaching this set to my early intermediate level students it's fun musical and engaging also a wonderful introduction to the Romantic Style the piece we're looking at is number three pastoral and we'll sight read the first 10 measures that's the first part of the piece first thing first the key signature in this piece we have one short F sharp then the time signature is six eight it means a snow gets one count and we have six counts in each measure next I'm moving on to the hand position right hand starts on G here and the left hand doesn't start until measure three and then it plays G major chord I think it's pretty clear that we're in the key of G major next let's look for patterns or repetitions well in this piece right hand has a very long melodic line so the notes don't really repeat however we have a rhythmic pattern which consists of a dotted Corner note and three eighth notes it goes like this one two three four five six one two three four five six and we have this pattern from measure three all the way to measure nine what about left hand any pattern in left hand well the G chord repeats several times and then the only chord that is different is the measure five see the middle note goes up one step so it moves from B to C [Music] and then the last two measures I see there's something interesting happened I will talk about it in a second next the range of hand position right hand is mostly moving within one octave going from g to g except at the end it goes up to D the last note see here that's the dominant of G major for left hand it doesn't move much until the last two measures where a big change happened I mentioned here before the bass clef is replaced by treble clef you definitely want to prepare for this move and let's see how far it is so in measure eight this is where your hand is and still place the G major chord and then going to the next measure we have a to a so your pinky needs to go up one step and then open your hand to reach for that octave next thing on the list articulations In this passage right hand has many slurs and they tell you two things one is to play Legato the other is that these slurs are also phrase marks they group the notes into one phrase and at the end of each phrase you should try to lift your hand to show the phrasing just like a singer with braids between the phrases I know this is hard to remember during sight reading since you already got so many things to think about so don't worry if you forget to lift your hand at the end of the phrase and you can always work down phrasing later during your regular practice finally let's find where we need to play the Black key F sharp the first one is in measure three this is the grace note and then we have it again in measure seven exactly the same Grace note and finally in the last two measures both hands have more F sharp to play so be prepared for that alright thanks for Patiently reading along with me now we should try to cosplay compared to the cherny piece I showed you earlier this one is slightly harder because it has more notes and the notes move farther so move your fingers on the keyboard to get a feel of how far you need to move meanwhile try to follow the fingerings when you finish ghost playing you're ready for the final step make sure to count Six Beats before you start playing and let's go slowly one two three four five six [Music] and here we have F sharp [Music] thank you F sharp again prepare to move and then more F sharp foreign guide gives you a clear idea on how to practice sight reading today we mainly focus on the basic steps and my discussions are geared towards beginning level students in my next video I'd like to continue with this topic because there are more important principles about sight reading I haven't talked about yet I also want to share more ideas for intermediate to advanced level pianos so please stay tuned thank you so much for watching if you like my video remember to subscribe and feel free to leave me your comments I will see you in the next one bye

Channel: Tingting Zhang

Views: 31,555

Keywords: How to practice sight reading? A step-by-step guide, How to get better at sight reading, how to improve sight-reading, a step by step guide for sight reading, piano sight reading, sight reading music, how to read music, learn to sight read music, tingting zhang piano teacher, tingting zhang piano studio, Dr. tingting zhang, sight reading demo

Id: KxEHMZvfy_c

Length: 18min 49sec (1129 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023