Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 8:16 AM UTC

spunker540 wrote: post #37

shermantanktop wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am cursed with enough musical memory that if I learn a piece from sheet music, my sight reading literally turns off and I play from some combination of muscle memory and ear. That might sound like a humblebrag, but it's not -it's quite frustrating to "work on reading" and then realize I'm not actually getting better at reading. When I come back to the material later, the short-term musical memory has usually faded…

This may sound crazy but my sight reading improved a lot after I took an ear training class that required me to work in arbitrary clefs. I always knew treble and bass from playing piano, and had really memorized the note positions in each. When I was suddenly forced to work in tenor, alto, soprano, baritone clefs, I could no longer rely on memorization of note positions. I had to pivot to “reading intervals”. A fifth…

Post by Gmage » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 8:49 AM UTC

Post by xibe » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 9:29 AM UTC

patrocle wrote: post #73

alwa wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what’s the French term for this technique?

We call it "solfège".

  - I'm French; 
  - I learnt to play the piano as a teenager, and I'm trying to get back to it again as at 45+; 
  - I too discovered the "sight reading" term online, but that was long ago (as I recall, through a video of an adult piano player doing "live sight-reading" versions of songs he didn't know beforehand, such as the Mario theme [2];

Post by xibe » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 9:50 AM UTC

pil0u wrote: post #33

rooster117 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My app appears at the top of a search if you specify sight reading but if you are searching for "learn piano" or similar keywords it will be no where near the top

I just learned via your post the term "sight reading" in English. French words and expressions when it comes to music are very different.

Post by balfirevic » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 12:49 PM UTC

xibe wrote: post #87

pil0u wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just learned via your post the term "sight reading" in English. French words and expressions when it comes to music are very different.

Indeed! When I first learnd that the English equivalent of... Do Ré Mi Fa Sol La Si Do ... is... C D E F G A B C ... it blew my mind :D I mean, I can see the point in using letters instead of words, alright. But why in that order? Even today I can't find the origin/reason for that -- apart from "It's a German thing" apparently. It could be just that the "German key notation") and the "Fixed Do key notation" were each…