Sight-reading on the piano

Note recognition on the staff

This is the ability to instantly know which note it is, whether in treble clef, bass clef, or on ledger lines. To improve this skill, you can use the "note reading" function in Piano Tree's "learning" section.

Knowing the notes on the keyboard

It seems simple but has several levels. One thing is being able to name the notes on the keyboard, another is finding them in any register with your eyes closed. Not looking at the keyboard and knowing it by touch is a skill that will help you greatly in developing reading, since the more you can use your sight for looking at the sheet music, the better.

Rhythmic reading

Rhythms that you can't think through and don't have resolved beforehand, you'll be even less able to resolve in the context of reading at the piano. Practice rhythmic reading to incorporate all the cells and expand your vocabulary. Also practice two-voice rhythmic reading to resolve the psychomotor difficulties this entails.

Melodic reading

Reading and understanding phrases. A phrase is a melodic unit -it's not just about reading individual notes. Try to analyze each phrase: what type of beginning and ending does it have? What type of movement? How is it composed intervallically? How does it resolve its tension in relation to harmony? How does it relate to the previous or following phrase?

Harmonic reading

It's always easier to conceptualize units within a set than to perceive them separately and arbitrarily. That is, it's easier and more practical to see a vertical set of notes and recognize and name a single chord than to name the notes separately without an apparent relationship between them. There are also several layers in this regard -you can read chords "one at a time" or directly see a harmonic progression at a glance.

Use Piano Tree's chords training and chords recognizer to train this skill.

Piano technique

You can't read what you can't play technically. Use the chords and scales training to polish your piano technique.

Visual path/peripheral vision

Maintaining a criterion and order is very important. Nerves can make you look at the sheet music without extracting enough information, look at the keyboard also without resolving, and look back at the sheet music, creating a meaningless path. Make sure to resolve with each glance, both at the keyboard and at the sheet music.

Understanding what's important

In a sight-reading situation during a rehearsal or even a show, you need to understand that not all information in the sheet music has the same hierarchy. If the difficulty of the sheet music and the proposed tempo make it hard to process all the information, you need to know how to choose what to play and what not to. When playing solo piano, of course the most important thing will be the main melodic line -obviously we're not going to play only the melody, but the focus should be there while in the accompaniment we can "fudge" a bit. When part of an ensemble, we need to evaluate whether there are other instruments with the same function, duplicated lines, etc.

Concentration

To put all these skills into play together, we need a clear and available mind. Concentration can be exercised with various techniques like meditation.

Practice sight-reading with the Piano-Tree app and the pianotree series:

The pianotree series and Piano Tree's adventure mode are ideal for developing good sight-reading. Their design will allow a gradual approach to all the points mentioned above with a fresh and fun proposal. www.piano-tree 's digital tools are ideal for working on reading since its interface is interactive and gives you real feedback at each step.