Sight Reading is an important step in learning and playing piano keyboard. If your interest lies with classical music then you do not have much of a choice but to learn to read music. Besides, there are many more benefits of being able to sight-read.
Written music is the only way a composer can share his work with others without actually needing an instrument around. A piano has 88 keys and you need a mechanism of depicting all these notes, and for how long you are going to play the notes, on a piece of paper.
This is what basically appears on a sheet music!
Is it Really Difficult?
Many feel that sight-reading the piano is very difficult, but so is learning to type, when you’re new to it. And the only way to overcome the challenge is to pick out one key at a time, be it the computer keyboard or learning to play the piano.
You don’t do it all at once; you take it one key at a time. You use your fingers to press down on a selected key and get a unique result: one particular letter or one particular note.
If you want to become good at sight reading piano, your aim initially should be to become good at reading the melody part. Once, you become good at reading one clef, you can proceed further to include the bass clef as well.
But if you can try playing both the clefs together, there is nothing like it!
Recommended Books- ABC Keyboard Stickers
Reusable key stickers that instantly attach to any size keyboard.
- Super Sight-Reading Secrets
An Innovative, Step-By-Step Program for Musical Keyboard Players of All Levels by Howard B. Richman
- Music Reading For Keyboard The Complete Method (Musicians Institute Essential Concepts) by Larry Steelman
Related: Learn to Play Piano: Methods, lessons, Books
Advantages of Sight Reading
Sight reading is not very difficult to learn as some people think. It is just like learning a new language, it takes time. Besides, if you become good at it, you will have a lot of advantages on your side.
- You do not need your teacher all the time. Pick up any song book, sheet music, exercises and start playing.
- Increase your value as a musician. If later on, you decide to become a teacher this skill will help you.
- If you can read, you can write as well. You can share your compositions with others; write part for other band members.
Things to Learn in Sight Reading
Beginner piano students often sit down at the keyboard with fear, they’re afraid of not knowing where the notes are or what key matches what written note. Practice is the only solution to this problem, and the reward of practice is that you get the ability to automatically reach for the correct notes on the keyboard.
Here is a brief summary of the topics that you would be expected to learn as part of your sight reading lessons.
- Staff & Clefs – The notes and their timings are captured on a piece of paper by drawing a series of dots and lines on a group of 5 horizontal lines, containing 4 spaces in between, called a musical staff. You will need to know the names of all these notes.
- Timing the Notes – All the notes that you play will need to be played for a few beat or less than a beat. Depending on this timing, the notes are known as sixteenth notes, eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes or whole notes.
- Rests – I am sure you must have noticed that almost all the songs have “pauses” in between where certain tracks do not play anything for some time. This is known as a Rest; it is just a pause where you play nothing. For all note lengths mentioned earlier, you will find a corresponding rest which you will need to learn.
- Time signature – Time signature gives you an idea about the meter or rhythm of the song. The rhythm pattern tells you whether the song is a Waltz or a March or any other style.
- Scales & Key Signature – Scale is nothing but the arrangement of notes in some specific order and all the songs are based on some scale. There are different kinds of scales but to begin with at least you need to know all the major and minor scales.
- Harmony – This is where you start learning the chords. Chords are necessary to make your music sound fuller and richer. Again, there are lots of chords that can be played but to begin with concentrate on the major, minor and dominant seventh chords.
- Articulations – Articulations are used so that your song does not sound monotonous. Here, you play additional notes or play the keys with different accents (force) to change the dynamics of the sound. You will need to learn what the different articulations mean.
Once you are able to sight read, you will realize that you just need to go through it initially to know the melody. Once you know the melody there is no need to look at the sheet. You can play it from memory, improvise upon it and just concentrate on the playing instead of the notes.
Piano Tabs
Tab is basically short form for tablature. Though originally used for writing down music for the guitar, it is used for piano as well, althuogh not much. Beginner guitarists find tabs interesting because it gives them a clear picture of where to place their fingers on the fret-board.
To help you understand how to read piano tabs, let’s take an example of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. It would look something like this.
4|ccggaag-|ffeeddc-|ggffeed-|ggffedc-|
b|1-2-3-4-|1-2-3-4-|1-2-3-4-|1-2-3-4-|
The first line indicates the melody to be played and the second line indicates the beats(rhythm) of the song. The number at the beginning of the first line indicates the octave where you need to play the song (fourth octave in this case). The symbol “|” indicates a bar line (4 beats every bar in this case). The letters indicate which notes you need to play. All the white keys are denoted by letters in small case. If the letter is in capital, it means you play the sharpened note. All the black keys need to be denoted as sharps – no flats! The second line denotes the timing for this song. This song has a 4/4 tempo. The “-” indicates “and” which is normally used while counting. So “1-2-3-4-” is same as “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and”.
Piano tabs are getting popular because some find it easier to read tabs than to read the traditional sheet music. However, remember that there is no substitute for traditional sheet music. If you are serious about music, you will have to learn to sight read.
More Piano Playing Tips
To help musical novices, here are a few tips for making piano playing easier.
- Practice daily. Without it, your progress will be very slow and you could easily get frustrated.
- Learn to correct your playing mistakes (wrong notes and so on) right away, before moving to the next part.
- If there’s a difficult passage, slow it down or break it down, and repeat the parts till you get it. Psychologists say something repeated seven times enters your long term memory.
- You may use colours / stickers to speed up the learning process. Match colours attached to piano keys, with coloured notes in a music book; this allows students to play without even knowing the names of the notes.
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