Q.
A. I would have to agree with tm99 but you can learn music by studying flash cards. They will help you with sight reading. Also, practice your scales and arpeggios. Chords are important but without them you can not play classical music correctly.
What are some good activities for an experienced piano player to learn to sight-read better?
Q. I've played piano for several years now and I'm in the process of learning some pretty advanced pieces, such as Frank Liszt's Etude III, La Campanella. However; I never learned how to properly sight-read. Although I can read music, it sometimes takes me several months or more to learn a 2-3 page piece, depending on the difficulty. My question is, are there any activities or exercises that would help me augment my ability to sight-read.
A. While notating your own music is an excellent suggestion (it gets the notion of notation 'inside' you,) the best way to better your sight reading is to practice sight-reading - that is a blazing flash of the obvious. Now, here is what you will need to do....
Assemble a stack of piano music, I estimate for you this should be at near beginner's level, since by your description your sight-reading is painfully at beginning level.
Choose music you can sight read at least at 50%, better 75% or higher, the tempo marked. I emphasize again,, this will be much simpler fare than the pieces you are working on.
Library access is essential - you need stacks of individual pieces or collections. I suggest the Bartok Microkosmos books I - III, the Schumann Op 68 "Album für die Jugend," and similar materials.
The process:
Read through, once only, a given piece. Keep proper time. Do not stop for mistakes - antithetical to traditional music performance practice -- but essential for forcing yourself to look ahead, which helps you develop a grasp on pattern recognition and spatial cognition of intervals, chords and their inversions.
Once read, there is an already established memory of what the music is, therefore, reading it through a second time is NOT 'cold sight-reading,' which is your goal. You Can Only Sight-read A Piece Once - after which it is not sight-reading!
This work is not meant to be 'comfortable.' You are forcing yourself to read, at sight, pushing through rather than stopping, naming, calculating, making marks on your score. You will find that your mental stamina, at first, will flag after only a brief time. It gets better, like all practice, the more you do.
Never repeat a read-through. Do go progressively through the stack of material, marking where you stopped so you can begin with the next piece.
I cannot enough emphasize your accepting that as a sight-reader you are (in my estimate as a professional and professional teacher) a raw beginner, and that you accept, without embarrassment, that you are a beginner ~ and then be a good beginner.
There are also basic note-speller exercise books, and flash cards. I suggest you look at those too, and see if you feel 'beyond' them or if they might also be a good exercise for you.
All of this tells me you are very likely working without a teacher. This also makes me think you are working on pieces far beyond your 'true' ability at present, and it is also entirely possible you are not reflexively familiar with all key signatures, which you must be.
Music, and playing of an instrument are a cumulative studies (there is a progression of difficulty on which to build.) No teacher would assign you any piece which takes several months knowing it takes you months to learn only two or three pages; this is antithetic to real progress, the path to which is well-understood and taught in piano pedagogy.
Please consider a truly qualified and reputable teacher: they are generally worth every penny you pay them.
Best regards.
Do I HAVE to learn to read sheet music to learn songs on piano?
Q. I've learned every song I know by watching YouTube videos. If you've done this yourself, you know that it's better than reading sheet music but still kind of sucks to do. My question is if I want to be able to play lots of songs, should I learn sheet music and if so how long does it take to be faster at reading it? Or is it better to learn chord structures and such and learn to play by ear?
A. If you learn sheet music, you'll go alot farther, because you won't have to depend on other people to learn a song. Once you learn to read sheet music, you'll be able to learn songs alot faster. I suggest using flash cards to learn the names of each note. Then start trying to learn to play songs by only depending on the sheet music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q_US3RRJws
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Description : Q. A. I would have to agree with tm99 but you can learn music by studying flash cards. They will help you with sight reading. Also, practi...