The Most Important Thing to Know About Sight Reading

this video is sponsored by the sight reading Factory use my code at checkout to save 10 off your first year sight reading what it is why it's a useful skill and the only real way to get better at it sight reading is the act of reading and performing a piece of written music without having prepared it ahead of time and it may be one of the most feared topics in music certainly commonly among beginners but even some very accomplished musicians are repelled by the idea of sight reading some people treat sight reading like a superpower that some lucky few musicians are bestowed with a power unattainable by mere mortals but really it's just a skill that you can learn practice and develop over time with a bit of effort and routine and it's a really useful skill because at a fundamental level the better you can read the less you have to practice it makes sense doesn't it if you can't read at all you have to learn by ear or have someone teach you note by note phrase by phrase and that's fine but that can take a while if it's a long or complicated piece and you'll probably experience a lot of trial and error along the way which may not be the most efficient way to learn something but if you can read a bit then the trial and error part becomes optional because the information you need to perform the music is right in front of you you just have to learn to interpret it and it potentially can make the process my much shorter and if you happen to have pretty good reading skills and the music is within your comfort level for complexity you just read the music of course there are many great musicians who don't read music at all and exploring the value of learning by ear versus reading music is something I definitely like to explore another time though spoiler they're both super important and useful often support each other and insisting that one is inherently better or inferior is just gatekeeping but I don't think it's a controversial statement to say that most people who read traditional musical notation would like to read better faster and more accurately so this is the first video in a series all about how to improve your sight reading skills we'll be looking at a variety of tips and tricks in this series some of them are very specific and immediately actionable and some you should consider more long-term projects we'll get to those details in later videos but right now I think it's really crucial to remember that learning to read music is not that different from learning to read written language at first when you're trying to read the process is very slow you start with the alphabet and you sang that song every day for years when you were little and then you learn to read some simple words which turns into simple sentences some words were difficult and you had to sound out each syllable but you practiced and got better at reading over time until it just wasn't a big deal when you were younger you were reading picture books with a few hundred words and reading a book with dozens of chapters and hundreds of pages seemed like an impossible task but eventually it just doesn't seem like a big deal you just read it music is the same you learn the basics and start with very simple pieces and notation then move on to more complex music with more details and more advanced musical vocabulary it takes a while and it takes effort but when you practice reading you get better at Reading along the way there will be challenges because music is like any other language in the fact that it evolved over time and has many features that are simple logical and consistent but it's also riddled with special cases and exceptions like in English the rule of i before e except after C except for all the times that it doesn't which is so so many times and in music how a quarter note gets one beat except for all the times it doesn't which happens kind of a lot English also has homonyms words that sound the same but are spelled differently or words that are spelled the same but mean different things and if you mix them up it can be very confusing music also has things that sound the same but are written differently because they perform different functions and work differently depending on the context and there are also notations that look similar at first glance but are actually very different but even English punctuation has similar challenges you just got used to it consider the comma it can be used for a pause contractions another kind of pause for quotes quotes within quotes or whatever is happening with proper nouns and fantasy novels all these things were a bit tricky at first but you got used to them over time through exposure and practice and to anyone who is annoyed by any of these rules and might be tempted to try to fix the system I'll just say that a lot of these weird rules actually make things simpler in the long run and fixing the system just tends to create far more complications than it eliminates for instance if you decide that C flat is a dumb note just because it's the same as B then you'll have to explain and remember a whole bunch of new complicated exceptions in music rather than just letting C flat exist similarly if you were trying to fix English pronunciation to make it fully phonetic you'd have to deal with just to start the fact that most vowels have a whole bunch of different sounds so you'll either have to introduce accents to show different sounds or you'd have to decide that vowels only make one sound which is going to cause lots of problems because if all A's sound like they do in cake then Snack Shack would sound like snake shake and when your friends suggest that for dinner you won't know if you're getting a burger and fries or a really weird protein drink over time you get used to these weird inconsistencies in fact with practice reading becomes not only effortless but involuntary you probably can't even look at text without reading it go ahead and try it's almost impossible your brain just automatically reads it whether you want to or not the reason reading is so easy is that we practice reading all the time it's just such an efficient way to transmit information that it's just everywhere and you get great at Reading if you're going to give a speech you might practice and prepare but that's probably more to do with the performance itself making sure that you have good Cadence flow and pacing rather than any real concerns about reading the words and actually actors and public speakers have their own version of sight reading they call it cold reading they practice this because they don't want to just say the words correctly they want to learn to emote and even find the best words and phrases to emphasize from a cold read the goal is to learn to anticipate the Cadence of a text and make a convincing performance even though they've never read this passage before and that's what we want we want to read music effortlessly and even with the ability to add emotion and expression in the moment the very first time so if you want to get good at sight reading you have to practice sight reading it's so obvious that I think people actually forget it sometimes but if you want to get good at reading music that you've never read before you have to practice reading music that you've never read before the truth is many people don't make this a priority they practice repertoire and technique but rarely sight reading and it remains an underdeveloped skill of course it's important to choose material that's of appropriate difficulty you wouldn't start a toddler off with Shakespeare but it's a pretty common assignment for teenagers to pick music that's good for sight reading think about what your personal sight reading comfort zone is as far as Keys notes range and rhythms and try to find new music to sight read that's right in that pocket it should be what you personally consider to be of medium difficulty and will require you to focus and be mentally engaged you probably shouldn't bother spending much time on music that's too easy because you won't be challenged and you'll get bored and while it can be good to push yourself to the limit of your abilities going too far beyond them with really difficult music isn't really sight reading sight reading is all about reading and playing now maybe not absolutely perfectly but with as much flow and forward motion as you can manage so do it do it often do it every time you practice make it a habit but the big question is how do you find music that's at the right level and plentiful enough so you always have new fresh music to sight read There are a few places you can find Etude books online at your local music store or maybe even your local library you can trade books with friends or borrow from a teacher and hymnals method books and Jazz fake books will also have large amounts of repertoire to explore but also there are software tools just for this purpose and one of the best most ridiculously useful tools is the sight reading Factory I use the site to practice sight reading long before I even had a YouTube channel and I still use it because it's really pretty great this site creates new music to practice sight reading for any instrument even choirs bands and orchestras in harmony or in unison instantly infinitely at the push of a button there are several levels of difficulty suitable for every level of musician and tons of ways to customize beyond that lower levels have simpler rhythms smaller range and smaller leaps between notes as you progress you'll see more complex material if you're not sure what level you're at try a few and see what feels right once you're signed up you can create as many exercises as you like it's not like buying a book and then realizing the material is too easy or too hard with the sight reading Factory it's easy to find your personal sight reading comfort zone and begin to push Beyond it if you want the metronome on it's here and feel free to adjust the speed if you want to hear the starting note before you begin use this button there's also playback if you want to hear the exercise before you try it or listen back and see how you did or even play along with it if you want longer or shorter exercises you can do that too and you can turn on several different kinds of annotations if you find that helpful if you want to focus on just one time signature or a selection of a few or go full random you can do that if you want to work on one key or a few or just the major keys or just the minor keys or challenge yourself with all of them you can do that as well you can also get really granular if you want to go to custom mode this will allow you to choose what types of rhythms and rests are included you can also include articulations Dynamics and syncopations what specific range you want and what maximum leaps you want at first you'll probably just read slowly work through the exercises at your own pace and teach yourself to get used to reading new music on a regular basis that's called free play mode but challenge mode is much more like sight reading in the real world you have some time to study the music and then it just starts playing and you have to keep up and if you make an error you just have to recover and continue it can be difficult at first but it's an amazing exercise and if you're a teacher there are a number of features like classes assignments and even live practice mode that will create separate transposed parts for each student and push them directly to their personal devices live so you can practice sight reading together as a class and you can do this in unison or in harmony if you want to get better at sight reading you have to practice sight reading and one of the best places to get new music to do that is the sight reading Factory if you want to give them a try be sure to use my discount code for 10 off your first year be sure to like comment share and subscribe thanks to the sight reading Factory for sponsoring this video series and we'll see you in part two

Channel: Brad Harrison Music

Views: 164,784

Keywords: sight reading, music, music lesson, sight reading made easy, for dummies, sheet music

Id: K2DrG2CpDwA

Length: 10min 15sec (615 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 20 2023