Improving your sight reading and note-recognition skills

What you do to improve your sight reading abilities.
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[@lennonpilkington3918]

Welcome to the recommended tab. Also, very useful video thank you for this tip. 10/10 video 😌😌

[@SuccessMindset2180]

0:15 efficiency in recognizing notes is essential in playing an instrument

[@pablobear4241]

Since this video, I've improved it a lot since asking! What you say at 3:05 became true, I surprised myself recently. I can basically read clementi sonatina/easier sonatinas at sight quite well, even Beethoven OP 49 sonatinas, or rondo alla turca (read at sight recently quite well slowly), I even read the whole op 25 no 2 etude right hand alone (I know it doesn't fully count cuz not HT), not stopping no mistakes with even-ness in rhythm since then! EVEN A LOT OF STUFF FROM WTC or easier Bach pieces too are becoming easy, everyday now I will just pick a random prelude or fugue and try my best to go through it. Baroque/Classical is easy-ish to sightread, but, now my issue in sightreading is romantic stuff, I think I will play lyric pieces, schumann album for young, and other stuff like that to work on it though after my recital. I have a recital May 8th, and I am going to be playing BWV 847 Prelude, and Chopin Prelude in B major, after this though I'm going to dedicate more time to sightreading before moving onto new stuff. I plan to learn Bach P&F in D major, An allegro of a classical sonata (likely k283), a romantic piece (maybe scriabin prelude/poem, or chopin prelude/mazurk/my first waltz), and an etude (maybe by czerny/heller or something IDK) after my recital. But, before I do the new stuff l'm going to spend a week or two where I just study theory a lot more and sight-read. I remember I spent a few days and I read like 120 pages of music, and it leveled me up but oh my god it hurt my brain LOL! I will do something similar after my recital, so I'm excited to see where it brings me.. Another thing is cadences helped me a lot since I learned them, that is very important for sightreading, you can recognize 1,4,5 all the time if you know them good. Thank you for this video, I am reviewing some of your old videos and they help a lot refresh stuff in my mind, you have great content for pianists! Very straight to the point.

[@Tclack]

This is a theme that transcends music. When learning languages, especially in the beginning, immersion in content well within your comprehensibility threshold is a great way to build fluency. With math, engineering, physics, chemistry etc. Repping problems does the same. Even some of the great mathematicians like Newton and Gauss were known to do lots of calculations, mental and on paper of just arithmetic, nothing close to the cutting edge problems they respectively solved. I'd wager the same can be said about authors. Anyway, great content. One followup question. You said "learn" a piece several times. My gut assumption was that practicing sight reading lower level pieces would be playing it through maybe a few times, them moving on to other (afterall if they're below your level, it shouldn't be difficult) but are you suggesting learn it as you would something at your level like practicing tricky bars, repeating it several times per day and such as if you were preparing that piece for a recital?

[@pardonmypiano]

you've made such a good point about immersion!

[@StevenMassicotte]

Yes Trevor, that is what I mean by two different ways of increasing the sight-reading skill.... One is actual sight reading like you described, reading something once or twice. Very easy stuff. Another way of increasing it the skill, is to actually learn continually pieces a few levels easier than your own. We could call this "prepared-reading".

[@Tclack]

Thakns for the clarification. I wouldn't have thought to work easier level stuff in the same manner. I'll give it a try!

[@manguiatgloriadeniceg.7781]

to sum up what he said... PRACTICE 40 HOURS-

[@bananabanana2887]

A two set fan I see

[@billligon4005]

Where is the list of up coming videos? Zoom master classes are very disappointing. Prefer a 'in person' Master Class.

[@StevenMassicotte]

Hi Bill, sorry you don't like masterclasses on Zoom, we have had a few great ones already though. Hope to see you sometime.

[@billligon4005]

@@StevenMassicotte Would like to listen in - how do I do that? What is the link.

[@billligon4005]

Actually I'm something to play. A Bach/Petri transcription of Sheep May Safely Graze.

[@manuelgonzales6483]

My goal is to play J S Bach The Well Tempered Clavier I and II, as a complete beginner where do I start? 😭🦫