How to Sight Read Piano Music
If you’ve ever wished you could simply sit down at the piano and read sheet music, or open up a book of your favorite repertoire and sight read it, you’re not alone - high level sight reading is an elusive skill that many pianists struggle with for years.
The good news is that if you take the right steps and practice regularly, you will improve and reach your goals, no matter how lofty they may be. If you want expert guidance on improving your reading, please get in touch for piano lessons in Westchester County, NY. I’d love to set up a trial lesson for you.
What Does it Mean to Sight Read Music?
You are sight reading when you play music that you have never seen before by reading it off a page. If you listen to a tune and try to replicate it by remembering how it sounds, you are playing by ear, not sight reading. Sight reading is just like reading a novel - you are reading new material that you’ve never experienced before. At the piano, you aren’t just reading; you are reading the notes and translating them into physical motions that interact with the piano keyboard.
Why is Sight Reading Important?
Firstly, you’ll get so much more joy out of the piano if you can sight read. If you can’t, every new piece of music will be a slog - you won’t be able to hear how it sounds until you’ve practiced it at length, and you can never casually enjoy new music by just sitting down and playing it.
Also, sight reading is an incredibly important practical skill: accompanying singers and instrumentalists, playing in ensembles, and so forth. “If you wish to become a working, professional pianist, you must absolutely master the ability to sight read,” mentions Gabriele Baldocci, founder of the London Piano Centre. “
“You only have one chance to impress your clients in rehearsals, and furthermore, you never know when someone else will call in sick and you’ll get a job because of short notice. In those instances, if you can’t make a go of it without seeing the music in advance, you may not get called back.”
You may need to show up at a rehearsal and try to play music that you’ve never seen before. You can’t possibly get this music perfectly, but good sight readers have to learn how to communicate the gist of a piece at first sight, maintain tempo along with the other musicians in the group, and generally hold their own.
How Long Does it Take to Be Able to Sight Read Piano Music?
If you are a complete beginner, it may take 1.5 to 2 years before you feel like you are really sight reading. Here’s a general rule: the difficulty of the music you are able to sight read well will always be about two levels below the difficulty of the repertoire you practice for recitals and such.
So if your teacher has you practicing Fur Elise (which is actually a pretty difficult piece - Level 5 according to the Royal Conservatory), you should be practicing your sight reading on music like Clementi’s Sonatina in C Major.
Now, there are exceptions to this rule. Let’s say you took lessons for several years, but your teacher never helped you get better and faster at reading. You may have simply worked very hard at one or two pieces of difficult repertoire each year (way beyond your reading level), and you learned largely by rote and repetition. In these cases, you may be able to play a difficult piece of music, but you can’t sight read even an easy piece of music fluently. This is a common situation, and one that causes much frustration for pianists. It’s the result of oversight on the teacher’s part - the ability to read must be taught in tandem with everything else at the piano.
If this sounds like you, go back to the fundamentals: make sure you can read music flash cards quickly, slowly practice sight reading every day, and don’t worry about the fact that you are sight reading easy music. You will progress rapidly.
Sight Reading Tips: How Do You Practice Sight Reading Sheet Music?
Let’s start right at the beginning - how well do you know your notes? Can you rapidly name notes on the staff when you are flipping through flash cards? Can you rapidly name each note in a line of music, in both the bass and treble clef? If not, start there.
Next, take very easy lines of music -- from the Dozen a Day book, for example -- and sight read with one hand at a time. As you sight read, practice reading intervals; C-A is a sixth for instance, and you can sight read faster if you can identify intervals right away rather than reading each note.
Then, as you get better at reading, stop focusing on individual notes, and read lines. If a line starts on an E Flat, and proceeds in a stepwise scale motion, you know it’s just a scale (hopefully you are also practicing your scales!). At that point, you are just playing the scale, not reading each note individually! It’s like reading a book - quick readers pass their eyes over lines, they don’t sound out each word.
Now you can start sight reading with your hands together - you will need to start with very easy music. When reading hands together, read from the bottom up - if you start with the bass note, you can often ascertain what the chord is in the measure you’re reading. Again, this saves you from reading each note if you are able to identify an E Flat Major 7th chord right off the bat. Also, it’s good to always try to play at least the bass when sight reading in tempo. If you have to leave something out, it’s often best to leave out the upper notes and play the bass. This helps to maintain a feeling of continuity in the music.
You must not stop, and you must maintain a steady tempo when sight reading. Did you play a wrong note? That’s ok in this case! Just keep going, focus on getting the gist of the music, and if you have to, set a metronome. People who “speed read” books do not comprehend each word, but they do understand the concept of what they are reading.
Before you begin sight reading a piece, always take time to figure out the key signature, time signature, generally topography of the piece, and keep your eyes open for potential pitfalls - a key change, tricky measure, changes in hand position, etc.
Lastly and most importantly, you get better at sight reading by just doing it. Spend 10 minutes every day sight reading new music following the steps above, and you will improve.
Should I Look at My Hands or the Keyboard When Sight Reading?
For the most part, you should not be looking down at the keyboard when you’re reading music. When I teach a student, I always try to emphasize this point and help them to figure out ways to play their music without looking at their hands. Great sight readers don’t have to look down. If you’re in the habit of looking down at your hands when you’re reading music, you will really need to break this habit to be a good sight reader. Every time you look away from the music, you break your concentration and waste valuable time. A good teacher can coach you on how to navigate the piano keyboard without looking down in different musical situations.
When I study a classical piece, I often work out the fingerings for the notes by writing them out in the music. (If you don’t know what fingering is, it means choosing which fingers to play which notes with). Over time, as I come to understand a piece better, I tend to refine these initial fingerings. I like to work on paper, so I usually just use pencil and erase and change fingerings as needed. This is an involved process, but it tends to yield good results. In my view, the more times you go through this process, the better you will become at coming up with new fingerings both when closely studying pieces and when sight reading (as long as you don’t look down at the keyboard when you’re reading the music).
I don’t mean to say that you should never look at your hands or the piano keyboard. Sometimes, it’s good to look down. For example, if you are really trying to fine tune a piece that you have memorized, I think it’s ok to look down. Also, when you are working on your technique or a difficult passage, sometimes it’s good to look and see what you’re doing to figure out if you’re doing the best physical motion for the situation. For the most part, though, it’s best to not look when you’re reading, so you can continue to develop this skill.
Here are some tips for finding the right notes without looking down when you’re on your own.
Feel the Keyboard with with your Fingers, Especially the Black Keys. When sightreading, its best feel around for the right notes with your fingers if you have to. You can often keep track of where you are in the music by feeling for the black notes, or feeling for the gaps in between the white notes. This is sort of an art. A good piano teacher can help you figure out how to do this when you're working on a specific passage of music.
Think about Hand Position. Hand position is one of the most important concepts, if not the most important one, when it comes to figuring out fingering. What I mean by this is that when you are trying to decide on a fingering, try so see which groups of notes you can play easily without moving your hand position (or by moving it only a little bit). Play those notes with your hand in that position. Then, go through the this process again for the next group of notes. In time, this thinking process will become more automatic. Finding the largest group of notes you can play with one hand position won't be the only consideration when choosing fingerings, but I think it's a good starting point to try to keep in mind.
Use Slip Fingerings. A slip fingering (or organ fingering) is when you change which fingers you are using to hold down a note. For example, you are holding Bb with finger 4 and you switch to 5 while continuing to hold the key down. I find myself using slip fingerings more when sight reading because I can't always plan out the best fingerings as I'm going, and sometimes you "run out of fingers.” It might be difficult to use slip fingerings a lot if you're not used to it, but you might try to see if you can work this idea in here and there with an eye towards using it more in the future when its more comfortable.
Learn the Size of Intervals. As you’re playing, try to be aware of how each interval feels in your hands. An interval is the distance between two notes. Each interval has its own approximate size. The size and feel of an interval can vary slightly depending on its place on the keyboard (whether it involves white or black keys, etc.), but it’s always pretty similar. Some intervals can sometimes be more challenging to learn the size of, like 6ths, while others, like 2nds, 3rds, and octaves tend to be a bit easier for people to learn. Over time, you will get better at judging the size of intervals, which will make it easier to play them when they come up in the music.
If you have any questions about sight reading, or if you’d like to contact me about piano lessons in White Plains, NY or live piano lessons online, I would love to hear from you! I combine piano learning with music theory and other musical elements, and I love to help pianists learn to read better.