I think hands separate practice should be used primarily in the first few years of study up until around the intermediate level. Once a student is able to read adequately and play decently, it should be used less and less and eventually abolished altogether once one has reached the advanced-intermediate level.
I've found ear training, particularly sight singing (or even better, 'sight hearing'), to be a most valuable tool for taking my sight reading to the next level. Even though I'm not fast enough at sight hearing yet to consciously apply it in real time to complex music such as piano concertos, I've found that it has helped my ability to sight read complex music immeasurably. I'm hoping that at some point, I'll be able to hear complex music in my head as I sight read it.
Thank you so much! I lived in Asia, as you know, English is not our daily language. But I tried to get your points and followed your instructions. I have started to practice the church hymn without pedal in the first step. I used my ears and my brain to the holy songs when I played slowly. I love it! Thank you again! May the Lord bless you and your family.
When I was about to finish my A.R.C.T. in piano performance, the only thing that was holding me back from receiving first class honors was my inability to sight read well. It was then I was tutored for sight playing by a very good teacher who advised me the best way to learn this aspect of musicianship was to practice reading from hymnals. Worked like magic! Now, confronted with constant blocks of notes in strict timing, my eyes were training themselves in the discipline of sight reading at a new level I had formally thought impossible for me. Of course, one usually does not play hymnals exactly as written, but instead improvises around them in singing accompaniment, yet to practice sight reading ability hymnals are indeed invaluable.
The best lesson on sight reading. Just got myself a hymnal. It makes real sense to start with vertical scores. Sight reading is so important and yet, most teachers don't invite or initiate their pupils to explain that it's a daily thing. Thanks so much for your tips. Sight reading has always been my "fear" so to speak but you managed to give it a brand new approach in 15 minutes. Brilliant! Thanks so much. Yoan xxx
These tutorial videos have been so important to my learning. I've always wondered why my teacher has asked me if I learn hands-together or hands-seperately as it just seemed strange to seperate them. Thanks Cory for your teachings through these videos and I cannot wait until the next lesson! :-)
"Horizontal" music is when the texture is made of a melody with an accompaniment. "Vertical" music is when there are mostly chords, like in hymns or chorales. The notes in the chords are stacked up vertically and one must read them all at once and not one at a time. With melodies that are horizontal the notes are read one at a time.
I don't think there is a formula to box-in the art of playing the piano since we are all with different capabilities and learning abilities. However, Cory has given us the best advice I have found so far on this subject. Thank you, Cory!
I plan on doing a tutorial sometime on pedaling. It's the most difficult aspect of piano playing and is hard to explain using just one camera. Most of the time when pedal isn't marked in a score, it doesn't mean you shouldn't use pedal. In fact, I don't know any composer who marks pedal every time it's necessary. Pianists should rely on their ears and common sense more than what's not written in the music. Chopin's E-minor Prelude needs pedal, definitely.
I believe "cognitive overload" is a real issue, and the majority of people cannot learn both hands at once. What I have learned from all of these "sight reading" videos on YT is that you begin to recognize a group of notes as a "word" and your brain says "oh I know that word" .
@@Zenghitar there are books that show you common chords and cadences. Focus on learning on or two of them every week. You'll be able to recognize lots of them pretty quickly.
Just wanted to thank you for taking your time and sharing your musical abilitys and knowledge with us. I play guitar, but work on piano from time to time, have absolutely no way to work on or learn proper applied technique, your videos give a good visual perspective and help quite a lot with what I can observe. Thank you Cory, the efforts are much appreciated!
I would say try to play all four voices at once but play only the simplest and least complex hymns. Great ones to start with are simple Christmas hymns like "Away in a Manger".
Depends a lot on which version you pick :) Some of the best choral versions aren't very easy to play at sight. Actually, I hate sight reading some of the most simple ones because they tend to run counter to my harmonic expectations (ruining all my voice leading muscle memory) but I digress
In spanish they are: Lectura Musical=Reading just Musical Sheets no matter if you read them or are new(just the purpose of doing such action) Lectura a primera vista=Sight Reading involves an ammount of levels related to how precise and fast you are with any sheet. This is just important to have at a high level when you are at a musical conservatory or going to enter one(the sight reading exam). If it is just practising and a hobby, you will be ok.
Thanks Pammi. The Schubert book in this video was an old edition by Liszt that I found somewhere in a sale. I would recommend any standard edition of the Schubert dances, preferably one with not many editorial markings.
I think your advice on playing with both hands at the same time is very important since, as you said, a lot teachers advice playing each hand separately. I think playing each hand on it own is easier at first, but does not help advance in sight reading. While playing both hands at the same time can be taunting for new students who do not want to be serious piano players. Thank you so much for this revealing video, as well as the immense amount of videos you have uploaded of you playing, and of giving advice. I took a look at your channel and I wish these advice videos had their own sections. Keep up the good work!
***** I may not have mentioned this, but I think beginners up to intermediate level around level 6 should play hands separately more. I always have my beginning students play separately. Also, I believe beginners should not be forced to sight read. Sight reading is overrated especially for the beginning levels. Once one becomes "advanced" though (after level 6), one should graduate to hands together more and gradually phase out hands separately. They should also be expected to sight read more and better due to their experience. Sorry if I didn't make this clear in my video. I guess what I was trying to say was that too many advanced students rely far too much on playing hands separately. I was not referring to beginners or even those who have played for only two or three years.
I see what you're saying. Thanks a lot for clarifying. For some reason, I got the impression that sight reading is a very important skill to have and to develop from early on. I see why it is overrated though, as in there are other skills that I think would should get more attention. Thanks again!
I always see sight reading like reading books out loud. The more you do it, the more fluent and easy it becomes :) I'd love to get to a point where i could sight read at your level :) I usually use church hymns to practice my sight reading since church hymn books usually have hundreds of pieces :)
I like that analogy! They are both reading, after all, and I've heard highly proficient sight-readers claim that reading music has become like reading English (or whatever language) to them Also when you sight-read, everybody says to read ahead a bit of where you are, and the same thing is true of reading a story. Unless, of course, you want every line to sound flat or have an awkward cadence. Anybody who can read something for the first time with expression that makes it really pop as a story have to be reading a bit ahead to get enough context to know what the phrasing should sound like. It's not magic, it's totally logical! Again, great comment
You and I are complete opposites as I'm probably THE slowest sight reader on the planet...and I started it about the time you were born! I've learned Liszt, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, etc. (of course, can't remember 90% of it any more!) in the absolute most pathetic, painstaking way...I have to count up from the bottom (Every Good Boy...) for every-single-solitary-note!! Yeah, about 6 months to learn Un Sospiro, I just never could catch on. Guess I'm a hopeless case by now, I'm probably slower than about 99.999%! You totally lost me with this horizontal vs vertical stuff, I have no idea what you're talking about. On another note - no pun intended...really - your video on the Bohemia Rag is just pure genius!!!! Blows my mind...best on RUclips by a wide margin.
I'm not a teacher.. but teaching myself a melody was rewarding and encouraging because I was able to reproduce some part of the music. hearing it makes me want to do more
This is exellent advise.I myself took lesson from Erwin Seeger a German who was placed in the top 10 at catnegie hall at one time. He taught one hands at a time, but I think the only reason he did was because I was learning music that was more advanced than I was technically ready for. Unfortunatly I used my ear to much as well and didn`t practice sight reading enough. You are lucky your experience and time was spent doing it right. Although, some with very good ears play very well.
Although I'm not a good piano player, I have to say, you are absolutely right :) I always learn the piece with two hands from the beginning because both hands are then "connected" and it's easier to speed up afterwards :) For me, it's difficult to connect both hands after I learned every hand seperately.
What you say about hands together is of course correct. It being a function of the brains way of working. The left and right hand movement being related one to the other in memory. But this is of course only relevant to learning the piece, not sight reading it. Most teachers recommend marking fingering but this again relates to reading or learning a piece as opposed to sight reading. My own experience is that it is not a good idea to sight read music you wish to learn, as great care must be taken to avoid errors or poor fingering from the outset. A good tip to help sight read is to look through the piece before playing it and imagine the actions and fingering you will use. Also, its essential to make a judgement on what tempo you think you will be able to proceed without goofing up.
Thanks Cory, very informative and good video! Really helps! another good tip I got from Josh Wright is never look at the keys. I think you once said, that youre not too fond of this method, but for me, it did quite the trick! Cheers pal! Youre an amazing Pianist and Teacher!
Of course there's hope! Just keep sight reading something new every day as well as reading pieces you can play already. Try focusing on chordal music like hymns and chorales. Good luck!
just found your channel and book via Josh Wright and just bought your book today. I'm 39, took a decade off of paino and looking forward to continue my training.
I love your point about practicing hands together, I always have this problem with sight reading, I start reading the right hand part and then I inevitably stop to look at the left hand part. It makes playing continuously very difficult.
In order to improve my sight reading I read as rapidly as possible all of the prelude and fugues Book I and II from JS Bach, which will force you to learn most of the available chords, keys and modulations. Playing the hands together.
I agree with you on all points. I am a good sightreader, mostly from always learning new pieces, I prefer to sightread hands-together, etc. One thing I would recommend is that, if you can, avoid listening to the piece before you sightread it. This way, it becomes a lot easier to play at a comfortable tempo.
I have always felt it was counterintuitive to learn hands separately so I was especially interested in your opinion. This has often been a subject of contention with my piano teacher as he is a hands apart proponent. Thanks for posting!
The argument against "playing hands separately" would make sense if reading and memorization were the same. But they're not. If a piece of music is too advanced for a student to read, then the student can either put it aside until s/he's ready for it or s/he can get value from it right now by reducing the cognitive load of the piece; and a good way to do that is to play just the bass staff and then play just the treble staff. This equates to playing left hand and then right hand separately. You make two (or more, if you want to pick out individual voices) passes at the piece. You thin it out. It's the same idea as playing each voice in a chorale one by one before playing them polyphonically. *Memorizing* a speech is not an analogy for *reading* music. Reading a speech is. And in fact it *would* be logical, and useful in principle (if the reading matter were too hard to read as-is) to have have a student first practice picking out the vowels in the speech and then later go through again reading the consonants (or some subset of the consonants; whichever glyphs had been learned so far). Similarly, your nouns and verbs analogy doesn't ring true to me because you're appealing to comprehension and not to reading (this video is about reading, right?). Reading is not comprehension. Being able to read words or music is not a predictor of whether the reader is understanding what is being read. Even at the level of parsing a group of notes into a chord, that's no more a demonstration of understanding than reading "cat" instead of "c-a-t". You still need to know what that word means just as you still need to know how that chord functions in the music (and you need to know what "functioning" even means, which no amount of reading training will tell you: that's comprehension and is a separate pursuit). Conflating reading and comprehension won't help anyone. IMHO, fingering is crucial to get right from day 1 because it helps you keep track of where your fingers are without looking at the keyboard. I agree that there's no need to write it in yourself, but most sight reading books and software these days have it written in already (although they should only write it when it's not obvious, and they don't, but that has to be tolerated). "Play most melodies legato", etc. Well, that quote is conflating reading and performance. Most folks are just struggling to develop the neurons that will allow them to read quickly, and the guidance in this video is pitched at too high a level for 95+% of people. Let people get good at reading quickly before adding the extra cognitive load of performing nicely. Kids learn to read the written word before we bug them with super-crisp pronunciation, projecting the voice, speaking in a nicer accent, or even a comical accent. In terms of reading music, you want to encourage folks to be reading the simplest pieces for their level, they should be giving themselves very high volumes of stuff to read, always be trying to read stuff they haven't seen before, and not looking at the keyboard but playing by feel instead. Look at Shawn Cheek's guidance on reading score, I would urge folks to hear his guidance, it's more useful and practical and logical than this video. I'd also suggest that nobody cares about the distinction between reading and sight reading. Nobody expects nor aspires to be able to perform a piece perfectly and at the correct speed at first sight. Being able to read competently has a couple of main purposes: one is to build a beautiful and crisp internal mental model of the keyboard as a physical instrument and the notes and intervals and chords laid over that construct; the other is in order to be able to input new pieces into the brain with a high-bandwidth transfer rate for purposes of analysis, performance, or just pleasure.
+Steven Charles White Of course "nobody cares about the distinction between reading and sight-reading" because the two two terms aren't understood correctly. Time and time again I hear people say "sight-reading" when in fact they really mean "reading".
Great question, Roger! I daresay all musicians have wondered the same thing at one time or another. Here's my understanding of the term. The Italian language features prominently in musical terminology. Reading a piece of music nearly always implies playing it, too. Reading a piece of music "a prima vista" ("at first sight") is the idea of reading a score that you haven't seen before, so you haven't had chance to get familiar with it, nor to memorize nor begin to internalize it. Let's say you read a piece of music 50 times in your life. You only get the opportunity to read it "at first sight" once, so we actually read "at first sight" statistically very infrequently. Why is why I cast doubt on its relevance. Few people can competently read at first sight these days. When you see someone "reading music" the chances are they're playing it mostly from memory, and using the score as a prompt/reminder. Now, back to the terms. Over time, the expression "reading at first sight" corrupted into the confusing and lazy term "sight-reading", and that corruption is the source of this confusion of terms. A newcomer to music sees "sight-reading" and assumes that the word "sight" is merely referring to the fact that you have to use your sight in order to read. Like you did, folks think that it's a pretty silly and redundant term for "reading music". But they use the term, and they use it incorrectly. So the mistake has spread and become endemic of confusing "sight-reading" with just plain old "reading" (meaning "reading whether or not it's the first time you've seen the score"). At this point in history I feel like it's too late to correct this widespread mistake and so I would say that it's best to avoid using the term "sight-reading" if you want to be understood. If you're talking about reading music regardless of how many times you've seen the score in the past, then I'd suggest any of the terms "reading score", "reading music", or "reading written music". If you're talking about the very first time you see a score (which as I say seems like largely an irrelevant, special case, to me, so I'm not sure why we need a term for it) then I would suggest reviving the original expression and just appending the words "at first sight" to either of those previous three terms. Since in the vast majority of cases you're playing the score at the same time as you're reading it, I think that the term "reading" already implies "playing", so I wouldn't worry about introducing the word "playing" here.
I think what bothers me is using the term "reading'' to require the simultaneous playing of the music. It's like saying you're not reading print unless you're also typing the words into a QWERTY keyboard. So is there another term for going through the score away from the piano but understanding fully how everything applies to the keyboard?
From my experience I’ll disagree with the focus on vertical music only. Perhaps, it was because I was also very harmonically interested and I had that basis already (by harmonizing simple songs myself). For me, reading Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven sonatas gave me many extra reading skills. And I enjoyed reading polyphonic music for the challenge of it. Of course not everything can be sight-read that way, but it helped enormously getting “mental” finger independence and e.g. reading more modern music.
I find knowing theory and counterpoint (and their applications such as ear-training and sight-singing) helps immensely in sight-reading, just because you know what you're playing and can somewhat expect where things are gonna go. This is especially true for horizontal music. Liszt could probably sight-read Bach fugues lol
Good videos Cory and keep going with this as I am enjoying viewing them. Sight reading is important so is improvisation and plenty of theory, ear training, memorization etc. Great to use hymns for chord analysis and part writing. Best regards, Peter Tarsio
I've practice Bach Inventions hands seperately then put them together and I've practiced Invention without doing hands seperately and I don't know if it mattered that much. Hand independence issue showed their ugly head regardless if I had done hands seperately or not. If something is really difficult then there are passages where I have to break them down. But generally I agree with Mr. Cory. Once I did put hands together it was like I started over anyway,
It's the "Augener Edition (No. 8393B), Schubert Dances, Book II, edited by Liszt". It looks old and maybe out of print but maybe I'm wrong. I found it at a garage sale somewhere.
A lot of Welsh hymn books are sol-fa (which I think is 'vertical' music!). This is an inspiring video because I'm not brilliant at sight reading or reading music - as you say - it takes practice! Thanks for your videos!
Thanks for the video Cory... I'm trying to be a better sight reader and I've heard from others that when you are actually practicing sight reading, things like going slow, not looking at your hands, not stopping, and picking music that isn't too hard for you are all hugely important.... Do you agree?
I appreciate the point you touch on at 11:48. Make playing musical with phrasing and control. It helps me to listen to what I am playing as I play, and try to make it sound to me more musical. Then arms hands and fingers almost unconsciously combine to produce a beautiful musical sound. I'm not sure of the technical term for this process. Self listening? or Feedback loop? Whatever. It cures robotic mechanical playing. Also, it allows us to make music even on crummy instruments. TY again.
I bought all of the schubert works and all of the haydn sonatas etc. in mini-print, expressly for sightreading. (Now-adays my eye sight would probably bother me, but still I do sight read in darkish rooms (I like it dark) with the stand down (so the book is flat before me). I guess you get used to it)
For those who seem very surprised by Cory saying not to worry about fingering, do remember that he’s talking about sight reading specifically. Fingering is of course very important, but the goal is learning to read “on the fly,” and concentrating too much on the finer aspects of technique can really slow you down. Cory, I’m glad you mentioned that you should read the notes together, as a chord, rather than identify each note individually. When I read, I don’t care what note I’m reading; I care where it’s at. Trying to mentally identify each note while reading will slow you down tremendously. Instead, focus on where your hands and fingers need to go.
[Sorry, this started as one line and became a book! 😄] Back in my teens I used to work very very hard to get the fingering "right" using hours and hours of careful thought for each Bach organ prelude and fugue etc, writing numbers carefully all over the score. Now I don't. I use a different technique that for me works very much better. First I memorize the score WITHOUT memorizing the fingering that I'm using. It turns out that I only learn what I turn my attention to, so by NOT turning my attention to the fingering I don't learn it. Once I've memorized the piece, my brain, with access to all the information not just what it's looking at in the score, finds the best possible fingering all by itself, with no working it out consciously. The result is better fingers than I ever managed in my teens (~40 years ago), and no need to read numbers off the page during the performance. In fact, like Peter Hurford (extraordinary organist a few decades back) I like to have the score free of numbers, so I've erased most of the fingerings I wrote in my scores as a teenager. I do not want to be processing numbers while playing music. It's the wrong brain mode for me. That's the basic idea. Like Hurford did, I do occasionally write some fingerings in. I put a number (e.g. 1) in a circle, where the circle means "mandatory" i.e. do it regardless of what else is happening. "Don't think, just do". I do this often to establish the hand position or change of hand position, particularly where there are multiple good options. I like to avoid convoluted fingers and to keep fingering patterns whereever possible and I do that by using thumbs on black notes far more often that editors do in scores. I've had zero problems doing this and it is working well as my hands become more arthritic (thumb under is getting more difficult). Incidentally, I've found that you cannot safely change fingerings you've learned. The old fingerings stay with you, even for decades, and ruin live performances and recordings. (This might seem surprising, but it agrees with my day job re how the brain works. It also agrees with Charles Owen's emotional response when I once mentioned changing fingerings to him!). Therefore it is not safe in my experience to evolve fingerings, or learn one set of fingerings and have a teacher change them downstream. Have a look at my Bach 542 or 785 performances on my channel if you're interested. (542 was learned properly; 785 was learned and recorded in one session a couple of days ago).
It is a pity that the most recent comment on this is now two years old. I presume commenters must have been put off by some of the toxic comments last posted. This is a pity because I think what BachScholar has to say here is probably the best advice on sight reading I have found on the web. The distinction he makes between reading and sight reading is crucial. The only way to get better at sight reading is to constantly move on to new pieces. Anything else is practicising which is fine but don't fool yourself into thinking that playing the same thing twice is sight reading. I also think playing with both hands is good advice for sight reading - indeed I feel the note that BachScholar adds about this advice applying to Level 6 and above is a bit unfortunate. Apart from absolute beginners - people who are the equivalent of people still learning the alphabet who haven't moved onto sentences - all sight reading requires using both hands together. If you can't do this with a partiular piece then the piece must be too difficult for your current level of competence. That doesn't mean you can't learn more difficult pieces to stretch your competence but - as Bach Scholar correctly points out - that is not sight reading. That is practice. And yes, for sight reading always play sufficiently slowly so that you have the capacity to see ahead and thereby remain in time.
Hi. I found you when looking for video of Clementi's p. 36. No.3. Thanks for the lesson! I sight read hymns all the time. I will try your suggestion to play without pedal first. I'm so addicted to it. I dsiagree about the two hands togeather. This week I was about to throw Bach Invention No 1 in the garbage, but my teacher said don't give up-- use metronome and hands separate for a few weeks. I'm going to try that. Found old copy of Joplin. Never played rags. Will give it a try! Thanks!
I agree with you about learning hands together vs separately. I have learned a couple of Bach Inventions, and it's crazy trying to try to put things together after learning them separately. I am confused though on why it's best to steer away from horizontal music for sight reading. I play mostly horizontal music, more of the lyrical/romantic style. I do have great difficulty jumping with my hands though. Ex. Glinka's Barcarolle is difficult, and it shouldn't be. Will Vertical help?
I once went to a piano teachers meeting where almost all presenters talked about "injury prevention" and Taubman and other "preventative" approaches. I don't think I've ever been so bored in my life. What ever happened to talking about the music? When professional speech people get together do they talk about how not to get strep throat? Why do some pianists have such fear of getting injured? It is something that never even crosses my mind.
I would kill for the Thick book of Joplin right about now. Im addicted to sight reading and getting better every day. I read Hymnals, Modern pieces, Mozart, Bach Beethoven, Im running out of stuff to read
Great video, thanks. I am beginner sight reader and have been using Mikrokosmos by Bartok for a few months. I have just purchased a book of Bach Chorales and it's painfully slow to sight read and play the pieces.
Ty Virtual Master. You are very well spoken. Are those books expensive? I am from Perú(i never heard of them). So i think they can be expensive or even not in libraries at 2018. So the only way to get them is buying from amazon or ... idk. Waiting from your answer. Thanks.
Also, I think Karajan (and probably many other people) played from orchestral scores. He did this to get better at conducting but it would be a good exercise even if you were only a pianist.
1)While practising sight reading,should I correct wrong notes or I should keep going till the end of the piece?. 2)How many times should I repeat the piece I'm trying to sight read it [ when I begin to memorise the piece,it won't be sight reading any more]. so should I turn to a new one?. 3) The more I practice ,the more I get results or, I don't have to over do it?.[ I mean for how long should I practise sight reading every day?]
Bachscholar, One thing I always struggle with is actually being able to look at both the treble and the bass cleff at the same time, so I struggle in immediate dual-hand execution. Do you have any suggestions? Kind regards... (liked the Schubert book, by the way! haha)
AS someone who is learning without a teacher would you do a tutorial on pedaling? For the most part I use pedal as you did in this video(Lift the pedal with each new chord) to varying degrees. But I often times get confused when a score will say use no pedal and yet when I play that way to me it just sounds plain bad with no pedal. Is it really possible to play Chopins e minor prelude sostenuto with no pedal, for example?
I had tried to play the piano for fairly long time, say 6 years. What I used to do was to first learn each hand separately, then combine and gradually increase the tempo, to one I felt comfortable with. This method however had me always quivering, hesitant, insecure and all these clearly showed in my "public" performance which rendered any such performance unpleasant to the beholder and myself. I had finally given up and about Easter this years ago (so ca 7 months as of this writing) decided on a different apporoach, that of sight reading purely. And in spite of VERY POOR RESULTS I persist to this day and my resolve gets stronger by the day if anything. I notice PROGRESS! Particularly since when I managed NOT TO LOOK AT MY FINGERS, but rather keep my eyes on the music at all times. I would say, this SIGHT READING thing takes a lot of determination, since you never seem to hear the acceptable results which you perhaps had got used to when honing the same piece a large number of times. I want here to recommend Scarlatti's Sonatas as my music of choice for practicing sight reading. Most pieces are very intuitive and from day one I got attracted to them. I NEVER "play" anything twice. The added benefit of working with original and famous compositions is that you can always hear them magnificently performed on RUclips (which particularly helpful when you are completely at a loss as to what the composer wanted to "say"). What I do (true to the sight rading principle) is I struggle through a piece, save it in the "read once" folder (sometimes with some annotations in the file name) and move on to another one always trying to get the musical thought behind a given composition. I also find it impossible to keep the tempo steady, or to read ahead as recommended by many sight reading gurus but this does not completely ruin (at least not to me) the overall musical concept of a given piece. So happy sight reading practicing everyone :-)
I would say an eighth point which is one of the most important is that you should forget any wrong notes played and keep going, so that rhythm and timing take precedence when sight reading. This is assuming you are not playing so many wrong notes that you should choose something at a lower level instead.
I mean with sightreading but also to a certain extent with everything. My tutorials with hands separate are just for the sake of showing the hands separate. The problem is that if one gets in the habit of ALWAYS playing separately from beginning to end with ALL pieces, this is totally not necessary and usually just wastes time. Hands separate practice should be reserved only for isolated passages that you find especially difficult.
I think hands separate practice should be used primarily in the first few years of study up until around the intermediate level. Once a student is able to read adequately and play decently, it should be used less and less and eventually abolished altogether once one has reached the advanced-intermediate level.
POV: Your a really tall person getting a piano lesson
I was looking down at the screen, so I highly relate 😂😂
Supervising a piano lesson
Lol.
Best sight reading video on RUclips. Thank you
I've found ear training, particularly sight singing (or even better, 'sight hearing'), to be a most valuable tool for taking my sight reading to the next level. Even though I'm not fast enough at sight hearing yet to consciously apply it in real time to complex music such as piano concertos, I've found that it has helped my ability to sight read complex music immeasurably. I'm hoping that at some point, I'll be able to hear complex music in my head as I sight read it.
Thank you so much! I lived in Asia, as you know, English is not our daily language. But I tried to get your points and followed your instructions. I have started to practice the church hymn without pedal in the first step. I used my ears and my brain to the holy songs when I played slowly. I love it!
Thank you again! May the Lord bless you and your family.
When I was about to finish my A.R.C.T. in piano performance, the only thing that was holding me back from receiving first class honors was my inability to sight read well. It was then I was tutored for sight playing by a very good teacher who advised me the best way to learn this aspect of musicianship was to practice reading from hymnals. Worked like magic! Now, confronted with constant blocks of notes in strict timing, my eyes were training themselves in the discipline of sight reading at a new level I had formally thought impossible for me.
Of course, one usually does not play hymnals exactly as written, but instead improvises around them in singing accompaniment, yet to practice sight reading ability hymnals are indeed invaluable.
The best lesson on sight reading. Just got myself a hymnal. It makes real sense to start with vertical scores. Sight reading is so important and yet, most teachers don't invite or initiate their pupils to explain that it's a daily thing. Thanks so much for your tips. Sight reading has always been my "fear" so to speak but you managed to give it a brand new approach in 15 minutes. Brilliant! Thanks so much. Yoan xxx
thank god I found your videos, all are very helpful! Thank you so much!!!
SO IMPRESSIVE ! I think what you do CORY unfortunetalty, most 99% of humans cannot do … you so gift
These tutorial videos have been so important to my learning. I've always wondered why my teacher has asked me if I learn hands-together or hands-seperately as it just seemed strange to seperate them. Thanks Cory for your teachings through these videos and I cannot wait until the next lesson! :-)
"Horizontal" music is when the texture is made of a melody with an accompaniment. "Vertical" music is when there are mostly chords, like in hymns or chorales. The notes in the chords are stacked up vertically and one must read them all at once and not one at a time. With melodies that are horizontal the notes are read one at a time.
I don't think there is a formula to box-in the art of playing the piano since we are all with different capabilities and learning abilities. However, Cory has given us the best advice I have found so far on this subject. Thank you, Cory!
I plan on doing a tutorial sometime on pedaling. It's the most difficult aspect of piano playing and is hard to explain using just one camera. Most of the time when pedal isn't marked in a score, it doesn't mean you shouldn't use pedal. In fact, I don't know any composer who marks pedal every time it's necessary. Pianists should rely on their ears and common sense more than what's not written in the music. Chopin's E-minor Prelude needs pedal, definitely.
You and Tom brier are the greatest sight readers!
I believe "cognitive overload" is a real issue, and the majority of people cannot learn both hands at once. What I have learned from all of these "sight reading" videos on YT is that you begin to recognize a group of notes as a "word" and your brain says "oh I know that word" .
I agree. But how do you go about recognizing chords as "words" especially when that chord is spread out over the staff?
Zenghitar by reading new music every single day for years... just like when you learned to read as a child
@@Zenghitar there are books that show you common chords and cadences. Focus on learning on or two of them every week. You'll be able to recognize lots of them pretty quickly.
My family has the exact same ragtime book too! It was my mom's when she was young and we still have it today.
Just wanted to thank you for taking your time and sharing your musical abilitys and knowledge with us. I play guitar, but work on piano from time to time, have absolutely no way to work on or learn proper applied technique, your videos give a good visual perspective and help quite a lot with what I can observe. Thank you Cory, the efforts are much appreciated!
I would say try to play all four voices at once but play only the simplest and least complex hymns. Great ones to start with are simple Christmas hymns like "Away in a Manger".
Depends a lot on which version you pick :) Some of the best choral versions aren't very easy to play at sight. Actually, I hate sight reading some of the most simple ones because they tend to run counter to my harmonic expectations (ruining all my voice leading muscle memory) but I digress
In spanish they are:
Lectura Musical=Reading just Musical Sheets no matter if you read them or are new(just the purpose of doing such action)
Lectura a primera vista=Sight Reading involves an ammount of levels related to how precise and fast you are with any sheet. This is just important to have at a high level when you are at a musical conservatory or going to enter one(the sight reading exam).
If it is just practising and a hobby, you will be ok.
Thanks Pammi. The Schubert book in this video was an old edition by Liszt that I found somewhere in a sale. I would recommend any standard edition of the Schubert dances, preferably one with not many editorial markings.
Bach's 4-part chorals are excellent. I'm a beginner and work through a few every morning. Hands together.
I think your advice on playing with both hands at the same time is very important since, as you said, a lot teachers advice playing each hand separately. I think playing each hand on it own is easier at first, but does not help advance in sight reading. While playing both hands at the same time can be taunting for new students who do not want to be serious piano players. Thank you so much for this revealing video, as well as the immense amount of videos you have uploaded of you playing, and of giving advice.
I took a look at your channel and I wish these advice videos had their own sections.
Keep up the good work!
***** I may not have mentioned this, but I think beginners up to intermediate level around level 6 should play hands separately more. I always have my beginning students play separately. Also, I believe beginners should not be forced to sight read. Sight reading is overrated especially for the beginning levels. Once one becomes "advanced" though (after level 6), one should graduate to hands together more and gradually phase out hands separately. They should also be expected to sight read more and better due to their experience. Sorry if I didn't make this clear in my video. I guess what I was trying to say was that too many advanced students rely far too much on playing hands separately. I was not referring to beginners or even those who have played for only two or three years.
I see what you're saying. Thanks a lot for clarifying. For some reason, I got the impression that sight reading is a very important skill to have and to develop from early on. I see why it is overrated though, as in there are other skills that I think would should get more attention.
Thanks again!
I always see sight reading like reading books out loud. The more you do it, the more fluent and easy it becomes :) I'd love to get to a point where i could sight read at your level :) I usually use church hymns to practice my sight reading since church hymn books usually have hundreds of pieces :)
I like that analogy! They are both reading, after all, and I've heard highly proficient sight-readers claim that reading music has become like reading English (or whatever language) to them
Also when you sight-read, everybody says to read ahead a bit of where you are, and the same thing is true of reading a story. Unless, of course, you want every line to sound flat or have an awkward cadence. Anybody who can read something for the first time with expression that makes it really pop as a story have to be reading a bit ahead to get enough context to know what the phrasing should sound like. It's not magic, it's totally logical!
Again, great comment
Thanks Cory! As always excellent advises and tutorials. Is an honor to learn from someone really dedicated to music teaching.
You and I are complete opposites as I'm probably THE slowest sight reader on the planet...and I started it about the time you were born! I've learned Liszt, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, etc. (of course, can't remember 90% of it any more!) in the absolute most pathetic, painstaking way...I have to count up from the bottom (Every Good Boy...) for every-single-solitary-note!! Yeah, about 6 months to learn Un Sospiro, I just never could catch on. Guess I'm a hopeless case by now, I'm probably slower than about 99.999%! You totally lost me with this horizontal vs vertical stuff, I have no idea what you're talking about.
On another note - no pun intended...really - your video on the Bohemia Rag is just pure genius!!!! Blows my mind...best on RUclips by a wide margin.
I'm not a teacher.. but teaching myself a melody was rewarding and encouraging because I was able to reproduce some part of the music. hearing it makes me want to do more
You talked about Church Hymnals and got me attentive... Thanks.
This is exellent advise.I myself took lesson from Erwin Seeger a German who was placed in the top 10 at catnegie hall at one time. He taught one hands at a time, but I think the only reason he did was because I was learning music that was more advanced than I was technically ready for. Unfortunatly I used my ear to much as well and didn`t practice sight reading enough. You are lucky your experience and time was spent doing it right. Although, some with very good ears play very well.
Although I'm not a good piano player, I have to say, you are absolutely right :) I always learn the piece with two hands from the beginning because both hands are then "connected" and it's easier to speed up afterwards :) For me, it's difficult to connect both hands after I learned every hand seperately.
What you say about hands together is of course correct. It being a function of the brains way of working. The left and right hand movement being related one to the other in memory. But this is of course only relevant to learning the piece, not sight reading it. Most teachers recommend marking fingering but this again relates to reading or learning a piece as opposed to sight reading. My own experience is that it is not a good idea to sight read music you wish to learn, as great care must be taken to avoid errors or poor fingering from the outset.
A good tip to help sight read is to look through the piece before playing it and imagine the actions and fingering you will use. Also, its essential to make a judgement on what tempo you think you will be able to proceed without goofing up.
Thanks Cory, very informative and good video! Really helps! another good tip I got from Josh Wright is never look at the keys. I think you once said, that youre not too fond of this method, but for me, it did quite the trick! Cheers pal! Youre an amazing Pianist and Teacher!
Of course there's hope! Just keep sight reading something new every day as well as reading pieces you can play already. Try focusing on chordal music like hymns and chorales. Good luck!
Thanks for this lesson... It's exactly what I was looking to better my sight reading study. Thank you!
just found your channel and book via Josh Wright and just bought your book today. I'm 39, took a decade off of paino and looking forward to continue my training.
I love your point about practicing hands together, I always have this problem with sight reading, I start reading the right hand part and then I inevitably stop to look at the left hand part. It makes playing continuously very difficult.
You are a really worthy person!!!
Cory I enjoy your detailed tutorials. I am a piano teacher as well. I've learned a few things from you. Thanks
In order to improve my sight reading I read as rapidly as possible all of the prelude and fugues Book I and II from JS Bach, which will force you to learn most of the available chords, keys and modulations. Playing the hands together.
DAVID BURKE, Hi, how does it work for you?
I agree with you on all points. I am a good sightreader, mostly from always learning new pieces, I prefer to sightread hands-together, etc. One thing I would recommend is that, if you can, avoid listening to the piece before you sightread it. This way, it becomes a lot easier to play at a comfortable tempo.
I have always felt it was counterintuitive to learn hands separately so I was especially interested in your opinion. This has often been a subject of contention with my piano teacher as he is a hands apart proponent. Thanks for posting!
The argument against "playing hands separately" would make sense if reading and memorization were the same. But they're not. If a piece of music is too advanced for a student to read, then the student can either put it aside until s/he's ready for it or s/he can get value from it right now by reducing the cognitive load of the piece; and a good way to do that is to play just the bass staff and then play just the treble staff. This equates to playing left hand and then right hand separately. You make two (or more, if you want to pick out individual voices) passes at the piece. You thin it out. It's the same idea as playing each voice in a chorale one by one before playing them polyphonically. *Memorizing* a speech is not an analogy for *reading* music. Reading a speech is. And in fact it *would* be logical, and useful in principle (if the reading matter were too hard to read as-is) to have have a student first practice picking out the vowels in the speech and then later go through again reading the consonants (or some subset of the consonants; whichever glyphs had been learned so far). Similarly, your nouns and verbs analogy doesn't ring true to me because you're appealing to comprehension and not to reading (this video is about reading, right?). Reading is not comprehension. Being able to read words or music is not a predictor of whether the reader is understanding what is being read. Even at the level of parsing a group of notes into a chord, that's no more a demonstration of understanding than reading "cat" instead of "c-a-t". You still need to know what that word means just as you still need to know how that chord functions in the music (and you need to know what "functioning" even means, which no amount of reading training will tell you: that's comprehension and is a separate pursuit). Conflating reading and comprehension won't help anyone. IMHO, fingering is crucial to get right from day 1 because it helps you keep track of where your fingers are without looking at the keyboard. I agree that there's no need to write it in yourself, but most sight reading books and software these days have it written in already (although they should only write it when it's not obvious, and they don't, but that has to be tolerated). "Play most melodies legato", etc. Well, that quote is conflating reading and performance. Most folks are just struggling to develop the neurons that will allow them to read quickly, and the guidance in this video is pitched at too high a level for 95+% of people. Let people get good at reading quickly before adding the extra cognitive load of performing nicely. Kids learn to read the written word before we bug them with super-crisp pronunciation, projecting the voice, speaking in a nicer accent, or even a comical accent. In terms of reading music, you want to encourage folks to be reading the simplest pieces for their level, they should be giving themselves very high volumes of stuff to read, always be trying to read stuff they haven't seen before, and not looking at the keyboard but playing by feel instead. Look at Shawn Cheek's guidance on reading score, I would urge folks to hear his guidance, it's more useful and practical and logical than this video. I'd also suggest that nobody cares about the distinction between reading and sight reading. Nobody expects nor aspires to be able to perform a piece perfectly and at the correct speed at first sight. Being able to read competently has a couple of main purposes: one is to build a beautiful and crisp internal mental model of the keyboard as a physical instrument and the notes and intervals and chords laid over that construct; the other is in order to be able to input new pieces into the brain with a high-bandwidth transfer rate for purposes of analysis, performance, or just pleasure.
+Steven Charles White Verbose and convoluted.
+Steven Charles White Of course "nobody cares about the distinction between reading and sight-reading" because the two two terms aren't understood correctly. Time and time again I hear people say "sight-reading" when in fact they really mean "reading".
I've always thought that the term "sight-reading" is a misnomer. Wouldn't "sight-playing" be more accurate?
Great question, Roger! I daresay all musicians have wondered the same thing at one time or another. Here's my understanding of the term. The Italian language features prominently in musical terminology. Reading a piece of music nearly always implies playing it, too. Reading a piece of music "a prima vista" ("at first sight") is the idea of reading a score that you haven't seen before, so you haven't had chance to get familiar with it, nor to memorize nor begin to internalize it. Let's say you read a piece of music 50 times in your life. You only get the opportunity to read it "at first sight" once, so we actually read "at first sight" statistically very infrequently. Why is why I cast doubt on its relevance. Few people can competently read at first sight these days. When you see someone "reading music" the chances are they're playing it mostly from memory, and using the score as a prompt/reminder. Now, back to the terms. Over time, the expression "reading at first sight" corrupted into the confusing and lazy term "sight-reading", and that corruption is the source of this confusion of terms. A newcomer to music sees "sight-reading" and assumes that the word "sight" is merely referring to the fact that you have to use your sight in order to read. Like you did, folks think that it's a pretty silly and redundant term for "reading music". But they use the term, and they use it incorrectly. So the mistake has spread and become endemic of confusing "sight-reading" with just plain old "reading" (meaning "reading whether or not it's the first time you've seen the score"). At this point in history I feel like it's too late to correct this widespread mistake and so I would say that it's best to avoid using the term "sight-reading" if you want to be understood. If you're talking about reading music regardless of how many times you've seen the score in the past, then I'd suggest any of the terms "reading score", "reading music", or "reading written music". If you're talking about the very first time you see a score (which as I say seems like largely an irrelevant, special case, to me, so I'm not sure why we need a term for it) then I would suggest reviving the original expression and just appending the words "at first sight" to either of those previous three terms. Since in the vast majority of cases you're playing the score at the same time as you're reading it, I think that the term "reading" already implies "playing", so I wouldn't worry about introducing the word "playing" here.
I think what bothers me is using the term "reading'' to require the simultaneous playing of the music. It's like saying you're not reading print unless you're also typing the words into a QWERTY keyboard. So is there another term for going through the score away from the piano but understanding fully how everything applies to the keyboard?
From my experience I’ll disagree with the focus on vertical music only. Perhaps, it was because I was also very harmonically interested and I had that basis already (by harmonizing simple songs myself). For me, reading Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven sonatas gave me many extra reading skills. And I enjoyed reading polyphonic music for the challenge of it. Of course not everything can be sight-read that way, but it helped enormously getting “mental” finger independence and e.g. reading more modern music.
Oh, I actually consider the vast majority of classical sonatas very much “vertical” music. The presence of a melody doesn’t really change that
Really great tips--thanks!
So good teaching thank you. Would u please show what you mean by vertical
I find knowing theory and counterpoint (and their applications such as ear-training and sight-singing) helps immensely in sight-reading, just because you know what you're playing and can somewhat expect where things are gonna go. This is especially true for horizontal music.
Liszt could probably sight-read Bach fugues lol
Thank you for sharing this. Lots of new insights here.
Gracias por tus consejos, tu metodologia es muy buena y la voy a poner en practica.
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, and for your advice.
Good videos Cory and keep going with this as I am enjoying viewing them.
Sight reading is important so is improvisation and plenty of theory, ear training, memorization etc. Great to use hymns for chord analysis and part writing.
Best regards,
Peter Tarsio
I've practice Bach Inventions hands seperately then put them together and I've practiced Invention without doing hands seperately and I don't know if it mattered that much. Hand independence issue showed their ugly head regardless if I had done hands seperately or not. If something is really difficult then there are passages where I have to break them down. But generally I agree with Mr. Cory. Once I did put hands together it was like I started over anyway,
Thank you very much! Easily put for me to learn. I can't tank you enough!
Please keep these videos coming.
It's the "Augener Edition (No. 8393B), Schubert Dances, Book II, edited by Liszt". It looks old and maybe out of print but maybe I'm wrong. I found it at a garage sale somewhere.
A lot of Welsh hymn books are sol-fa (which I think is 'vertical' music!). This is an inspiring video because I'm not brilliant at sight reading or reading music - as you say - it takes practice! Thanks for your videos!
Wow! Thank you! Love the video! Informative and a guide to the right direction for practice!
Thank you! These are great tips! I am always looking to learn how to sightread better.
This is a very informative helpful video. Bravo kind sir.
Thanks for the tutorial! It's always helpful since I can't afford a piano teacher right now. Thank you.
Your voice calms me. I bet you're on of those people who's incapable of feeling anger.
Really great tips, look forward to more of your expert teachings.
Thanks for the video Cory... I'm trying to be a better sight reader and I've heard from others that when you are actually practicing sight reading, things like going slow, not looking at your hands, not stopping, and picking music that isn't too hard for you are all hugely important.... Do you agree?
Ah ..., nice Sir Hall. VERY NICE!!!
Your tips from another video has really helped me. Thanks!
I appreciate the point you touch on at 11:48. Make playing musical with phrasing and control. It helps me to listen to what I am playing as I play, and try to make it sound to me more musical. Then arms hands and fingers almost unconsciously combine to produce a beautiful musical sound. I'm not sure of the technical term for this process. Self listening? or Feedback loop? Whatever. It cures robotic mechanical playing. Also, it allows us to make music even on crummy instruments. TY again.
Thank you very much for making this video, Cory. It has helped me a lot
Thank you. Very helpful.
I bought all of the schubert works and all of the haydn sonatas etc. in mini-print, expressly for sightreading. (Now-adays my eye sight would probably bother me, but still I do sight read in darkish rooms (I like it dark) with the stand down (so the book is flat before me). I guess you get used to it)
Thanks very much.
Reading vertically is toughest for me. Especially from upper to lower staff.
i wish i had enough money to buy your book, it seems really good and it's highly rated.
Thank you, Cory!
For those who seem very surprised by Cory saying not to worry about fingering, do remember that he’s talking about sight reading specifically. Fingering is of course very important, but the goal is learning to read “on the fly,” and concentrating too much on the finer aspects of technique can really slow you down.
Cory, I’m glad you mentioned that you should read the notes together, as a chord, rather than identify each note individually. When I read, I don’t care what note I’m reading; I care where it’s at. Trying to mentally identify each note while reading will slow you down tremendously. Instead, focus on where your hands and fingers need to go.
[Sorry, this started as one line and became a book! 😄]
Back in my teens I used to work very very hard to get the fingering "right" using hours and hours of careful thought for each Bach organ prelude and fugue etc, writing numbers carefully all over the score.
Now I don't. I use a different technique that for me works very much better. First I memorize the score WITHOUT memorizing the fingering that I'm using. It turns out that I only learn what I turn my attention to, so by NOT turning my attention to the fingering I don't learn it. Once I've memorized the piece, my brain, with access to all the information not just what it's looking at in the score, finds the best possible fingering all by itself, with no working it out consciously. The result is better fingers than I ever managed in my teens (~40 years ago), and no need to read numbers off the page during the performance. In fact, like Peter Hurford (extraordinary organist a few decades back) I like to have the score free of numbers, so I've erased most of the fingerings I wrote in my scores as a teenager. I do not want to be processing numbers while playing music. It's the wrong brain mode for me.
That's the basic idea. Like Hurford did, I do occasionally write some fingerings in. I put a number (e.g. 1) in a circle, where the circle means "mandatory" i.e. do it regardless of what else is happening. "Don't think, just do". I do this often to establish the hand position or change of hand position, particularly where there are multiple good options.
I like to avoid convoluted fingers and to keep fingering patterns whereever possible and I do that by using thumbs on black notes far more often that editors do in scores. I've had zero problems doing this and it is working well as my hands become more arthritic (thumb under is getting more difficult).
Incidentally, I've found that you cannot safely change fingerings you've learned. The old fingerings stay with you, even for decades, and ruin live performances and recordings. (This might seem surprising, but it agrees with my day job re how the brain works. It also agrees with Charles Owen's emotional response when I once mentioned changing fingerings to him!). Therefore it is not safe in my experience to evolve fingerings, or learn one set of fingerings and have a teacher change them downstream.
Have a look at my Bach 542 or 785 performances on my channel if you're interested. (542 was learned properly; 785 was learned and recorded in one session a couple of days ago).
It is a pity that the most recent comment on this is now two years old. I presume commenters must have been put off by some of the toxic comments last posted. This is a pity because I think what BachScholar has to say here is probably the best advice on sight reading I have found on the web. The distinction he makes between reading and sight reading is crucial. The only way to get better at sight reading is to constantly move on to new pieces. Anything else is practicising which is fine but don't fool yourself into thinking that playing the same thing twice is sight reading. I also think playing with both hands is good advice for sight reading - indeed I feel the note that BachScholar adds about this advice applying to Level 6 and above is a bit unfortunate. Apart from absolute beginners - people who are the equivalent of people still learning the alphabet who haven't moved onto sentences - all sight reading requires using both hands together. If you can't do this with a partiular piece then the piece must be too difficult for your current level of competence. That doesn't mean you can't learn more difficult pieces to stretch your competence but - as Bach Scholar correctly points out - that is not sight reading. That is practice. And yes, for sight reading always play sufficiently slowly so that you have the capacity to see ahead and thereby remain in time.
Very helpful, thanks.
Good upload.
Hi. I found you when looking for video of Clementi's p. 36. No.3. Thanks for the lesson! I sight read hymns all the time. I will try your suggestion to play without pedal first. I'm so addicted to it. I dsiagree about the two hands togeather. This week I was about to throw Bach Invention No 1 in the garbage, but my teacher said don't give up-- use metronome and hands separate for a few weeks. I'm going to try that. Found old copy of Joplin. Never played rags. Will give it a try! Thanks!
nice to hear something about you and your life...its the same thing with me. i come from scholl and learn joplins rags to :)
Wow thanks for all your very valuable info! Terrific video!
THANK YOU SIR
thanks a lot. fingering is very good
Thank you, very helpful! God bless
I agree with you about learning hands together vs separately. I have learned a couple of Bach Inventions, and it's crazy trying to try to put things together after learning them separately. I am confused though on why it's best to steer away from horizontal music for sight reading. I play mostly horizontal music, more of the lyrical/romantic style. I do have great difficulty jumping with my hands though. Ex. Glinka's Barcarolle is difficult, and it shouldn't be. Will Vertical help?
I once went to a piano teachers meeting where almost all presenters talked about "injury prevention" and Taubman and other "preventative" approaches. I don't think I've ever been so bored in my life. What ever happened to talking about the music? When professional speech people get together do they talk about how not to get strep throat? Why do some pianists have such fear of getting injured? It is something that never even crosses my mind.
Very cool story, I'm very into ragtime music as well, they're so fun to play. Very nice videos keep it up!
I would kill for the Thick book of Joplin right about now. Im addicted to sight reading and getting better every day. I read Hymnals, Modern pieces, Mozart, Bach Beethoven, Im running out of stuff to read
What about sight reading Bach's fugues?
Great video, thanks. I am beginner sight reader and have been using Mikrokosmos by Bartok for a few months. I have just purchased a book of Bach Chorales and it's painfully slow to sight read and play the pieces.
great sight-reading advice!
Ty Virtual Master. You are very well spoken. Are those books expensive? I am from Perú(i never heard of them). So i think they can be expensive or even not in libraries at 2018. So the only way to get them is buying from amazon or ... idk. Waiting from your answer. Thanks.
Also, I think Karajan (and probably many other people) played from orchestral scores. He did this to get better at conducting but it would be a good exercise even if you were only a pianist.
Great stuff Cory...
Thanks Cory, it's very important for me
1)While practising sight reading,should I correct wrong notes or I should keep going till the end of the piece?. 2)How many times should I repeat the piece I'm trying to sight read it [ when I begin to memorise the piece,it won't be sight reading any more]. so should I turn to a new one?. 3) The more I practice ,the more I get results or, I don't have to over do it?.[ I mean for how long should I practise sight reading every day?]
Thanks for the tutorial! It's always helpful since I can't afford a piano teacher right now.
15:00 "do not worry about fingering"-that pretty much sums it up :)
Bachscholar,
One thing I always struggle with is actually being able to look at both the treble and the bass cleff at the same time, so I struggle in immediate dual-hand execution. Do you have any suggestions?
Kind regards...
(liked the Schubert book, by the way! haha)
Great pianist and great tutorial, thanks a lot :)
AS someone who is learning without a teacher would you do a tutorial on pedaling? For the most part I use pedal as you did in this video(Lift the pedal with each new chord) to varying degrees. But I often times get confused when a score will say use no pedal and yet when I play that way to me it just sounds plain bad with no pedal. Is it really possible to play Chopins e minor prelude sostenuto with no pedal, for example?
Will you make a video on ear training? That would help me a lot because I want to learn how to play by ear
I had tried to play the piano for fairly long time, say 6 years. What I used to do was to first learn each hand separately, then combine and gradually increase the tempo, to one I felt comfortable with. This method however had me always quivering, hesitant, insecure and all these clearly showed in my "public" performance which rendered any such performance unpleasant to the beholder and myself. I had finally given up and about Easter this years ago (so ca 7 months as of this writing) decided on a different apporoach, that of sight reading purely. And in spite of VERY POOR RESULTS I persist to this day and my resolve gets stronger by the day if anything. I notice PROGRESS! Particularly since when I managed NOT TO LOOK AT MY FINGERS, but rather keep my eyes on the music at all times. I would say, this SIGHT READING thing takes a lot of determination, since you never seem to hear the acceptable results which you perhaps had got used to when honing the same piece a large number of times. I want here to recommend Scarlatti's Sonatas as my music of choice for practicing sight reading. Most pieces are very intuitive and from day one I got attracted to them. I NEVER "play" anything twice. The added benefit of working with original and famous compositions is that you can always hear them magnificently performed on RUclips (which particularly helpful when you are completely at a loss as to what the composer wanted to "say"). What I do (true to the sight rading principle) is I struggle through a piece, save it in the "read once" folder (sometimes with some annotations in the file name) and move on to another one always trying to get the musical thought behind a given composition. I also find it impossible to keep the tempo steady, or to read ahead as recommended by many sight reading gurus but this does not completely ruin (at least not to me) the overall musical concept of a given piece. So happy sight reading practicing everyone :-)
I would say an eighth point which is one of the most important is that you should forget any wrong notes played and keep going, so that rhythm and timing take precedence when sight reading. This is assuming you are not playing so many wrong notes that you should choose something at a lower level instead.
I mean with sightreading but also to a certain extent with everything. My tutorials with hands separate are just for the sake of showing the hands separate. The problem is that if one gets in the habit of ALWAYS playing separately from beginning to end with ALL pieces, this is totally not necessary and usually just wastes time. Hands separate practice should be reserved only for isolated passages that you find especially difficult.
Thanks for a really interesting and helpful lesson.