Tips on simultaneously sight reading bass & treble clef

[Jazz+]

What advice or technique do you offer advanced students for improving their ability to simultaneously sight read both the bass & treble clef together with advanced grade material, such as Bach's Two Part Inventions or The Well Tempered Clavier?

 

I know a pro jazz pianist who is great at sight reading just the treble clef alone and also great at sight reading the bass clef alone. But when he has to read classical scores and both clefs simultaneously, he slows down. He says his eyes are not able to capture the wide vertical gap between the treble and bass clef fast enough at a glance. He finds his eyes having to scan down and up. He reports that he gets better results when the chord changes are penciled in above the score, like on lead sheets.

[Jazz+]

Conventional wisdom on sight reading basics says:

 

1. Before playing, study the music silently, note the key signature and time signature.

2. Play the scale in which the piece is written

3. Notice any tricky rhythms and perhaps clap them

4. Keep your eyes on the score at all times

5. Move your hands only when neccessary

6. LOOK AHEAD

7. Read from the bass upward

 

However, reading from the bass upward when sightreading could mean risking losing the melody and I think the melody should be the last part to drop out. If anything, I think it's best to have the middle voices drop out briefly.

[David Loving]

That's just because it's what he is used to, I bet - reading lead sheets or bass lines. If he practiced reading both clefs his reading chops would improve. Just like anything else. So my advice would be, "do it." I'm no music teacher. I don't have the temperment or attention span for it. I learned all I know about sight reading from reading a book by Charles Cooke, a writer and obsessive amateur pianist who interviewed concert artists for the old New Yorker magazine, and trying to do what he said to do. Cooke uses all the advice he gleaned from years of asking the most celebrated pianists of his era how they did things, and put it all into his little book. He was kind of the Harvey Penick of the piano, way before Mr. Penick's time. Cooke says he would collect stacks of sheet music and devote 10 minutes a day every day, 60 hrs per year, to sight reading through the stacks. He says take a long, hard look at the piece first, then forge ahead keeping the rhythm going at the expense of the notes. Left hand going at the expense of the right, cultivate reading groups of notes, read ahead as far as you can. He says that the more you work on repertoire, the more technique improves, and will "in turn improve your sight reading ability, through increased facility in translating printed notes into played notes." Playing the Piano for Pleasure, Charles Cooke, p. 144, c. 1941, 1960, Fireside Books, Simon & Schuster. I love that book. Sometimes I feel like his student. Anyway Mr. Cooke pretty much agrees with you - all the way back from 1941.

[Byrdman]

Bach's probably not the skill you need first unless you want to sight read contrapuntal music.

 

Try Mozart. Its by and large chord based (and scale based in the right hand). Learning to recognize chords and scales is the way to go. Beethoven will work too but he's generally (though not always) technically harder. Also, Mozart is sometimes more rythmically difficult than Beethoven, and that is an important skill to practice.

 

With Bach you are learning to read multiple lines. Anyone who can read 4 lines at once is doing real well. This skill won't help you play music with 7 + note chords in it.

 

Once you have Mozart down expand your list. Don't want to end up playing everything in Vienna style.

[Dave Horne]

My advice is the same exact method I use myself - don't play any faster when reading than you can play without making any mistakes.

 

With practice it will become easier and the speed at which one learns\sightreads new pieces will become faster.

 

Slow and steady without errors is the method I use myself and encourage others to adopt.

[Jazz+]

Have you given much thought to how your eyes track notation? There are different approaches to how ones eyes scan the grand staff notation: from the bass up, from the top down down, the middle outwards, etc.

[Dave Horne]

I personally find that a solid basis in theory really helps when sightreading/learning conventional music. I can quickly glance at a string of notes and see a scale and quickly glance at a group of stacked notes and see a chord. Instant analysis and keeping the eyes moving ahead works for me. Figuring out rhythms is what slows most folks down.

 

As with anything, practice makes, if not perfect, better. I strongly believe that playing as slow (or fast) as possible without making mistakes is the way to learn. Speed will come with time. I hear my wife practice on occasion and she plays too fast and makes too many mistakes. She has to constantly stop and start. I give her my professional advice but it seems to fall on deaf ears.

[Dreamer]

Originally posted by Dave Horne:

I hear my wife practice on occasion and she plays too fast and makes too many mistakes. She has to constantly stop and start. I give her my professional advice but it seems to fall on deaf ears.

Most of times, the way you convey a message is more effective than the message itself. I think that you really could use a little more skills in the art of seduction.

[Dave Horne]

Most of times, the way you convey a message is more effective than the message itself. I think that you really could use a little more skills in the art of seduction.

I could practice on your girl friend, apart from the improvement, she'd never notice the difference.

[Dreamer]

Originally posted by Dave Horne:

I could practice on your girl friend, apart from the improvement, she'd never notice the difference.

Dave, I begin to think that you are a desperate case...

[Tom Fiala]

How do you improve your sight reading ability?

 

Same way you get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.

 

All kidding aside, the tips given above are excellent. Expect the level of difficulty of the pieces that you use to practice sight reading to be somewhat easier than what you normally work on.

 

You also might try using transcriptions of music that you can get a recording of - that you haven't played yet and don't know by ear - so you can compare the accuracy of your sightreading to a real performance. Then, consciously analyze where you messed up and why.

[MikeT156]

Hey, some great advice you guys. What composer's music you sight read was one I didn't think of, Mozart for starters, as Byrdman suggested. My piano teacher use to tell me to read from the bass line up. That will tell you what the basic chord is and then glance up to "grab the melody line". I related everything I play to chord changes. That applies to Classical as well as popular. You can see the key and time signature before you begin to play, and even if you make a few minor mistakes the first time you go over it, if you are playing the correct chord and keeping in rhythm, mistakes can be smooth over easier.

 

HOWEVER, I agree 100% with Dave Horne about only playing as fast (which means slowly) as you can go without making mistakes. Anytime you pick up a piece of music at home, play slowly. You don't have that option sight reading popular music from the Great American Song book playing in a Lounge and a customer requests a song you never played. Fortunately, sight reading popular music or standards is a "sight" easier (pun intended) than sight reading classical music.

 

Dave Horne's observation about his wife playing too fast and constantly having to stop is a good of example of how a player can waste time and not accomplish anything. Stay on her case Dave, you're giving her the right advice. When she fails to learn a piece because her learning method is wrong, you can always say "I told you so". However, your "art of seduction" would REALLY have to be good if you say it.

 

Mike T.

[Bartolomeo]

There really are no sightreading secrets. Though accomplished sightreaders will read ahead and think in the key and so forth, these are things that come automatically once you're good enough at sightreading.

 

When sightreading at speed, one reads in blocks rather than reading "up" or "down" a chord, because when sightreading at speed there is no time to think or even to look at individual notes.

 

To learn to sightread, start with material that is easy enough that you can sightread it at a workable tempo - possibly less than you would like to play it but still fast enough that the muscial effect is maintained. In all likelihood this will be simple, artistically bankrupt music that you might otherwise consider to be beneath you.

 

Sightread such material for 10-15 minutes every night. Don't sightread the same thing more than two or three times, because after that, you're no longer sightreading.

 

Move on to more difficult material as you find it comfortable to do so. If you want to learn to sightread a variety of styles, than practice sightreading a variety of styles, because as a rule they must be learned seperately. Contrapuntal music, chord-based popular music, classical music, hymns. Play in all keys, especially the hard keys. Play music with double flats and double sharps. Play music with notes way above or below the staff, with clef changes, goofy time signatures, double dotted notes, and everything else you can think of.

 

With time and mastery, learn to sightread the expressive marks, particularly dynamics and phrasing.

 

It is sometimes important to leave notes out. In sightreading, it is an important skill to be able to continue playing in time and drop of enough notes to be able to keep up.

 

I've been told that most people who practice 10-15 minutes a night will make pretty good progress in a year or two, and that was true in my case. However, it takes years of additional work to achieve any real mastery.

 

I play church gigs and have had last-minute hymn substitutions made by the pastor. So there I am sightreading four-voice hymns in public, with a congregation singing and dragging the beat. Yes, I missed a bunch of notes, but I pulled it off.

 

I am now finally reaching the point where I can sightread three-staff organ music. It makes preparation so much easier and more enjoyable when I can play through a piece and decide how well I like it and whether it is suitable for a particular occasion, without spending a lot of time on it.

[RudyS]

my teacher always give the advice to play A LOT OF SONGS sightreading, even when I can't even play them really good, so I absorb a lot of new notes.

Also, he says, always try to play along. It can be a real struggle, with some music (like Bach for instance, I also played the 2 and 3 parts, I know they are though for not so good sightreaders) but always try to make it to the end.

That's how I did. I was a really bad sightreader, but I improved a lot, just by doing it.

[Jazz+]

So what's the secret to sight reading 3 and 4 part Bach Fugues in tempo? Exactly how do your eyes scan? Can anyone here do it at moderate tempo?

[Tom Fiala]

Bach fugues are a challenge for sight reading. The best advice I have is to analyze the main theme's figure, and see where it enters the music in each voice, and try to hear the voices individually as you play - thinking "horizontally", if you will - rather than playing blocks of music chorale style, or "vertically".

[Dave Horne]

Every once in a great while I'll work through a Bach fugue. I just play as slowly as possible _and_ keep track of the fingerings. The edition I use (Schirmer, I believe) has all the important fingerings notated. In my regular playing, I rarely have a problem where I have to figure out a fingering, but when you have three or four independent voices, it is necessary to read the fingerings. Without the fingerings (the editor's or my own), it would take much longer to get it sound musical.

 

I suppose if you worked on this stuff on a daily basis, you could sight read it effortlessly. I'm certainly not in that league though.

[Patrick.Randall]

Thanks for all this good stuff.

 

(BTW - how does one subscribe to a thread on this forum (apart from replying?)) It must be obvious but I can't see it)

[Bartolomeo]

Originally posted by Jazz+:

So what's the secret to sight reading 3 and 4 part Bach Fugues in tempo? Exactly how do your eyes scan? Can anyone here do it at moderate tempo?

Nobody can read, sight unseen, 4 part Bach fugues accurately, at tempo, in their entirety. You have to learn the parts one or two at a time and then put them together. Some good sightreaders could maybe read the easier parts of a typical 4 part fugue, since for most of the fugue the voices will not all move at once or if they do two of them will remain parallel.

 

The more difficult passages in the fugue where the voices alternate moving in parallel and contrary motion, and where the rhythm is different, have to be learned one or two voices at a time.

 

Sightreading involves unconsious exploitation of the structure of the music. You see a seventh chord, you play it, without even thinking "seventh chord" let alone identifying all the notes. You see dotted rhythm, you play it, without even thinking "dotted rhythm" let alone counting out the 3+1 beats.

 

None of that works with fugues because unless you're a fucking genious the structure of the fugue is not going to be obvious to you as you read through it.

[gangsu]

Do I sense you're feeling a tad underrated, Bartolomeo?

 

If you meant "a ******* genius" in the adnominal sense, you might want to check out the latest avatar thread. Those guys know how to make it happen.

[Dreamer]

Originally posted by gangsu:

If you meant "a ******* genius" in the adnominal sense, you might want to check out the latest avatar thread. Those guys know how to make it happen.

[ManInTheBox]

When you are sight reading, do you translate the notation into notes, then finger action, or does it go straight from notation to finger action??

[IdropEtoD]

Excellent thread! I will pass along this wisdom to my sons once we put them with a teacher. Then of course, I may join them in their lessons!

[Tom Fiala]

GovCheck: With practice, sight-reading should go almost "automatically" from reading to playing with no intervening steps in-between. The hands should ideally "just know what to do".

 

Of course, most of us, myself included, struggle to get to this ideal level, especially when confronted with complex scores.

[gangsu]

Dreamer, did I say something wrong?

 

I only object to the idea that Bach could be anybody's penultimate challenge. There are so many 20th century composers using harmonies that aren't remotely recognizable, ragtime/jazz influenced "classics" with a twist. Like separate key signatures for each hand.... the possibilities are beyond the scope of one man's imagination. And good sight reading is maybe 50% imagination. besides, who knows if you're sight reading very well if nobody's listening? I have a piece of music by a Russian composer I tried to read through the other day, for violin and piano, it's so foreign to me, I've never seen anything like it. The notes look and sound like a blur. I can't even tell you the name of the composer, that too was written in a foreign language.

 

Unlike Bach.

[marino]

A few accomplished sight-readers can certainly play a 4-voice fugue at sight. Maybe not with all the nuances, but with most of the notes in place. I've witnessed this a few times, most impressively with the late Gino Marinuzzi, my composition teacher, who used to sight-read orchestral scores at the piano, and made his students work in all possible clefs...

 

A few thoughts about sight-reading:

 

- Most of it is practice. I find it especially useful to sight-read as many different musical styles and levels of difficulty as you can.

 

- It's also very useful to 'quick-study' the piece before playing it; recognize key, tempo, style, any key changes, tempo changes, trublesome passages, etc.

 

- While the technique of slowing down the tempo until it's comfortable for your level is useful, the time will come when you'll *have* to sigh-read a piece, easy or hard. So how do you prepare for this? Use the "no-stop" method. Choose a tune or a fragment, choose a tempo, start playing and DON'T STOP till the end. Even if you miss most of the notes, keep your time and make it to the end.

Then do it a second time. This time, you'll recognize a few of the notes that you missed the first time, and you will also have a better overall grasp of the tune. The third or fourth time, try to catch most of the notes, even if a bit roughly.

If you work this way with a certain regularity, your reading skills will improve immensely. You'll learn to keep your eyes forward in the music, and not to think about errors - when you're sight-reading, there's simply no time for that.

It's a very different situation than preparing a tune for performance (setting fingerings, dynamics, etc.); your fingers must be ready to go everywhere at any moment.

 

Good sight-reading is a lot of fun. Besides being able to take short-notice jobs, you will know a lot more music if you are in that club.

[gangsu]

Originally posted by marino:

- Most of it is practice. I find it especially useful to sight-read as many different musical styles and levels of difficulty as you can.

For sure. With that in mind, I'd like to have some fun. Here's a fragment of music that I doubt many have come across before. Give it a shot. Study the rhythm, it's about the only thing that's obvious.

 

Rock on! And thanks to James Campbell, my very best and most musical friend, for making so many obscure manuscripts available to me. And I sure hope I don't get into trouble for this.

 

PS. I'm willing to bet that Marino's own compositions would pose a much more complex puzzle to the unsuspecting sight-reader than anything J.S. Bach could have imagined.

 

Teaser

 

edit: gee, looks a bit small. This wasn't supposed to be an eyesight test....

[Byrdman]

Originally posted by GovernmentCheck:

When you are sight reading, do you translate the notation into notes, then finger action, or does it go straight from notation to finger action??

Its best if you hear it first. Otherwise you are just a machine operator, not a musician.

 

Unfortunately a lot of us were taught to be machine operators so one has to start over.

 

When you can hear it it really makes site reading easier. What is more, if you have to you can fake it for a note here and there because you understand what is going on musically, even if you can't get the exact notes.

[Dave Horne]

Its best if you hear it first. Otherwise you are just a machine operator, not a musician.

I don't know about that.

 

There's one incident that stands out in my mind. I was playing a big band arrangement where there was a very complicated unison line played by everyone in the band. I was having problems with it and I asked the lead trumpeter, my friend, to play it for me. He refused. He told me to play it slowly and figure it out for myself. That turned out to be the best advice. I wanted to 'hear' it first and go from there.

 

Many years later, the situation was reversed. I had a friend ask me to play a piano part for a show she was having problems with; she wanted to hear how it sounded. (All of these examples, by the way, dealt more with rhythms than with the actual notes per se.)

 

I know from personal experience how a person can 'memorize' an incorrect rhythm. I personally think it's better to approach sight reading having no idea how it sounds and just working through it. That's also part of the fun. My two cents.

[gangsu]

Hey Dave. I'm pretty sure Byrdman was talking about hearing it in your head before you play it.

But anyway, did you print out my music and try it? It's so cool! Don't let the andante marking and the key sig fool you into thinking it's some kind of high brow nonsense. I'm delighted to share it with you, but only if you try it!