Introduction

Sight reading is always neglected by music teacher, because it can't be improved immediately compare with pieces.? Most of the music teacher don't know the effective method to teach sight reading, it causes sight reading is less concerned by students. Even no student really know how to practice sight reading and it will limit the healthy musical growth of students. I choose this topic because i want to tell every music learner that how sight reading is important and how to improve and teach sight reading skill.

Sight reading is very important for learning music, it is the most valuable skill if student can play it fluently. It's the basic skill for a musician and it should be trained at the early stage of music learning. The main reasons are, student can learn music independently and they can explore different music by themselves as they like. Thus they can create a great ocean of music experience than others and develop a rich & great musical life. Also, fluent sight reading can prevent to waste valuable time for boring note learning, but focus on the essential for learning pieces.

Analysis of sight reading

Basic factors of sight reading

The first step to analyze sight reading is knowing its basic components, they are recognizing pitch, understanding rhythm and combining them together with a steady pulse.

For recognizing pitch, it's the process to see a note, knowing its name and translating the information into appropriate set of physical movements needs to be a virtually instantaneous process. The fluency of note reading is very important and it can be trained by specific method like using flash card. Base on scales or arpeggios, triads or chords etc, students can recognize pitch from reading letter to words, phrase, or even whole sentences. Fluency will soon be easily handle by students.

For understanding rhythm, it's the fundamental part for sight reader. When student can maintain a steady pulse with appropriate tempo physically and internally, they can relate pulse to rhythm which is essential for the fluency of sight reading. So, learning and recognizing new rhythmic pattern can help students to improve the accuracy and fluency.

For combining pitch and? rhythm with steady pulse, students should ensure that they should know every note and understanding all rhythm patterns. It is impossible if there is the slightest hesitancy in the recognition or understand of either of the basic elements. Another important thing is disregarding errors, if students can ignore all mistakes, fluency will be improved eventually.

Associated factors of sight reading

Besides the basic components, there are some associated factors which affect the fluency and accuracy of sight reading. They are:?

Concentration

As a multi-task activity, sight reading should be focus on concentration, sight readers should clear their minds and concentrate fully on the matter in hard. They need to consider the associate factors and focus on concentration regularly and repeatedly to obtain efficient sight reading. Those points should become subconscious & automatic and concentration is focused simply on playing the music.

Key signature

Key signature is the soul of a piece. Once sight reader keep in mind, they can read music in a more musical way, it can reduce the load on the short term memory to remember how many sharp and flat in a piece. Recognizing the key signature can be trained by playing the scale & arpeggio and remind the key in mind during performing a piece. It can also heighten and maintain their awareness of key.? The key can find from the last & beginning chord or note.

Looking ahead

Sight reader should be encouraged to read ahead form the earliest sight reading they do. That's mean to scan the piece when playing the music until the end. When sight reader's hand are playing first beat of measure, the eyes are already glancing at the second beat of the same measure. It is essential for fluency of sight reading.

Keep eye on music

Sight reader should keep eye on music but not keyboard or finger. It can develop a peripheral vision toward keyboard and habit of feeling the key before playing them.

Fingering

A instinctive approach of fingering which developed by playing scales, arpeggios & related pattern can improve the fluency of sight reading. It is because most of the pieces are developed by those patterns with similar fingering, then sight reader can easily get on the piece, anticipate fingering problem and avoid paint into impossible situation.

Aural understanding of music

Aural understanding means the ability of reading music, know what they sound like and what they mean internally. It affects the fluency and accuracy of sight reading directly. When sight readers have this skill, they can hear the notes in their mind and produce an expected sound by a fingering. To train this skill, students should able to sight sing before playing it, then do it regularly, the skill will be improved.

Dynamic expression and articulation mark

Sight reader should aware of those dynamic marks which shown on the piece, they are sometimes for expression. Sight reader should know all the meaning of those expression and articulation symbols for the basic requirement of the pieces.

Time signature

Sight reader should know the basic knowledge about time signature to ensure they can tap the pulse and rhythm accurately. So, music theory and homework should be given to enrich their musical knowledge.

Harmony understanding

If the sight reader can be trained up to accuracy to play the piece on right notes and rhythm, harmony understanding will help sight reader to perceive musical intention of a melody, phrase chord or chord progression.

How to teach sight reading

When do we start to teach sight reading? We should assure student's counting and note reading is well.

Firstly, we can explain why sight reading is important and find how tough to read a new piece. When the student discover that it is easier to begin a new piece, they can gain appreciation the importance of good sight reading skill.

Then we can select material for at least one level below the student's present ability and tell the basic rules(factors of sight reading) to play sight reading. We can examine the piece first for pattern and traps(key, accidentals, unusual counting patterns, accents, dynamics, fingering etc).

?Then student can play slowly for high accuracy to incorporate every detail part on the page. It is important to tell the student to read ahead, non stop, count, ignoring mistake, absolute concentrate.

The rhythm can be demonstrate by taps(one hand tap the pulse and one hand tap for rhythm, vise versa) to improve coordinate pulse and rhythm. Before sight reading, student can sight sing to know the note sound like to improve accuracy.

We should give assignment daily and check it at each lesson. They can start at various place and hear a little bit of each piece. We should encourage students to play sight reading at home daily to notice how much improved of sight reading skill. When sight read a new piece once, we can ask students to give comment to their work and criticize. We can also give comment to them for mistakes. Then repeat the piece to correct mistake. The maximum times is 3 times to play a sight reading piece. We can reteach basic skill at alternate week and month until student perceive sight reading skill in the most effective way. Students should make mental plan and build up library of musical ideas and gesture.

Student should know practicing sight reading each day and improve daily is an important job. It is because sight reading depend on recognition of structure and memory,? so if they stop practicing, they will lose sight reading ability eventually. Also, young sight readers will have better memory.

When we choose material, we should give assignment for different level sight reader. For beginner, we can choose some easier piece in Beyer, EveryBody etc. For intermediate player, we can choose sonatina. For the advanced player, we can choose easier Haydn sonata and Mozart sonata. Sight reading exercises book, Graded sight reading book also a good material to practice. The main rules is to play at least one level below the student's present ability.

Many student can't ignore mistake, there are 3 ways to make them as inaudible as possible. They should keep rhythm intact, maintain a continuous melody and practice simplifying parts from complicated(carry melody and omit accompaniment). Students should eliminate the habit of stopping, backtracking and stuttering at every mistake. This skill can develop by not stopping every mistake when beginning the first lesson. The stuttering habit can be eliminated by deciding you will never backtrack again and try your best at every mistake. The most powerful skill for ignore mistake is simplify music, student can eliminate ornament out of the melody from fast runs.

Students should learn all common musical constructs: scales & fingering, arpeggios, common chords, chords transition, common trills and ornament. They should memorize location of very high & low notes appear on score and find them instantly. They can start by memorizing all octave C.

Another useful skill to find notes is interval observation. It is for precise note playing. We can teach students by drawing staff with 5 line and 4 spaces. If there are 2 notes from different line or space, the interval must be 3rd , 5th? and 7th . If there are 1 space and 1 line, the interval must be 2nd . 4Th, 6th , 8th, vice versa. We can print out for exercise, until students can tell us the interval within 1 second. It can develop the habit of reading sheet music by reading interval.

We should let student know sight read is a skill just like learn to speak well and? can save time for rehearsal. It also gains convenience advantage beyond assimilating notes, rhythm, phrase and musical nuance are all quick apparent and make sense immediately. It takes quick insights into practice room for processing. Student should think that sight reading is easy to handle and they should always do sight reading . We should? ensure that they know the advantage of good sight reader and how to improve sight reading.

Finally we can give the sample outline for the sight reading skill to students to keep their attention and aware of sight reading for reference.

Conclusion

Sight reading is an essential skill for musician and even every student who study music. No matter how great effort you try to practice pieces, sight reading skill can not be improved if you don't know the skill for learning it. For the future advantage of music development of every music learner, we must hardly remember the what advantage of good sight reader and how sight reading skill to improve.

Outline