Do you find sight reading challenging?
Are you curious on how you can
actually improve your sight reading?
So you actually get to play the music faster?
Hi, I'm Jazer.
I'm here to give you three tips
on how you can improve your piano sight reading.
Let's get to it.
The first point is to "Stop looking at your hands".
When you're playing the piano and you're doing this
and you're sight reading, right?
And you're looking up
and you're looking down
and up and down and up and down.
It's just going to be too boggling for your mind.
Your mind's going
too much is happening
and so many of my students,
so what they do is they are looking up and down up,
up and down to try and find assurance
by looking down at their fingers when they don't have to.
And what ends up happening is they end up
stopping the music so many times
when they don't really need to.
What I recommend you do
is when you sight reading your piece,
look straight up at the music
stare,
stare down like it's your arch enemy.
And don't look at your hands at all.
Or at least as much as you can.
What you do when you,
when you're doing this
is you're building a really good spatial awareness
of the keyboard.
So what that means is your fingers,
you start to build
this ability for your fingers to know
what a fifth is,
one five or what an octave is.
And it knows exactly how far to go.
For example, that's a fifth and that's an eight.
So for example, whatever note I play on the piano,
[Music]
Look, that's a fifth
[Music]
somewhere else.
[Music]
You know, my fingers just knew exactly
what a fifth actually is.
So I'm going to play a "Chim Chim Che-ree"
from Mary Poppins piece,
Probably everyone knows.
And notice how I am looking at the music
as much as possible.
I am looking at my hands as minimally as possible.
Let's give it a go.
[Music]
Tip Number 2is to "Learn chord patterns".
Really familiarize yourself with chord patterns.
Now, why?
When you see a chord,
let's say in the piece that I was just playing,
let's say you're looking at
this chord right here.
Now you have an F,
and A, and a D.
Now when you sight reading a piece like that,
and you're thinking...
F
A
D
If you are looking at them
separately, individually,
you're probably not really good sight reader.
Now what you're supposed to do when you're sight reading
is you are suppose
to chunk all that into one block.
And that may seem hard to do at the start,
but that's how you improve.
You have to play enough,
have enough experience
to chunk all that into one block.
Your brain cannot see them separately
because that's too many things to do at one go.
To illustrate my point,
think about this word
now,
PIANO
right?
When you look at this word,
you see the word "piano",
you hear the what piano.
You're not thinking
P
I
A
N
O
You're just not.
Well, why? Because
you have spoken the language enough.
You've read it enough
to see this entire word as one whole.
It's the exact same thing
with piano chords, right?
So when you're
working on your sight reading,
make sure you're chunking all that information into one.
Or at least working to do that.
Play a ton of pieces.
That chord there,
That D minor chord
of F, A and D
with a the root on the top F - A - D.
I've played that numerous times.
I've played that so many times.
I don't think about that anymore.
It's just one thing to me,
a really good way I like to actually practice,
I'm playing these chord patterns
is to play hymns.
So you can Google any sort of hymns
on the internet or you can buy some hymn books.
So I've got this
really random hymnbook
from an op shop.
I think it was $1 or something.
And look at the music like that.
So,
Look how good that is.
Just for really
recognizing and playing
these chord patterns.
[Music]
Tip Number 3,
is to "Play each chord extremely slowly".
Now if you need to,
when you're seeing a complex chord,
don't rush it.
Actually try and figure out each and every note
step-by-step.
Even if it like completely stuffs up your rhythm.
It doesn't matter.
What you're trying to do is
if the chord is G B D F,
you want to make sure you're playing
G B D F and not anything else.
You want to build the right connections,
to the actual music and the things you're doing with your hands.
Built that correct
create a neuropathway.
Just take your time.
So don't play with the metronome.
Okay?
You're not trying to keep time when you're sight reading.
You're trying to learn
what these chords are.
So that these chords,
they can enter your hands and it sticks with you.
So that next time when you're sight reading another piece
that has this similar pattern,
you can
perform
the same pattern again.
So there you go.
Those are three tips on how you can improve your sight reading.
So that you can get to play your music faster.
It's so frustrating to
in the some of the learning stages of music,
but it's very essential.
And each time you do it,
it gets better and better and better.
So keep it up.
Keep up the practice.
If you liked this video,
give it a LIKE,
give me a COMMENT,
ask some QUESTIONS,
so I can answer these questions for you.
And consider subscribing as well. 🤓
I'll see you in the next video.
[Music]