Sight-reading
"The best way to develop your sight-reading is to sight-read."
Charles Cooke, Playing the Piano for Pleasure
Jane believes that sight-reading is much easier than many are led to believe.
Have you ever noticed that the music-staff, as printed on a sheet of paper, is similar to a keyboard rotated (counterclockwise) to vertical position? Climbing up the staff as if it were a ladder, is like going from left to right on the keyboard. These ideas are helpful for understanding my approach to sight-reading.
The position of the written note (as indicated on the staff) determines a key on the keyboard. The trick is to train yourself (with lots of practice) to transfer the information from your eyes to your fingers. Your eyes identify the indicated position and your finger strikes the corresponding note. The goal is to instantly transform the visual image of the position of the written note to a command to the finger to strike the corresponding key on the keyboard.
In the beginning there is no need to have a name for each note. We'll do that later. We need terms and names only to communicate. Also, one does not need to understand chord structure to read music.
The regular keyboard has 88 keys. Each staff, containing 5 lines and 4 spaces, denotes an exact 9 key section on the piano. That totals 18. For the remaining 70, we add short lines ("ledger" lines) to the top and bottom of staves (plural of 'staff') to extend the notes as far as we need to go. Symbols such as 8va, make extremely high or extremely low notes convenient to notate.
One does have to get used to the various time values of notes. But by breaking the counting into the smallest note duration, and counting with whole numbers, understanding all this becomes easy too. You might have already noticed how Jane counts differently. Instead of the standard "1 & & &, 2 & & &, 3 & & &", which would drive anyone insane, Jane counts "1, 2, 3, 4; 1, 2, 3, 4; 1, 2, 3, 4".
(Assumes no prior knowledge of reading music)
Lesson 1 Right hand plays "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"
Lesson 2 Left hand plays "Boogie Woogie"
introduced skipping notes, flats, bars, measures, time signature
Lesson 3 Middle C
Lesson 4 Note Names
Lesson 5 How to Recognize Octaves
Lesson 6 Memorize Notes on the Staff
Lesson 6.4 F
Lesson 7 Sight-reading Techniques. E.g.,Clementi Prelude 1
Lesson 8 Sight-reading Techniques. E.g., Rameau Rondino
Lesson 8.1 Without symbols
Lesson 8.2 With symbols
Lesson 9 Sight-reading: Counting.
E.g., Leopold Mozart's Burlesque
Lesson 10 Trills and Ornaments
It appears those who used these tutorials are well on their way to reading music.
To Practice Sight-Reading
Practice Tips
How to Practice (Piano) When We Keep Stumbling over the Same Part
On Fingering
Jane tries to obey the editor's fingering for her tutorials, even when she finds the fingering uncomfortable
Best lesson as of 2021
Graham Fitch offers some crucial tips and advice on how to find the ideal piano fingering
Charles Cooke, Playing the Piano for Pleasure:
"...Be especially careful to choose the fingering which best suits your hand and the phrasing of the passage. Good editions of music usually have sensible fingerings, but if there is any department of piano playing where you should follow your own judgment it is that of fingering. The best teachers will always tell you that. Even such fine editing as that of Rafael Joseffy should not be followed in its fingering unless you feel it suits you. In fact Joseffy had some strange fingering crotchets -- such as changing fingers on repeated notes even in molto adagio passages -- which few wish to follow..."
"For fingering advice, it's worth investigating Chopin's own practice. Study modern editions, e.g. Jan Ekier, which include the annotations Chopin made on his pupils' scores (not always consistently), and the fascinating book by J-J Eigeldinger "Chopin: Pianist and Teacher" which compiles many useful quotations by his contemporaries about his playing as well as musical examples.
Some of Chopin's own fingering solutions are ingenious.
Some points:
1) Finger changes on repeated notes are not necessary at slow tempi. Chopin often opts for 3 as this puts the hand in a balanced position.
2) use of 4th finger where many editions give 3rd; Chopin clearly had a very strong 4th finger and the demands he puts upon it might put some players off, but if cultivated, his fingering is usually more conducive to a balanced hand position than stretching 3 over.
3) use of 4 and 5 in runs, notably when there are staccato marks - look at Chopin's own extraordinary fingering published in Op. 9/2. You demonstrate an example of this (not mine - I would keep 5 on the white notes) with your solution for the run at 0.42f - many editions suggest the thumb towards the start of this RH run, which I suspect Chopin didn't - well done!
4) Leaps in LH figuration that distinguish the bass note from the rest, e.g. 5-5 for Db - F 10th at 1.00 - imagine the figuration as a low bass note plus a chord. As a formalised improvisation, which is what many of the nocturnes were, this is almost certainly how they were conceived and encourages the bringing out of the bass note upon which the chord resonates, One has to be careful not to accent the note after the leap, though.
5) Chopin's fingering for the final RH descent on the C-flat chord is 4/2 for each pair(!) It works brilliantly and has an effective simplicity about it, enabling the player to focus on the long accents for each pair. 4/2 neatly cuts the Gordian knot compared to the fussy solutions given by older editions - as ever, Chopin's solutions aren't just practical, but they bring out the phrasing or musical gesture."
After pondering how Guido the monk came up with the staff notation, Jane made up a fun series about reading music. That was long before making
these sight-reading lessons.
For those and a laugh, click here.