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Four years of sight reading practice

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Re: Four years of sight reading practice

#61

Post by mtalantikite »

skybrian wrote: post #38

Having started with traditional piano lessons, being able to sight-read notes without knowing what they are is something I’ve picked up, but not what I want. I think of this as “player piano mode.” I want to sight-read chords, chord progressions, and other patterns, and get better at playing those.

A good jazz teacher would be able to lead you through this, or a classical teacher that has a composition background.

You'll need to learn all your chords of course. Take a few keys every day and just practice your four triads for each (major, minor, diminished, augmented) with their inversions up and down. Use a metronome and increase the speed weekly until you've got all of them going at a decent pace. When you can do that, then you can move to the four part chords and do the same. Everyone teaches it differently, but my teacher had me doing 10 of them -- maj6, min6, dim7, maj7, dom7, min7, min7b5, minmaj7, augmaj7, aug7, in that order, with their inversions, in closed and then open position, in all 12 keys. It takes years honestly.

And of course you'll want to be playing songs from lead sheets -- over time you'll start picking up on the ii-V-Is, I-vi-ii-Vs, and I-IV-Vs, etc.

Re: Four years of sight reading practice

#63

Post by stonemetal12 »

eitally wrote: post #55
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's the problem with this approach. You don't learn random notes, you learn note patterns. It's the difference between learning to recognise letters and learning to read words. Music is made of words - scale-specific gestures, of which there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, typically arranged in some kind of harmonic context so you can make reasonable guesses about what's coming next. This matters because fin…

I was going to make the same comment as the PP, but I disagree with your point about "note patterns". When you're sight reading real music (melodies, harmonies and chords), that's when you start grokking note patterns and can reach real mastery. Sufficiently good sight readers often don't even need to read every individual note to anticipate what will "happen next" because in many cases chord progressions, rhythms an…

> good sight readers often don't even need to read

That would suggest they aren't good at reading, but good at playing. If you are practicing reading, then not reading and making stuff up is against what you are trying to do.

Re: Four years of sight reading practice

#64

Post by vunderba »

k__ wrote: post #54
vunderba wrote: post #51

As others have mentioned, I would not recommend learning to sight-read from randomly generated assortments of notes, simply because the runs/progressions are unlikely to be found in the "wild," so you aren't building up mental patterns for chunking groups. Even though I could read sheet music, I mostly played piano by ear until around high school when I decided to properly learn to sight-read. At the time, my access…

But isn't this a good thing? I always try to avoid learning by pattern, because it would make me less flexible when composing.

Well everyone learns differently. My earliest "compositions" (if you can call them that) are from grade school whistling into an old tape recorder and then transcribing them on our upright piano. Many of my friends who are musicians could also compose based on their ability to sing LONG before they had any working knowledge of music theory.

Additionally let me call out that sight reading and composition are completely different objectives.

I also sincerely doubt playing random notes on the piano as part of a sight reading process would make you a better composer unless you're aiming to be the next Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Re: Four years of sight reading practice

#65

Post by HenryBemis »

> You don’t need to name notes to play them

I was playing piano as a child, and I was ok-ish. I started again a couple of years ago as a 'workout' for my brain/reflexes/speed/etc rather than to amaze the crowds (I never play in front of other people - 2-3 people know/have seen me play).

The author wanted to 'learn how to play'. I wanted to re-learn 'playing music', and if you want to get the notes of a random song and play it half-decent, I'm sorry but you need to be able to read the bloody thing :)

In case anyone wants to try their luck, I will suggest to buy a second-hand electric piano (I got a Yamaha), and for 'guide/teacher' I use SimplyPiano (not affiliated) and it has taken me from "play with one finger" to "play with two hands" (but I take it slow and easy - I will never reach Ryuichi Sakamoto level)

Re: Four years of sight reading practice

#66

Post by Hunpeter »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #45
klodolph wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember typing tutors that started with the home row and slowly expanded. There aren’t a lot of words that use the home row exclusively, so you end up with nonsense. (You said “typing tutors programs” but my memory is of actual tutors, as in, people.) You may not like practicing random notes but maybe you want to play Schönberg or Bartók?

Bartók... >shudder< You have a point.

I mean, Bartók is really not that random: polytonality, pentatonic and octatonic stuff, whole-tone scales etc. are all things you can practice and put into work in his music. (You can argue that Schönberg is even less random, cause serialism, but that probably doesn't help too much when playing the piano).

Re: Four years of sight reading practice

#67

Post by mianos »

eitally wrote: post #55
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's the problem with this approach. You don't learn random notes, you learn note patterns. It's the difference between learning to recognise letters and learning to read words. Music is made of words - scale-specific gestures, of which there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, typically arranged in some kind of harmonic context so you can make reasonable guesses about what's coming next. This matters because fin…

I was going to make the same comment as the PP, but I disagree with your point about "note patterns". When you're sight reading real music (melodies, harmonies and chords), that's when you start grokking note patterns and can reach real mastery. Sufficiently good sight readers often don't even need to read every individual note to anticipate what will "happen next" because in many cases chord progressions, rhythms an…

They are not anticipating the next phrase from memory. Music has a structure that often repeats or relates to earlier patterns. Like reading, you look forward and recognise the patterns in the score and their relative position. While I am partially agreeing with you, I disagree about 'reading' individual notes. You see every note, you just don't need to convert them to a letter or key, because your hand is playing the whole phrase by interpreting the structure.

Re: Four years of sight reading practice

#68

Post by ryanscio »

vunderba wrote: post #51

As others have mentioned, I would not recommend learning to sight-read from randomly generated assortments of notes, simply because the runs/progressions are unlikely to be found in the "wild," so you aren't building up mental patterns for chunking groups. Even though I could read sheet music, I mostly played piano by ear until around high school when I decided to properly learn to sight-read. At the time, my access…

Agreed. Among pianists Bach's four-part chorales [1] are a widely used practice resource for working on sight reading because of the sheer volume of the catalog.

[1] https://www.bach-chorales.com

Re: Four years of sight reading practice

#69

Post by EvanAnderson »

Hunpeter wrote: post #66
EvanAnderson wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bartók... >shudder< You have a point.

I mean, Bartók is really not that random: polytonality, pentatonic and octatonic stuff, whole-tone scales etc. are all things you can practice and put into work in his music. (You can argue that Schönberg is even less random, cause serialism, but that probably doesn't help too much when playing the piano).

As a wildly amateur and unschooled musician Bartók simply looks wildly intimidating. Listen to him (again, as a wildly amateur and unschooled musician) doesn't make him make much more sense.

I wish I'd taken music more seriously when I was a kid (and had better neuroplasticity). I know I could still make decent progress with it, even at nearly 50, but I missed my opportunity to really cozy up to it deeply. (Instead I've got 6502 and 16-bit x86 assembler... Arguably not an even trade.)

Re: Four years of sight reading practice

#70

Post by khazhoux »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31
exchemist wrote: post #25

This is cool, though the notes in your example look pretty random? Are they actually randomly or is it just too modern for me to hear it without playing it? I'm a fairly average pianist, but sight reading is a (relative) strength. Being able to play random notes is definitely part of it, but I think for me sight-reading is more about getting a sense of the gist of the music (a lot of pattern matching of common phrase…

Yes, that's the problem with this approach. You don't learn random notes, you learn note patterns. It's the difference between learning to recognise letters and learning to read words. Music is made of words - scale-specific gestures, of which there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, typically arranged in some kind of harmonic context so you can make reasonable guesses about what's coming next. This matters because fin…

> It's the difference between learning to recognise letters and learning to read words

Bebop is the best example of this for me in music. When I first started listening to Charlie Parker as a teenager, I heard only a series of notes. But it sounded great so I kept listening (a lot!) and then I heard phrases, sentences, an actual language.

Then I bought Giant Steps and again heard only a scramble of notes. It was a new language, which took some time to learn. But now listening to Coltrane and listening to someone talk, feels exactly the same.

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