Tips for Musicians: How to Sight-Read Better

Most people feel nervous just at the thought of sight-reading. However, with the right technique you can really crack the code. In this article, we will share a few tips to help you master sight-reading with ease. 

Mastering Sight-Reading: Where to Start 

Sight-reading is both an essential and challenging skill for learning music. Things get pretty intense, as musicians have to combine keys, accidentals, rhythms, and notes. 

However, sight-reading is like reading a book where you don’t look at each word out of context without looking at a bigger picture. Similar to reading, when you sight-read, you need to look behind the notes — see patterns, music concepts, and harmonies. 

Here are questions to ask before sight-reading: 

1. Do you know notes well? Before delving into this process, you definitely need to check if you can recognize notes easily and play them on your instrument without taking too much time. If you don’t, it’s the first fundamental you need to master to move on.
2. Do you know key signatures? Ensure that you know how to play a scale and chords in different keys.
3. Can you recognize the shape of chords and intervals on the music sheet and your instrument? There are seven intervals, each of which makes a different shape. You need to learn what shape they make in your hand on the instrument. This knowledge can make your sight-reading faster because by instantly recognizing intervals on the page you can also feel them in your hands.
4. Can you hear the notes before playing them on your instrument? You should train yourself to hear stuff in your head before actually playing it on the keys. Here is how you can train this skill: take sheet music of pieces you haven’t played yet and then sing the pitches from there. After that play them on your piano or trumpet to hear how far or close you are.

Principles for Successful Sight-Reading 

There are a few principles you should follow to make sight-reading easier:

• Do not play right away but look at the music first. It means you should take time to look at key signatures, clef signs, and time signatures, and only after that move to notes. Also, at this step you should find your hand position.
• Identify the range. Look at the highest and lowest notes. This will help you understand how far you need to move with your hands.
• Look for changes in hand positions. This helps you know where these changes happen and be prepared for them.
• Look at articulations (legato, staccato) and accidentals. Try to remember parts where they occur.
• Ghost-play notes. In other words — play them silently by moving fingers on the keys without making a sound.

Tips on Improving Sight-Reading 

Now let’s explore how you can progress with your sight-reading skills:

1. Turn Sight-Reading into Your Daily Practice

Even if you sight-read for five minutes it still matters. Since music is a language, you need time and patience to learn it. Each music piece comes with new phrases and words that you need to remember. The more you train, the more phrases you add to your musical vocabulary, which means it will be easier for you to learn other pieces in the future.

2. Don’t Look At Your Hands

Yes, it’s a difficult task if you’re just starting to learn new pieces. The point is that when you switch between your hands and sheet music, your brain can’t concentrate, which prevents it from knowing what comes next.

3. Keep a Steady Beat

Sight-reading comes with rhythms, which must be precise and accurate. Many musicians agree that the rhythm is the hardest part of sight-reading. To master it, you should start with a slower tempo —so slow that it may even sound wrong. Remember that your progress is the result of slow playing and precise rhythm.

4. Learn Musical Patterns

Different music pieces have common recognizable patterns — things that look similar and repetitive. Many of them feature very predictable harmonies. Good sight-readers are musicians who can recognize these patterns quite well. Remember that in music every note is like a letter in a language, while a scale is like a word. So, if you can read these patterns and recognize them, it makes your progress easier.

5. Look One Measure Ahead When You’re Playing

This is hard to do, since it requires you to know what comes next. It means you need to always prepare for leaps and certain patterns before you have to play them. However, it’s that ability that makes your sight-reading smooth.

6. Be Ready to Play Wrong Notes and Accept It

When most people make mistakes while playing they immediately doubt their sight-reading skills, while it’s a natural part of the process. Don’t worry if you play half of the notes correctly and half of them wrong — keep going. If you focus too much on the measure you’ve already played and think about whether all notes are correct, you can’t concentrate on one measure ahead.

Conclusion 

While looking challenging and difficult at first sight, sight-reading is an achievable goal that requires practice and patience. You need to learn to look behind the notes and see a big picture. Learning sight-reading requires such fundamentals as knowing notes, scales, time signatures, intervals, and chords. Also, different music pieces share common patterns, which can help you during learning. By using all this knowledge and incorporating it into your sight-reading, you can make notable progress.

In addition to sight-reading, musicians need to have well-trained ears. Recently we’ve shared tips on How to Develop Ear Training Skills. Check them out to gain helpful insights.

On our website, you can always find a wide range of accessories for musical instruments, including skill development tools for beginners.