How To REALLY Improve Piano Sight Reading | 8 ACTION STEPS

if you clicked on this video there's probably a lot of piano music that you want to learn but you feel frustrated because it seems to take forever to learn just one song today I'm going to share with you some actionable steps that you can take to see noticeable Improvement in your site reading skills I've been teaching for over 30 years and I'm confident that I can help you to read music more fluently make sure to stay with me throughout the video because I'm going to share some fun apps and software that will really Excel your progress I'll link all those resources in the description below let's get started a lot of pianists only work on hard pieces that take them a long time to master and then they wonder why they're not good at site reading you really have to learn a lot of music in order to become a good site reader so try to work on more than just a few pieces at a time and make sure that most of them are at a level where you can play hands together slowly on the first try uh and get most of the notes right each week I make sure that my students are working on a few pieces that they can pass off in 1 to two weeks and a few pieces that they can pass off in 3 to four weeks and then one or two pieces that they can master in a matter of months this may seem like a lot of assignments but remember you don't have to practice every piece every day I like to use an A Day bday practice schedule to improve on site reading you really need to be able to identify the letter names quickly I use this app called notes with my students you also need to know the location of the notes on the keyboard quickly I love this app called note Rush that I use with my [Music] students if you're getting value from this video give it a like and consider subscribing if you'd like to see more piano lesson videos like this the next tip I have for you is to get comfortable with five finger patterns or the 12 hand positions on the keyboard when I started lessons at age s my mom and my teacher had me practice out of this book called Magic Finger technique by Bastion you don't have to buy this book to work on this concept you could really take any five finger piece and transpose it to the 12 H positions like this and move up a half step and move up a half step and gradually work your way up till you've played all 12 major H positions and these are just the first five notes of each major scale it's so important to be able to identify intervals in the music EAS easily it will help you tremendously with site reading and also with chords when I'm site reading and I see a chord I'm not reading individual notes I'm actually looking at intervals F on the bottom and then up a third up a fourth when I'm site reading this and I'm thinking about my right hand notes I'm thinking about going up a fourth and then app of sixth here the most enjoyable way to practice intervals is with some apps and I'll link a few down in the description that I use with my students but here's an important tip to memorize with intervals two notes that are the same either space to space or Line to Line will create an odd interval two notes that are different space to line or line to space will create an even interval you probably heard that you need to practice chords and get really familiar with them so how do you accomplish this no one wants to sit at the piano and practice chords without a song I have some of my students working out of method books like the piano Adventures series and those progress gradually and they incorporate chords into fun songs I'm also a huge fan of piano Marvel software and I'll tell you more about that later in the video but another way that you can get better at chords is to practice hymns if you like hymns I played for choirs in church for many years and it definitely improved my site reading skills a lot of people will say that you should be looking ahead while you're site reading I find that students really struggle with that but try to be looking for patterns and notes that are the same from here to here I can see that my bottom two notes stay the same and the top note shifts [Music] up here my left hand chord is going to shift up one position and then it's the same chord now my bottom note is going to stay the same you probably already know this but most music is Created from a simple major or minor scale when I sit down to site read a new piece the first thing I do is look at the key signature and I think of the scale so for example this piece is in the key of C minor I'm able to navigate the keys pretty easily on my first try because the C minor scale is embedded into my brain and fingers because I've played it so many times over the [Music] years so I'm thinking about that scale as I'm sight reading this piece and I'm going to play very slowly so my advice is to include scales into your daily practice get to know the major and minor scales really well and work on one scale at a time and practice them in the order of the circle of fifths the best way to improve at site reading is to practice site reading so try to include five minutes of site reading into your daily practice routine you should be site reading at a level where you can play hands together slowly and hit most of the notes correctly I highly recommend using the piano Marvel software for site reading and this is a software program that you use with your digital keyboard with an iPad or a laptop you can also use it with acoustic pianos the really cool thing is it gives you instant feedback if you play a wrong note or the wrong Rhythm and it's structured like a video game it has really fun catchy background music that you play along with and a huge library of popular music to choose from you can really dramatically improve on note reading chords rhythms scales using this software and I see my students progress about five times faster than from traditional method books so I can't say enough about it one of the most difficult Parts about site reading is the rhythms so how do you get better at rhythms well that's a complicated question that requires a detailed explanation I hope you'll join me in the next video of mine where I talk about time signatures and how to count different rhythms thanks for joining me today and let us know in the comments if there's any questions or if you have a specific video that you'd like us to make thanks

Channel: Piano Lessons with Brillante Piano Duo

Views: 98,843

Keywords: sight reading piano, how to improve sight reading piano, piano sight reading, piano sight reading practice, piano sight reading tips, piano chord sight reading exercises, sight reading piano tips, sight reading, piano tutorial, piano lessons, piano lessons for beginners, how to play piano, beginning piano lessons, piano exercises, piano chords, how to read music, piano tips, how to sight read, how to sight read piano music, how to sight read better

Id: nZnvWQr9d4E

Length: 7min 40sec (460 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2023