The Sight Reading Thread

[Det_Nosnip]

Sight reading. Comes natural for some, and others never learn it. For those of us caught in the middle who are trying to improve our ability to read pieces on the spot, it can be quite a challenge. So, I thought I'd get some discussion going and pool some resources in order to help myself and others out!

There seems to be some controversy over the use of mnemonic devices ("Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, etc"). According to one author that I read, mnemonic devices slow you down because your brain has to perform two tasks (recall phrase, translate into note letters). The author goes on to state that it is better to just try and memorize the letters. I've never been a huge fan of mnemonic phrases, anyways, so I'm gonna go ahead and follow his advice, but you're welcome to do as you like. Anyways, however you decide to memorize these, here are the notes for treble and bass clef:


Treble Lines---EGBDF
Treble Spaces--FACE
Bass lines-----GBDFA
Bass Spaces----ACEG


They're close, except that the bass starts 2 letters up, albeit a few octaves BELOW where treble begins. To be honest, this is kinda retarded, if you ask me. Why not just standardize everything and make the clefs read equally? *shrug* Not for me to decide, unfortunately.

Now, one question must be asked - is it better to memorize these notes and then attempt to sight read from there? I pulled this interesting paragraph from one of the links below:

Contrary to what novices believe, sight-reading is not accomplished by reading individual notes, but by immediately recognizing intervals, chords, keys, shapes, formal and grammatical relationships, and scales. When one is very young and learning to read ordinary English, one may have to look laboriously at every letter of each word in order to recognize the words spelled. This is analogous to reading music note-by-note. A more experienced reader is not concerned about the individual letters, but recognizes words immediately, and moreover, patterns of words that form sentences. Thus, one learns to read sentences at a glance. So, too, in music the immediate recognition of outlines of chords, intervals, shapes, and other patterns leads to rapid reading.


So, then...according to the author, it is more important to be able to follow melodies, phrases, and intervals than to translate letter by letter. Of course, you'll never know where to start from if you don't know what each note represents, but it seems that, in order to sight read, intervals and phrases are more important.

http://www.soundfeelings.com/free/music-reading.htm
Some decent basic tips...they're trying to sell you their product, though.

http://www.emusictheory.com/practice.html
Some GREAT trainer programs...I highly recommend trying some of the drills if you feel that your reading is slow. I love the timed note drills especially...very good practice.

http://www.musictheory.net
Incase you're a noob to theory, although there are also a few cool lessons even if you're not. Also has a nice ear trainer that I use.

http://www.geocities.com/athens/marble/9607/sight.htm
Pretty rad article/s.

http://www.practicespot.com/
Giant free-stuff database. Cool stuff!

That's a good start. Now, as far as discussion goes...

Ledger lines are a bitch. Has anyone found a good way of reading notes on them quickly? I've memorized some of the key ones...middle C, of course, being 1 line below the treble clef and 1 above the bass clef...2 above treble is also a C, and 2 below bass is as well. Past that, and I end up having to count from the nearest marker, which takes time and is annoying.

[Moseph]

Awesome idea for a thread.

One quick thing I noticed: when you start out reading, you DO read letter by letter first, with the intention of "growing out" of that phase of ability.

So it does sound to me like it really is just all about practice. Maybe some people will pick it up faster, but that's more of a variable than an obstacle.

[Det_Nosnip]

Ah, good point...you can't read words without recognizing the letters first, after all!

[gaslight]

Yeah, I've been struggling a while to learn to read music.

Why has it taken me so long?

Because I'm too lazy to practise it every day, which is what you need to do to get good at it.

It's so depressing when you can shred your instrument like a mad idiot, but then make mistakes on the simplest sight reading exercises :lol:.

[Jom]

Ledger lines are a bitch. Has anyone found a good way of reading notes on them quickly? I've memorized some of the key ones...middle C, of course, being 1 line below the treble clef and 1 above the bass clef...2 above treble is also a C, and 2 below bass is as well. Past that, and I end up having to count from the nearest marker, which takes time and is annoying.

Well, when I played trumpet and had ledger lines, I just extended the staff in my head - if the ledger line intersected the note, I knew it was an A, or if there were two lines, a C on the treble clef.

The same applied for ledger lines below the staff. I used intersected notes as a guide, but the more and more accustomed you grow into sightreading and the more pieces you sightread, the easier the recognition. As for the quoted part that you cited, I can see where the author is coming from.

For bass clef, I visualize the notes in the same fashion.

[gaslight]

Yeah, you can just memorise the ledger lines because they do occur a fair bit.

Personally I play bass, so I know that the first ledger line below the bass clef is going to be an E. Its been drilled into my head because you can imagine how often open E's come up in bass playing.

The first ledger line above the bass clef is C, and the next line above that is the E that is the first line on the treble clef, from there I just picture the treble clef.

[Trigger_003]

Awesome, sight reading is something I've been working on a lot lately. I'll definitely check out those links :).

Ledger lines are exactly why we have different clefs. Otherwise your old bass clef would have to be read 4, 5, 6, ledger lines down without even starting to get into pedals for us low brass players. Well actually, it's not EXACTLY why, but it's a good reason as to why we've kept them going.

Likewise, alto clef has continued on because viola players LOVE you when you can give them a piece written in alto instead, as they'll generally have to do a heap of ledgers otherwise.

On a related note, if anyone's interested, http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory2.htm#origin
and I guess http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory1.htm#middlec a bit as well go into the development of the clefs, notation, etc. I find it interesting, others can't be stuffed haha.

I never really think about the ledger lines, I just... play them. I think this is mainly due to the fact that I covered them a lot with AMEB. One grade I'd need to go up to C, then G, then high Bb, then high C or D, and so forth. So each grade I'd be introduced to a few more through the scales and other technical work, plus in my pieces, so I wasn't ever thrown in the deep end with that I suppose (until I started experimenting a heap with extending my range anyway, but even then I'm not getting many of those notes coming up in pieces I'm playing).

As for reading in another clef, I sometimes forget which one I'm playing in and automatically swap to another which can sound... interesting... but if it's not one that I've started to get used to, I think in terms of the bass clef, but up or down spaces. For instance, with alto clef, I just think in terms of everything being a line or a space higher than what I'm used to, although I'm of course playing in another octave.

In relation to the quote up there, in one section of The Inner Game of Music (which is probably quite useful to look at actually, even though it's not directly related to sight reading), the author also writes about trying to "simplify" the music, instead of looking at each individual note, or problematic aspect of the phrase. One example he used was of a musician who was having trouble playing a fast semiquaver run, who at his master class decided he would simply look at the direction a group of notes was going in, and play according to that. The difficult phrase then turned into 4 notes up, 4 in a U, another 4 notes up, and so forth, which instantly helped him to be able to play the phrase much more proficiently.

What about the causes of bad sight reading? One of the reasons some people don't sight read too well is that they're afraid to make a mistake. I probably come under this a bit, but I try to tell myself:
Just because you've never heard a recording before, doesn't mean it can't be musical, and much the same applies when trying to play a piece for the first time.

The main thing though is to practice sight reading regularly. My reading has really picked up since I joined the Australian Youth Band, because we're getting so many new charts all the time (we either did 220 last year, or across the last two years).

Likewise, I was at a workshop the other day, and she said she used to be a horrid sight reader, so when it came to uni (and her having to drop her "you either have a good ear, or can sight read philosophy"), she decided she would force herself to sight read regularly. Now, for people who hate that kind of thing, that can be hard to do, so she went to be the piano accompanist for the musical the scouts were putting on. At first she sucked, but she had to keep on going because the choir kept singing, and she kept getting page upon page placed in front of her. By the second week she'd made it up to decent, and was quite good by the end, managing to get asked back again. So if you can get into an ensemble or similar where they'll be introducing you to a lot more music, it's really beneficial. They're not going to stop too often because you slip up (and productions pay well, if nothing else!).

Woah, sorry for the rant! I think that's enough for this post :p.

[Det_Nosnip]

Cool stuff, man! Nice post.

[Dr. Jake Destructo]

My piano teacher makes me sight read. I can do like..16 measures of really simple stuff in like a minute, but anything after that and I just completely flounder.

[Det_Nosnip]

I hear ya. Wish I could say the same, but I can't afford piano lessons. :(

[what]

a knowledge of harmony, form, and basic knowledge and feel of 'where everything is going' and whats the point of the whole piece helps a lot.

[Trigger_003]

So... yeah... bump and all that.

Just in the hope that someone else contributes because it's a good thread.

[Det_Nosnip]

Yeah. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be very many people on the forum who bother to learn how to read standard notation, let alone sight read it. :(

Piano seems to be the most difficult instrument to sight read. For one thing, you often have 2 voices moving in counterpoint (or at least some sort of harmonic motion), which means that you have to be able to split your attention. Also, it has the largest range out of just about any instrument, so those ledger lines can get pretty insane when you're really pushing the registers.

[what]

um best sigth readers are pianists though

you have atleast two voices in most classical music on nearly all instruments (obviusly except brass, wind, vocal parts etc.) reading on stringed instruments is harder imho, since you can have one note in different spots and figuring out the correct fingering makes things harder.
piano has a C1 only in one place.

those registers are rarely used though, most music you have to go through doesn really go extrmely high or low.

[MdL]

This thread delivers. Very easy to read.

[gaslight]

I really need to get back into my reading practise, I've been disgracefully lazy lately.

[chronowop]

I find the devices for learning the notes on the lines and spaces of the clefs, stupid, personally. If you indulge yourself in writing and reading it becomes immediate, what's more important is applying this to your instruments.

Here is a key element: learn scale positions.

This simplifies greatly, because, if you're in key, you don't have to think sharps or flats, all of the notes are contained within that 4 fret span, and all you have to do is think of which scale degree you need to play. This simplifies it a LOT. It's much more effective than thinking "C? Where's C? I can play C, here, here, or here,".