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Reddit mentions of Progressive Sight Reading Exercises: Piano Technique

Sentiment score: 8
Reddit mentions: 10

We found 10 Reddit mentions of Progressive Sight Reading Exercises: Piano Technique. Here are the top ones.

Progressive Sight Reading Exercises: Piano Technique
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Piano Method0793552621SG2745Piano Technique
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Height12 Inches
Length9 Inches
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Release dateNovember 1986
Weight0.7 Pounds
Width0.213 Inches

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Found 10 comments on Progressive Sight Reading Exercises: Piano Technique:

u/Yeargdribble · 206 pointsr/piano

Let me guess. Your sightreading is a weakness. You sound like one of the panoply of stories I hear of students who can play amazing pieces of music, but basically have been taught like trained monkeys their whole life. Look at the page... decode where your fingers go... repeat until perfect and memorize very quickly. You likely are always working on difficult and impressive music. There's just something that seems almost unique to piano culture that students are often taught to sprint before they can crawl. Move from one ridiculous difficult piece to the next... maybe learn 3-6 pieces of incredibly dense music a year.

People seem to get pissed at me when I recommend avoiding this approach... avoid overly difficult music even if you love it... avoid constant rote memorization, even if you're just a hobbyist.

Sure, some people manage to pick up the other skills along the way by accident or osmosis, but all too often your situation is what results from this approach to music.

I've been playing roughly half as long as you and didn't start seriously until my late 20s and I'm making a career of it. I can prepare a lot of music somewhat quickly and I get better at it all the time. I don't do this to make you feel bad, but to give you some perspective. Don't feel bad... it's not a lost cause. You probably absolutely trounce me in many areas of technique. You have huge advantages so if I could do it, you certainly can do it.

If you want to fix all of this you first need to drop any ego you have. You need to not care what other people think about how bad you sound or how childish the stuff you practice is. The constant one-upmanship in the classical piano community is what has gotten you in this spot. Stop caring what people think and work on what you actually need to work on to make progress.

Start at the beginning and don't try to tell yourself that you're above anything. In my opinion, no piece of music is too easy. If you can't sightread it effortlessly with good musicality then there is something to be learned from it. That might mean you're playing the simplest songs out of the most childish books... so-fucking-be-it.

You obviously are willing to work at it, but like many people, you're putting all your effort in the wrong places. Some of that may be that you're just misguided, but some of it might be the human tendency to avoid things that are hard and toward things that are an easier path.

Like I always say, it's exactly why people seem either be good readers or good at playing by ear, but rarely both. Once someone finds one way of doing something that works for them, they start avoiding the other one. In so doing, they get even better at the one and even worse (relatively) at the other and eventually they are completely unwilling to try the other because they have their easier path.

"Why am I trying to play this by ear... I could just sightread it easier?"

"Why am I trying to decode these stupid dots... I could play it by ear easier and make a better arrangement?"

Both fall into the groove of the path of least resistance.

Additionally, people with some background are far more resistant to actually starting at the beginning and fixing their foundation. They gloss over the stuff they think they already know never bothering to actually put it under their fingers and find out. They read something sloppily and "close enough" they say before jumping to reading something way too hard. They think that by just throwing themselves at harder problem, they will somehow magically get there. I tend to use the analogy of someone going to the gym every day and attempting to bench press 300 lbs. They never work up to it, they just try and fail every day hoping that some day they will magically have figured out how to do it.

It doesn't work that way. You have to build yourself up to that point. Likewise, you have to build up the musical muscles that will allow you to actually accomplish the lofty goals you keep throwing yourself at. You can say you work really hard, but if you just spend 2 hours every day trying to move 300 lbs. fruitlessly, what are you actually accomplishing?

Reading

Get this book. It's offensively easy. Deal with it. Worst case scenario you read effortlessly and breezily through it's 500+ exercises in 5 finger position and you're out 10 bucks, but most likely you won't absolutely nail it. You'll find some tricky rhythm or some weird issue with accidentals.

Every tiny thing like that is a weakness... work it out and it becomes a strength. You just need to weed out the 100s of these you likely have in technique, decoding, theory, etc. and slowly work up to the point where they are like breathing.

When you're done with the book... read it again if you feel like you need to. Then go grab some beginner books. Surely in your position you have access to tons of them. Sightread those. Keep your eyes on the page and force yourself not to check your hands. Learn to know where they are. Learn to associate what you see on the page with what you're playing.

From there you can just work your way up. Go to a used book store and find shitty old songbook collections of stuff that looks about at you level and read. If something is a bit too hard, maybe learn it. Either way you should be finding easy-ish stuff that you can digest and polish in a few days to a week. Optimally you should be learning several small pieces like this in parallel. These are the pieces that are nearly sightreadable but contain small weakness. Maybe a rhythm that's difficult, or a chord you're not comfortable wrapping your fingers around, or maybe a brisk tempo that tests your technique. Work these out... weaknesses become strengths and eventually you'll just be sightreading this stuff... expose yourself to as much different stuff as you can. A variety of styles will also really help if possible.

Read. Every. Day!

Ear

Play simple songs by ear. Just force yourself to do it. Either turn on some simple pop on the radio, or find a bunch of children's song on Spotify or whatever. You should be able to bring in at least the most basic theory to this. Most songs will be diatonic, so out of the 12 note available, you've already eliminated 5 and only have 7 to choose from. You can probably hear when something is tonic. You should eventually be able to hear if something is stable and part of the I chord (do-mi-sol; 1-3-5). Ultimately everything else just wants to lean to those. Over time you'll start associating these things with chord and chord tones, but for now, just try to do it.

Find the key by locating the tonic, then pick out he melody. Stick to simple things. Hunt and peck to start as needed, but quickly transition to not taking blind stabs but instead listening and making educated guesses before hitting a key. You'll progress quickly from a lot of mistakes to pretty good accuracy so long as you stick to simple music.

Eventually move to picking out the bass line. You said you're good at theory. From the bass line of simple nursery rhymes or pop music, you should be able to figure out the chord progression. Most of the bass notes will be roots, though occasionally they will be inversions. You'll learn through a bit of trial and error to recognize common motions of this stuff. In simple music there aren't that many progressions and you'll learn to recognize them quickly enough.

At some point you might want to try transcribing them first with the aid of the piano, but eventually without... just being aware of the pitch relationships... sketch the melody... figure out the bass (solfege is helpful if you know it) and make either a lead sheet with chords or a simple arrangement by filling in the middle. This will work your ear and force you to make associations with music that will improve your reading as you puzzle out things like rhythm from the reverse end.

Once you're good at this, you'll likely naturally move to more and more complex stuff and much like with reading practice, you'll notice the parts that you identify quickly (Oh, that was V-I) and maybe find some things that catch you off guard (was that I-bIII?) You'll learn it... put in your back pocket and once again weaknesses become strengths. The more ideas you're aware of, the better you'll get at doing it unaided.


Chords and Improvisation

I've been meaning to make a video about chords for a couple of weeks now. I guess I need to buckle down and do it because I just don't think I can adequately explain to you what you need to do in text. I'll give you a spoiler. The first step is to play up and down your diatonic triads in every key. Say them out loud as chords... say them out loud as Roman numerals. Internalize them. At the very least you should be able to instantly tell me the V and IV of any key I call out... hopefully the vi too. Make flash cards if you want to practice this away from the piano. Then start playing progressions in every key. This will force you to think about them quickly.

Improvisation needs to start simpler... like everything you're trying to do. Don't give yourself no limits... make strict limits. I made a video that honestly needs some updating at this point but it will get you started.

I wouldn't even worry about jazz at this point, but if you really want to get started, start working through this book. Also use this video to help guide you though some things you need to start with. The book will lay all of this 3-7 stuff out to you on the page, but internalize them and make a leadsheet to play them from.

u/Keselo · 14 pointsr/piano

That is exceptionally inspirational, and the timing is great as well, as I've just ordered Progressive Sight-Reading Exercises to get started on my own sight-reading practice. Great job on your progress!

u/NinjaNorris110 · 7 pointsr/piano

I went through a phase of playing like this for a few months, it's definitely fun.

I reckon a logical next step is fake books: You can clearly read chord sheets really well so look into a book like this to get a grasp on reading melodies on the spot, then buy a fake book to play from. They're essentially a book of lead sheets for various pop/rock/jazz songs which feature the melody and the chords for you to mess with. Give it a go!

u/Metroid413 · 3 pointsr/piano

I tell this to most people that are trying to work on sight reading -- do yourself a favor and get this book and work through it. They're progressive sight-reading exercises and they were extremely beneficial in improving my ability to sight-read and in general, they helped me work through my normal pieces more quickly too (because I was better at reading on the spot).

u/scottious · 2 pointsr/piano

> How do you practice sight-reading?

Get a book like this and make your way through it slowly.

> Read it through, play it, and never sight-read it again?

Pretty much, yeah... playing through it too many times means you start to memorize what it should sound like.

> Is it okay to bring down the tempo than from the marking?

Absolutely

> What if I'm just making too many errors?

The goal is to choose something easy enough and play it slow enough that if you make an error you can continue playing the rest of it. Error recovery is it's own skill, and you need SUPER easy pieces to start out with. The book I linked to starts off very very simple.

u/EntropyOrSloth · 2 pointsr/piano

Is this the same Hannah Smith?

u/npcee · 2 pointsr/piano

I highly recommend doing some keyboard practice by transposing! I'm currently going through this https://www.amazon.com/Progressive-Sight-Reading-Exercises-Technique/dp/0793552621

There are 500ish examples that are quite easy I spend about 10 minutes on it everyday and I transpose the exercise i'm reading into all keys going up semitones. This forces you to read and feel hand positions and read in intervals rather than notes as you're transposing. Instead of thinking G > C> D in the original key of C you think I'm playing a perfect 4th and a major second after that and then you play it in every key from sight. I think it would be of much benefit to get into this kind of thing early.

u/DatOrganistTho · 2 pointsr/piano

What you need is a progressive sight reader, one that starts below your ability and moves up steadily as it challenges you more.

If you are looking for something online that fits this, you likely won't find it, but here's some things you and "search" around (and maybe find something you can use):

  1. Bela Bartok, Mikrokosmos - Goes from absurdly simple to complex college-level recital pieces.
  2. Progressive Sight Reading Exercises by Hannah Smith. This is good, though not technically diverse.
  3. http://www.soundswell.co.uk/pages/swsightr.htm Goes through some progressive work with emphasis on real music.
  4. http://sightreading.com.au/free-resources/free-examples.html Sampling of various books for sight reading.

    HTH.
u/nanyin · 1 pointr/CasualConversation

There are a lot of resources online - youtube etc, but I prefer books so when I decided to teach myself how to play around 2 and a half years ago I used Alfred's Adult all-in-one, progressive sight reading, and Easy classics to moderns.

Once I felt comfortable enough with sight reading, I just started buying whatever I liked. I also sit down and transcribe the music I like. Just got done learning this track from pride and prejudice, and it barely took a week to learn! It's so wonderful to see my fingers flying across the keys, I can't even describe it.

You might also like flowkey.

Good luck, and I'm sure you'll thank present you for starting - say 5 years from now, when you're sitting at your piano and feeling generally amazing after a particularly good improvisation :)