To keep building on this, Piano with Rebecca B is a good next step. We work on sightreading in the live sessions, and with 6 of them a month you can bring your own music and hear what is happening as it happens. Not general advice. Feedback on the way you play. Come see us here: https://www.skool.com/pianowithrebeccab/about

I'm almost through Alfred's Piano for Adults book one, and I am still AMAZED that my head/hands seem to know exactly where to go to play a note, even when the fingering changes. I have never looked at my hands when I play and it's made the whole process feel really magical and special.

I love the acting in the beginning.  The Oscar for best dramatic sight reading re-enactment goes to...  Rebecca!   Maybe dramatic music for the climatic wrong note being played moment would be awesome.

Remember first learning how to type? Trying to find where the A, J, K, L are on the keypad? The incredible frustration of not being able to hit the right letters on the keypad without looking at it? First typing one letter at a time trying no tot look at the keypad while you fumble around trying to find and feel those two little notches at F and J? Then reading and typing through extremely very easy passages and words - so painfully slowly one letter at a time without looking at the keypad? Then more complicated passages, then more complex words and sentences? Until finally you can now just read a book and type everything you are reading simultaneously without looking at the keyboard once? Exact same process.

Thank you for such a thorough in depth explanation of these highly valuable and applicable methods to improve our sight reading skills. Very impressive! As I said in KLPC, you're the TOP! La crème de la crème!!!❤️❤️❤️

I learned by ear first. Leaning to read, it helps me to map what I see to the sound it will make.

Thank you so much 💓

Excellent advice. Thanks so much for sharing this invaluable information. 🎉

I was doing Sight-reading Factory for 30 minutes a day. I took a break to review a bunch of the very simple pieces I was learning, but now I think there's no excuse not to do ten minutes of SRF a day. You've piqued my interest in Piano Marvel.

Rock solid advice!!

Amen!

Thank you for this, Rebecca. It reminded me that it's ok to take early pieces and just slowly read through them. There are people who, to me, are born with the ability to somehow magically sight read anything, everything and perfectly!  They are the exception and not the rule. I will sightread through a book of early Bach/Mozart/Clementi and do exactly as your video suggests.

Great tips, very well articulated. Totally agree that developing spacial awerness without looking at your hands is a big one. It really frees you up once you start to get the hang of it.

O'nite it occured to me, again, that your talk about reading was hits bulls eyes.  The sitch with readers and non-readers highlights a pervasive reality.  I don't know how many people saw the long Youtube clip of Martha Argerich visiting Nelson Freire at his Brazilian home studio, typical of piano enthusiasts-the piano lid and surrounding floor was littered with scores of scores, which I do to a lesser extent to find stuff without a big search.  Martha has been a perfrorming marvel at the highest levels for 50 + years, still performing, less, but at noticeably over 80.  Nelson was a classical toast of the town and celebrated recording artist in decades past.

Sitting as guest/friend while Nelson is seated at his grand, Nelson suggests that they read through a bunch of music.  Martha responds, "Yes, but you can read and I can't."  Probably not an absolue statement but more relative, relating to the best readers.  Martha can, no doubt, I'm assuming, read at some level but maybe not as prolifically.  Goes to show the differential spans all levels of performing talent.

The session proceeds with Martha listening as Nelson grabs a bunch of scores and proceeds to reel off piece after piece, many of which he claims to have never played.  Martha is one of, if not my favorite among technicians at the piano.  I have watched many of her concert videos, slowed them down, to whatever speed I needed to see what she was doing, especially her thumb under work, remarkable.  She hews toward exactly the points Rebecca offers in this video.  Since we live in such a marvellous technical age, I have watched many artists using the same methodology of observation.  Slowing down the tape is necessary as the hands are quicker than the eye, as pickpockets, shell game players and magicians will attest.

Thank you. This will definitely help me. Your errant harpist in Finland. Excellent clear points.

Would that no-look at keyboard technique also apply to songs that have the chords indicated above the word? Thanks Ms. B.

Excellent advice as always.  One other aspect that helps me to get better at sightreading is to go slow enough so your brain is picking up on the patterns and instantly translating them to your hands.  I know I’m always tempted to go a little too fast with an unfamiliar piece because I want to hear it (and play it).  But too fast means you’re really not learning anything, just overwhelming the brain on the ragged edge of can and can’t do it.  The more you sightread slow, the more you’ll be able to sightread pieces of similar difficulty fast down the road.  Oh, and I almost forgot, regards to Zorro — excellent in a supporting role!

I could listen to you forever!  I will practice the intro to Blue by Joni Mitchell with my eyes closed.  

I am making slow progress,  but it’s fun

All very GOOD advice expressed here  - especially avoiding a 'per saltum' approach to playing at sight. Once beyond the initial stages the Diabelli ‘Jugendfreuden’ Sonatinas for Piano Duet are useful as the primo is from a fixed hand position while the secondo explores textures of primary chords up to and including the dominant seventh (and occasionally the augmented sixth). In other words one learns to recognise and read intervals up to a fifth with rhythmic patterns that become more complex as the series increases while the more advanced sight-reader becomes familiar with the commonest chordal textures and harmonic rhythms found in piano music. The Paul Harris series - Improve Your Sight Reading - is allied to ABRSM and Trinity exams and graded accordingly from one to eight. This series is also good whether taking exams or not.


Playing prima vista to a HIGH level of competence, however, is something that can only be learned while young. Before retiring I was sometimes asked, when playing the organ or piano, how I’m able to THINK so quickly when reading a score. The answer is I don’t think at all – my fingers and feet just do what they are supposed to do without conscious effort. I believe this is because I learned to translate all those dots on two or three staves into a permanently fixed kinaesthetic experience during my formative years via a very large and varied repertoire of music. My eye-hand span is large and my accurate proprioception has not diminished with age, thank goodness.  But if I were to attempt to consciously evaluate, like older adult beginners do, then I expect that mistakes are more likely.

Older adult beginners - especially those who have retired and seek a new avocation - evaluate everything in music because evaluation is what they have learned to do during their adult lives and because of their inability to translate what they see on a score into a lasting kinaesthetic experience due to both degraded neural plasticity and proprioception and often age-related memory impairment as well – all of which are perfectly normal with ageing. For most there is an incessant interior dialogue where the act of playing is replaced by THINKING about playing.  I had one elderly lady, whose dialogue was actually spoken aloud, processing every note name, every interval, the value of each note and its placement within the measure. Such intense evaluation meant that ABRSM Grade 1 sight-reading lacked any semblance of flow and musicality. Even attempting to count and clap simple Grade 1 rhythms was subject to evaluation expressed verbally – hence just a series of stops and starts with a lot of dialogue in between. She was, however, an extreme case.

❤