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1 0S t e p s t oI mp r o v e Y o u r P i a n oS i g h t R e a d i n g
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The 10 steps to become a better sight-reader that you will read about in a moment will help you cope with all these situations. Its no secret that many pianists find the exam or ensemble situations rather frightening some may even be slightly embarrassed that they are so poor sight-readers, when their performance otherwise is quite good. Follow the advice that you are about to read and the elements of sight-reading that scare you will gradually disappear. Look at the first two sight-reading situations again. If you think about it, it is pretty obvious that working at your sight-reading skills will not only take much of the stress away from certain taxing situations that we have to face as pianists. It will also make you a better musician generally. The less time and effort you need to put in just deciphering the notes, the more you can concentrate on interpretation, technical issues and so on. Your technique will improve because you will be able to try out more music, exposing yourself to more technical problems and gradually beginning to solve some of them more easily as you for instance get to know the peculiarities of a certain composer. In the ensemble situation, you will be able to listen and adapt your playing more easily to your partners when you dont have to fight as hard to get all the notes in.
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sight-reading skills will always develop only within certain limits, set partly by how well you understand a musical score, and partly by your technique. When you have tried and tested the 10 steps, and feel that your improvement is slowing down, putting in more effort on your technical and theoretical skills is what will really take your sightreading to the next level.
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notes. This is particularly useful if you are sight-reading as an accompanist. Begin with a really simple, short piece and see if you can spot the harmonic (chordal) elements of the music. There is no need for complete analysis here - if you are looking at a piece in C major, for example, a good start would be to look for all C major chords or bass note C:s. This is where the piece returns to its tonal center (the tonic).
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When you are a fluent sight-reader, you read groups of notes at a time, imagining the sound of each musical gesture or phrase the moment before you play it. This sounds like magic, and in a way it is - but not more so than the fact that you can speak, sing, read, type, walk or play tennis. You are already performing a lot of very complicated tasks where your mind and body work together in the most remarkable ways, without any sense of difficulty. Your goal should be to make sight-reading one of these very natural activities. If you are not there yet, go to the piano and sight-read something really, really easy. It only has to be a couple of notes. The main point is that you should be able to grasp the whole thing more or less at once. This will give you a foretaste of what fluent sight-reading should feel like.
As Robert Schumann once wrote: there is something magical about this veiled enjoyment of soundless music. Let this be a motto for your sight-reading practice: to be able to enjoy the music just by looking at the notes should be one of your main goals. When you have achieved that, every improvement of your technical ability will give you instant access to new parts of the piano repertoire.