pyromarimba621
Tiger Talk Trainee
Reged: Oct 10 2003
Posts: 2
Loc: Texas
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if anyone has any ways to help bad sightreading, let me know
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Mike4
Tiger Talk Pro
Reged: Dec 03 2002
Posts: 626
Loc: Maryland
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Like Nike says, "Just Do It". For me, it's all about repetition and consistancy. If I practice reading regularly, I improve. When I don't, it's the skill I lose the fastest..... ![[Frown]](/ubbthreads/images/icons/frown.gif)
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James Walker
Tiger Talk Pro
Reged: Mar 18 2002
Posts: 1283
Loc: Connecticut
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Like Mike says - consistency is the key to developing one's sight reading skills. Five minutes a day - but EVERY day - is better than half an hour once a week.
Some other quick thoughts:
- There are two main components to sight reading: recognizing the notes on the page, and realizing them on the instrument.
- Work on something called "clef reading" - where you just read the names of the notes in the music, without playing them on the instrument, and not even singing pitches (altho sight-singing is great for this as well). This helps to develop your fluency in recognizing notes on the staff.
- Continue to develop your knowledge of the keyboard - specifically, being able to find your way around the keyboard without actually looking at the bars. Rely on feel ("ideo-kinetics") instead. The tag-team effect of looking at the music...looking at the bars...looking back to the music...back to the bars...music...bars...music...bars...every time you adjust your focus from the music to the bars and back, you have to find your place again, giving you that many more opportunities to get lost. Besides, the part of the brain that remembers physical distances (how far to reach to go up an octave from middle C on your marimba, for instance) is a separate part of the brain from the one that visually recognizes that distance - so looking at the instrument to see how far you have to reach is actually a less-efficient way of doing it, even tho it's easier at first.
- Before you sight-read a piece, take a second to look it over; find out the general range of your part; look at the "road map" (repeats, DCs/DSs, coda, etc.), check key signature, meter signature, clef(s), and try to spot the more difficult passages.
- When sight-reading, use a metronome, to help force you to keep going, even if you miss a few notes. When you're reading with an ensemble or at a recording session, they're not going to stop the rehearsal/session so you can go back and fiddle with one or two notes.
- Sight reading duets is great - it helps you to keep moving forward if you make a mistake, and two people sight-reading in tandem is usually more fun than reading by yourself.
- If you're sight-reading, and you're not missing any notes, you're not challenging yourself; the material is something you can already handle. If you're sight-reading, and you're missing a ton of notes, having to drop out for a minute and come back in, etc., you're reading something too difficult. Either way, you're not getting the most out of your sight reading sessions. The ideal is that you miss a few notes here and there, but you can keep your place and stay with the flow of the music - that way, you're challenging yourself, but you're not in so far over your head that you're not gaining from the experience.
- If you get to a section that's suddenly more difficult than what you've been reading thus far in the piece, and you know you can't get all the notes, prioritize in this order: 1) get the rhythm right; 2) follow the shape of the line - if it goes up, go up; if it goes down, go down; 3) Once you can get those two happening, start focusing on pitch accuracy.
- When you finish sight-reading (this is in the practice room), if there was a part that you didn't get, go back and learn it. Expand your capabilities in terms of what you can play on the instrument, and it'll make it easier to read a similar difficult passage in the future.
This is a great topic. I'm thinking that I might want to draw up a "lesson" for Tiger Bill's site, dealing with just this subject. (Whaddya think, Bill?)
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marimbamistress
Tiger Talk Trainee
Reged: Feb 27 2004
Posts: 30
Loc: Michigan
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wow, I was going to give some advice, but he just about covered it! My biggest sight-reading problem is getting lost during many measures of rest and ocassionaly while searchng for a D.S. You just have to read your music and focus for that though!
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