If you feel like learning songs or pieces take ages. And by the time you finish learning the
piece, you're quite bored with it to be honest. Then chances are you may not be doing some sight
reading principles correctly. In this video, I want to give you some proven sight reading
tips so you can learn your songs or pieces in days, rather than weeks or months. I want
to explain why sight reading is possibly one of the most important concepts to master. How
it can just help everything in your piano life. And why looking at your hands when you're sight
reading is probably one of the worst things you can do. Let's get into it. How to get better at
sight reading? Sight Reading Tip Number 1 is "To Not Look at Your Hands." This is what most
people do when they're trying to sight read. So they first look at the music and then they look
down at the hands and they position it. They look at the music, down, up, down, up. [Music]
Does that feel familiar? Here's what you should do instead.
So as you can see there, my eyeballs were looking completely just at the sheet music.
And I use my hands to sort of feel where the notes are. Rather than to look down at
my hands to find the notes, and then to look back up, and down, and up, and down, and up,
and down. The reason you don't want to look up and down, and up and down, is because each time
you look down to find where your notes are, when you look back up, you need to spend just that one
or two seconds to figure out 'Oh where on the music was I again?' And that little lag in time
will unfortunately stop the flow of your music way too much. It's a really important concept
if there's one thing you can take away from this video about sight reading is not to look at your
hands. Let's do a little exercise together. So with your right hand, I just want you to put it
on the piano without looking at the keyboard. Okay and try to find a three black key group.
So without even looking, you can probably feel like this one is a three black key group. So
I'm not looking at the keyboard as you can see from my top down camera. But I can feel that
this is a three black key group. The next one is probably a two black key group. And that's a three
black key group. So find any three black keys. So let's say this one and between the first black key
and the second black key, this is a G. So play that. Okay and now try to do the same with other
three black key groups. So finding them through black key group. play the G. Another three black
key group, play the G. Another one down here, play with g. Give this a try. The reason I wanted you
to try this exercise is to show you that without looking at the keyboard, you actually know where G
is. You can find where G is because once you find that three black key group, you can use that as a
starting point or a pivot to then feel where G is, which is between the first and the second
black key. This skill you're using to find the G is what I call "SPATIAL AWARENESS". When you
have good spatial awareness, you can find where notes are on the piano without looking at them.
Now just a disclaimer, I've played this piece before. So I'm not technically sight reading.
But I haven't played this piece in a long, long time. So I chose it as an example piece
for today's video. When you're sight reading I want you to think about your body as, let's say,
a machine. Okay, so you have the input, the input: which is the notes, and the lines,
and the rhythm on the sheet music. You have the inputs and your brain is really smart. It does all
this processing... processing and then comes out the output from your hands or your fingers. So,
the music that you're playing with your fingers that's the output. So again we have the inputs.
We have the processing in your brain and an output with your fingers. Now your output can only be
as good as however much input you put into your brain. So remember this next time you sight read.
You want to look at the music and not look up and down, and up and down in your hands. Because you
want to look at the music as much as possible to absorb as much information as possible.
Rather than something like this...
Especially if the notes are relatively close with each other, you don't need to look down
to find where they are. Try to use your spatial awareness and your sense of touch and your feeling
to feel where the next note is. Tip Number 2 is linked to Tip Number 1. Tip Number 2 is "To Keep
Your Fingers Really Close to The Piano." I don't know if you've seen cartoons or kind of Hollywood
depictions of pianists playing piano. And they do something like this. Where they're no no no
no no. They're lifting the hands so high from the piano and striking from such a distance.
Now in real piano playing that never happens. Real piano playing should look kind of boring. Let me
explain what I mean by that. Let's say you're playing a little scale with your right hand.
You want the action of playing that skill to look almost as minimal as
possible. As little turns as possible and as little movement as possible.
Rather than...
something like that. The closer you keep your fingers stuck to the keyboard, the better you
can sight read. Because that allows you to feel a keyboard more. That allows you to use
each note to kind of figure out where the next note is more. So let's say in this first part...
Now there is a little rest there before the next note. But what I'm going to do
is to not lift up my hands entirely. Because that last C note is really,
really important for helping me to find the next note up. Which is the A. So
I'm going to use this note to find where this next note is. Because I
know roughly this stretch of my hand that's going to give me an A. Okay so
[Music]
So Tip Number 2, remember this one, to keep your fingers really close to the keyboard.
That's going to allow you to feel the keyboard and find relative positions much, much stronger.
Tip Number 3 is to "Practice at a Speed Where You Can Strike 99% of Notes Correctly." This is a tip
I used with one of my students Chloe recently. And it did wonders for her. When you're sight reading,
you want to choose to play at a tempo that you can actually handle. So this is not good [Music]
This is much better.
This next one is even better.
When you practice sight reading at a speed you can actually handle, your brain is actually
processing all the notes on the sheet music. The first example that I showed you where I was just
kind of rushing everything, I personally find that those experiences don't help you to learn
really anything. Because you're doing something I like to call gambling. Which is you're looking
at the music and you're roughly faking out all the notes without really, really processing or
really learning anything. So remember the tip is to practice at a speed where you can strike 99%
of the notes correctly. That means for every 100 notes you're only allowed to make one wrong note,
99% correctly. So take this as an example. Let's say this next bunch of notes I'm about to play.
It's making me go "Oh there's some changes there and I probably need to just pause to
look at what's happening." I don't even mind if you just kind of pause the music slightly
to make sure you're getting the correct notes straight. So something like this...
So as you can see there, I almost kind of broke the flow of the music. I broke the rhythm but if
you do that to get the notes correct I think this is a really good move for the long term. Because
you're giving your brain a chance to learn something there rather than just faking it
and gambling it. Why not use that chance to slow it down but actually get it right? So that the
next time you see something like that, you see a pattern like that in sight reading. You can
actually strike it correctly the next time. Tip Number 4 for sight reading is "To Scan Ahead."
Good sight readers are always doing this. Good sight readers are actually fantastic analyzers.
So what they usually do before they even read the piece is, they look through the whole thing. Okay
you look through the whole thing. You see there maybe any repeats. You look for specific patterns
are there, maybe left hand chord patterns that repeat themselves. Are there specific melodies
at the right hand plays that repeats? For example, in this piece I'm sight reading for you here it's
very scale-y. There's lots of going up and down with the right hand. So it's just something that
I bookmark in my head before I even attempt the piece. And after analyzing the whole piece when
I'm actually playing the piece, I'm also deeply analyzing what's in the next bar.
So looking at the next bar, already looking at the next bit, already next bit, next bit.
[Music] [Music] A good sight reader always reads ahead because that's the only way to keep that
flow of music. Now if you're wondering "How am I supposed to do that? I feel like I can't even read
the current bar. How am I supposed to read one or two bars ahead." If you're asking the question,
there's a chance that you might be sight reading something that's maybe just a little bit too
difficult for you. Try to pick something that's less complex to sight read. Make sure you have
that ability to read just about half a bar, one bar, two bars ahead. And then you can attempt
to sight read some of the more complex things. Tip Number 5 is "To Focus on Patterns and Structures."
I alluded a little bit to this in the previous tip of scanning ahead. But as a sight reader,
remember you want to be a master analyzer. Look for repeated parts. Are there anything,
things that you can kind of tell your brain "Oh this part you can relax a little bit because
it's just the same part as before." You can use your kind of aural and muscle memory to
play out that part when that part comes back again. Because you need to leave some brain
and cognitive resources for something else that's going to come that's much harder to
decipher and play out in real time. Look for chord structures. Look out for what the left
hand is doing. Try to decipher those patterns. A piece is never made up of just random notes.
There's always some kind of structural pattern that you can analyze and in your head just try
to remember about these patterns. For example, in this piece the left hand...
I can see that the starting part are made up of many of the similar pattern. This is called an
"Alberti Base". Bottom top middle top bottom top middle top. I can see that left hand is
a whole bunch of Alberti Base but just with some different notes here and there. So in my head I
have bookmarked about this is a specific pattern that I need to do. All I need to now watch out
for are what different notes I need to play within this structure called the Alberti Base.
All Alberti base but some different notes here and there. That concludes
our sight reading video today. If you think this has been helpful for you,
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If you have any specific questions about sight reading or any other piano-related topics,
put them down in the comments. 90% of our channel's content are all based on
questions asked by you. Happy practicing sight reading and I'll catch you in the next video!