Nuts and Bolts

Additional practices to include as you make progress

Use these exercises when you are ready, they all can be employed regularly throughout your sight reading journey.

  Focus on staying confident, comfortable and moving with ease while not looking down at the keys.

  Practice tapping rhythm with drum sticks or hands so as to become accustomed to reading rhythm.

 Practice muscle memory and maintain fluid muscle movements--imagine how your hand feels moving along to the next note/s, interval. Not looking, sense the feel of it before you play, while you play, anticipate your next hand movement. Develop a relaxed style in your sight reading--this goes hand and hand in going very slow.

Wide range movement: practise reading waltzes, music where left hand has accompaniment role. Without looking, focus on arm and hand movement, the geography of the keyboard. Ignore mistakes, stay fluid.

Melodic and harmonic expectations: music sometimes does not follow an expected pattern, keep reading. If you are thrown off balance by a note or chord, stay limber, keep playing.

  Practice seeing phrases, repetitions, sequences, the unusal and unusual at a glance rather than one tiny bit at a time.  Music is always going somewhere (even atonal). Learning to see phrases or the direction of a musical piece is very helpful in getting better at sight reading. It’s like reading short form. We do it all the time in other forms of reading or interpreting.

    Start with simple music because it offers fairly predictable  phrases. Anticipate them a little, but keep your eyes on the page, looking ahead as much as you are comfortable. Take note of repetitions because you’ve already played it, so relax through the repetition.

As for complications--composers and editors do like to offer variety for children and beginners, so a phrase can take an unexpected turn. Learn to expect the unexpected; stay focused, eyes on the page, read slightly ahead of where you are playing.

  Enjoy your ride around the learning curve because it will lead to ever growing confidence so long as you look at your gains, accept your problem areas as a positive challenge.

  Look for small musical/and or rhythmic motifs that repeat.

   Reading intervals

Some sight readers say that reading intervals is easier than reading notes by name and scale. Of course you have to know the notes and the scales somewhat, and the intervals too in order to read this way. Because I’m now well acquainted with much of these, I agree that it is easier--the scale, note names, intervals are almost a second language for me.

   Reading keys

   Learn or relearn and continue to review all the major keys and their relative minor as you make develop your sight reading skills.

   Minor keys and modal surprises

   Pieces in minor keys are read by keeping the major key signature in mind (i.e. remember C major when playing in A minor. Accidentals will appear, but they do in major pieces so read the accidentals as temporary--holding only for the measure.     
   A modal surprise is one that happens if you assume a key is in a particular key, say, in C major, for example, because you see that the there are  no flats or sharps in the key signature. You realized it could be in A minor, but started playing figuring it would be either. Some music will be in a mode not belonging to either of the major or minor keys associated with the key signature. The presumed C major piece could be in the dorian mode (scale on d, no black notes) so be flexible about anticipating the key of the music. Keys can be cancelled within a piece, and a new key named. A piece of music can change to major or minor of a given key, become modal, or have chromatic changes that are quite fleeting. Try not to be surprised by change. Another strong reason to keep paying attention to music theory.

      No matter what happens in a key, keep the original key signature in mind. If you lose your sense of the key, keep going and try to recall--glance to the left hand side of the staffs where the key signature is written if you need to.

    Accidentals (alteration of a note) are introduced and canceled in two ways; noted or implied--sometimes an editor will not note the cancelation but leaves it up to musician to understand that whatever the key signature is, if there are no alterations noted such as accidentals or natural signs, then the measure is read as it should be, in the key already established.