Sight Reading - Part 2

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin here at virtualsheetmusic.com. Welcome! Last time, we talked about the importance of sightreading. Today, we're going to talk about tips for sightreading.

On a personal note, as a child, I got quite advanced in the piano. In high school, I was playing Beethoven's sonatas, Liszt's Hungarian rhapsodies, Chopin ballades, and yet, I was a mediocre at best sightreader. In fact, my sightreading level was on such a low level that when the choir director gave me a stack of music to accompany the chorus, I had to decline. And he probably thought I was being rude. But I honestly, the only way I could have done it is if I had a month or so to memorize all the scores, because I couldn't sightread.

Well, how did I learn how to sightread? It came to me in an aha moment. That's right. My father was performing the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall. And he said, "Bob, listen. I'm doing this, and I really need to play it with another piano. Can you help me out?" And so he gave me the score, which is a book this thick. B-flat minor, think of all those flats. And I couldn't even read at an elementary level. So I said, "Well, you know I'll miss half the notes," which is a lie because I couldn't even get half the notes.

But anyway, here's what happened. I opened up the score, and there's all these black notes just flooding the page. And I thought to myself, "Well, if I look away from that page, I will get lost instantly." So what I did was I put my hands over the right keys for the beginning. I looked up at the score, and I never looked down again. And we went through the entire concerto. I never got lost.

Now, I missed a lot of notes. As a matter of fact, when we got done, I said, I apologized to my father. I said, "Dad, I'm so sorry." He said, "Not at all." He said, "That's exactly what I needed," and I couldn't believe it. Because he just needed to run it. It didn't matter if I played accurately, you know, perfectly accurately. It wasn't the point. He needed to play through it to know he could play through this concerto. And indeed, I stayed right with him even though I didn't play all the notes.

Well, since that moment, I've gotten more and more of the notes, and I realized I can read anything, essentially, and get more accurate as the years go on. So how is this possible? Well, I mentioned that it's very important to keep your eyes on the score. As tempting as it is in certain instruments to look away, you must keep your eyes. Count like crazy. So long as you count to keep your eyes moving and keep the music flowing in time, particularly when playing with other musicians, that's critical.

Incidentally, playing with other musicians is the secret to developing your sightreading. Sure, you can work every day on your own, progressively working through music to develop your sightreading. But it's not until you play with others that you're forced to keep the flow of the music going, which makes your eyes move and your hands move and staying with it. And that's the way to really develop it.

Now, with complex music, sometimes it's necessary to kind of flesh out what you can't see. In other words, think of the musical score as a skeleton. And then, yes, you flesh out all the harmonies and such, particularly with complex piano, guitar, and other scores and double stops on violin. You might not be able to see everything, but you can play the melody. You can try to get all the notes you can. You can simplify, but keep the music flowing.

So if you have a fast passage in something, maybe you grab the notes you can, but keep the general character of the music going. Keep the nuance of expression, the timing. These are actually more important than whether you get 100% of the notes or 90% of the notes. It's not nearly as important as having the expressiveness, the dynamics, the nuance of tempo, and all of those things, which are much easier to do without the complexity of all the notes of the score.

And you would be surprised. When playing with other musicians, they're not so concerned with the perfection of your performance as much as the sensitivity you have for their playing, making it sound like this, like one, taking a group of instruments and making them sound like one voice. That's the secret to great sightreading. And you can achieve that even before you become the most accurate sightreader. And over time, I promise you, you will develop your sightreading by doing it every day and playing with other musicians as much as possible. Keep your eyes on the score, and count like crazy, and you too can be a great sightreader.

Thanks for joining me, Robert Estrin, at virtualsheetmusic.com.

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