How To Become A Better Sight Reader On The Piano
Becoming great at sight reading piano music!
Learning to read piano music can seem like a long and daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. If you truly wish to become amazing at playing the piano, you will want to become a good sight reader. Some students try to skip that concept and want to just play by ear, but if you wish to be able to play a variety of music (even music you’ve never heard before), and be able to learn those pieces of music quickly you will want to become great at reading piano music.
How do I become better at sight reading?
Practicing on a consistent basis.
Playing a variety of piano music.
Have classical music training as part of your music education.
Having a good music theory education.
Practicing the piano on a regular basis.
The more you practice on the piano, the more you will be used to reading music and the more your hands will be able to move quickly and accurately through the music that you are playing. There are reasons that your piano teacher asks you to practice. If you wish to master that piece of music you were assigned during your piano lessons and move on you will need to practice so that you can move on and get new music.
Students who practice on a consistent basis are much better at sight reading than students who do not practice regularly, because they are reading music more often.
Don’t just play one piece of music on the piano for months at a time.
Some students prefer to just play one piece of music for very long stretches of time.
Whether it is a difficult piece of piano music or just a song that they like. If you only play one piece of music you are more developing your memorization skills as opposed to sight reading. If you want to stretch yourself you will want to follow your piano teacher’s guidance and at least try to get to all the music that they assign to you. If it find you are not able to handle it, let your teacher know so that they can make sure to not overwhelm you but still give you enough to push you.
You will find that learning different styles and large quantities of piano music will not only help you become great at sight reading, but you will also be broadening your knowledge of music that you may come to love.
Classical music will help you improve!
One of the great things about learning to play classical piano music is that there is so much going on as far as notes and patterns. If you play mostly modern music with chords and a melody line it will be easy to see chords when you sight read music, but other styles of music will still be difficult. So making sure that you receive a classical music education for your piano lessons is crucial for becoming an excellent sight reader.
When you play music that is different styles, and so much more going on, you will be used to so much more patterns and reading harder music.
If you can learn it, you can play it!
Music theory is another very important thing that should be a part of your piano lessons. Music theory will help you understand what is going on in the piano music you are reading. So instead of trying to read music one painful note at a time, you learn to recognize what is going on in the music. All of a sudden reading sheet music is so much easier to understand! One of the perks as well as having a good music theory education for the piano is that the same music theory will transfer over to learning any other instrument that you may want to pursue at a later point in time.
It won’t happen overnight.
Although you will see progress happening, make sure that you are not too hard on yourself. Developing your sight reading will take years to develop at a high level. Learning to play the piano is something that takes time and so will developing every aspect of your skills. But with patience and practice you can improve at a very rapid rate.
