Celebrating 200 hours of sight reading

On returning to piano, sight reading wasn’t something I really bothered with.  I’m not preparing any exams so won’t need to demonstrate it.  I don’t accompany other musicians and so don’t need to sight read in those circumstances.  

However, one thing that I quickly discovered is that when playing from music, my actual reading ability wasn’t always great and, therefore, often I’d struggle to play something that I hadn’t memorized.  The ability to instantly translate dots onto the keyboard was definitely lacking and I was relying on my memory more to know what to play than my ability to read a score! Naturally, the more complex the music we decide to learn, the more problematic this gets.

Therefore, back in January 2019, I decided it was time I started practising sight reading.  I noticed recently that I have now passed the 200 hour mark!

Getting Started

To get me started, I decided to work through my collection of Pianist Magazine editions.  I have been subscribed to their Digital Edition since June 2015.   Thus, all editions are comfortably available from my iPad which pretty much lives on my piano.    In their scores section, there is everything from absolute beginner music to relatively advanced pieces of music. 

Traditional wisdom

Traditional wisdom would tell us that we should really only be sight reading pieces of music below our level.  When needing to pass an exam, we’re expected to faithfully reproduce at the key board a piece of music in front of us that we’ve never seen before.  We should play at tempo, with phrasing and dynamics.  On this basis, I should therefore restrict myself to perhaps the beginner music in Pianist Magazine.  However, I think this is a somewhat narrow view.  

I think that often we pianists are short changed by this type of ‘wisdom’.  Why would I be working towards to acquiring a skill that I simply don’t need! As I said, I never need to play something that I haven’t practised before in public!  If I’m sight reading at home, does it matter how quickly or slowly I’m playing it.  Equally, as for only music that I don’t know, does it really matter if I have heard a piece before?  Whilst it might sound familiar (which perhaps makes things simpler), I’m still relying on the dots in front of me to play it. 

I’ll also bet that for collaborative pianists they also play lots of pieces that they have already heard if not played.  Likewise, I’m sure they often get the chance to have a few run throughs of something they need to play when accompanying.

An alternative path

I therefore decided to ignore this traditional wisdom and simply sight read every score from beginner to advanced in my back catalogue of Pianist Magazine issues.  Equally, if I read through something and really enjoyed it, then I’ll repeat it once or twice just for the joy of it!  This approach I believe has a few very interesting advantages.

Explore new music for yourself

The first of these is that we get to discover and explore a greater variety of music.  This has broadened my horizons in terms of composers.  It has also helped me construct a good ‘wish list’ of pieces to learn next. I remember hearing Schubert’s G Flat Major Impromptu and downloading it to sight read.  I found the experience enchanting and instructive. There were swathes of it that I could pretty much play too – allowing me to delight in them.  There were many parts where I needed to stop and think!  And so what!  Even when I read something in English or French, there will be times I’ll re-read a sentence to double check I’ve really understood what it says! 

Excellent exercise for the brain

Trying to sight read the Rachmaninov Etudes Tableau or Chopin Preludes (or Mazurkas or in fact whatever) takes us through a very wide variety of key signatures.  We also need to recognize much richer harmonies and more interesting musical constructs. Trying to recognize the chords in key with which we’re less familiar is very interesting.  Unfamiliar rhythms that cause our brains to do a triple take really keep us on our toes.

Identifying study aid pieces

Another unexpected benefit of doing this was that I started to build myself a little database of pieces that I could use as study aids.  I realized some time ago that one of the best ways to get better at something was to experience it in as many guises as possible.  For example, my ornaments – even the simpler ones such as mordents – have always been hit and miss.  I’ve played for example Chopin’s E Flat Nocturne for as many years as I can remember and more or less fluffed my way through the mordents!  

I decided some time ago that it was about time I bit the bullet and fixed this gap.  In order to do it, I found 5 or 6 different pieces with similar ornaments in a variety of keys and started practising if not the entire piece end to end certainly sections where the ornaments were more prevalent.  

Generally, to do this would be awkward in terms of finding the appropriate material.  However, I had started noting down some of the main features of the music I was sight reading each day so that I had a list to go back to.

So now, if I need music with say polyrhythms, thirds, scales, octaves, chords etc., I just filter my list and I’m good to go!

I’m happy with the results!

The net result is that I feel my sight reading has progressed beyond all recognition.  I can now fairly easily sight read lots of the ‘intermediate’ scores from Pianist Magazine.  If I want to learn something relatively quickly, it’s now possible as I can much more confidently play from music!  This is because I simply need to work at the trickier passages and can rely on my reading ability rather than my memory to support me in the easier parts.

There is also the undeniable (possibly psychological?) aspect that when you do then try to sight read something ‘below your level’, it really feels so much easier.

Finally, there’s nothing wrong with ‘playing badly alone’ as I learned from the Crosseyed Pianist!