Author: sfalexi
Date: 2008-08-12 04:58
Hmmmm. Well, whenever I start a practice session, I typically play the SAME warmup exercises from study books. Scales, arpeggios, diminished sevenths, dominant sevenths, scales in thirds, and chromatic. Not necessarily in that order, but I do them all. And as I do them more and more, I realize I tend to memorize them and need less and less paper on my music stand to play them. Also, when I get comfortable with my warmup, I add another thing. At first it was just scales and scales in thirds. Then I added diminished sevenths, now it's at the above. Soon I'll be adding broken scales, blues scales, returning scales, scales in octaves, etc, but one at a time as I get more comfortable.
I think this gets my fingers warmed up and seeing the music in front of me gets my brain warmed up to the idea of looking/reading music (although it's getting memorized well, I sometimes put the paper there because I want to have my brain link the sound and fingers with sheet music and what the notes look like).
Then I move on to a piece that I know. Something I've played through often. Maybe I can't play it perfectly, but I've pretty much almost memorized that piece as well. THEN after a bit, I feel I'm ready to tackle a piece I'm working on, or sight-reading, or something else.
I think focusing on a standard warmup and looking at the notes while you play them might help a LITTLE. For instance, for all those scales and whatnot, when I see a scale in thirds in a piece of music, my brain registers what it sees and my fingers feel MUCH more comfortable doing it.
But keep in mind, sight-reading, by nature (it being unfamiliar), may just flub and SHOW how unfamiliar you are with it. Maybe you just could use work on established patterns (scales, arpeggios), maybe you are tackling music a little tough for you to sight-read at your current level, or maybe you are just holding yourself to too high a standard expecting sight-reading to be "automatic". It's FAR from automatic. It's tough.
Lastly, picking up a piece and reading it is tough. But why not give yourself a minute or two just to look through the piece and spot some potential problem areas and try to work them out mentally before starting to play away? Maybe a wierd rhythm or unfamiliar jumps could throw off the rest of the piece, but with 30 seconds of looking FOR a pattern in them could prepare you for when you get to them.
Alexi
(BTW, take my advice with a grain of salt and remember it's only my opinion. I'm not a professional teacher, have never had steady lessons, nor do I have a degree in music. I simply do what I can to improve my skill to another level and these are some of the things that have helped MY sight-reading)
US Army Japan Band
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