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sight reading

Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2017-08-20 07:01

How do people practice sight reading? Do you try to read unfamiliar music at its marked tempo, and keep going forward despite mistakes? When you get a new piece or a new book, do you take the opportunity to try and sight read it? Are there sources of unfamiliar music to use but not necessarily buy for the purpose of learning?

I've got a pile of music I bought years ago in my "first incarnation", before a little 32-year break from playing. Most of it is at least unfamiliar now, and some of it I don't recall at all, though I must have at least read individual pieces through once. The other day I reached into the middle of the pile and grabbed a piece that I must have bought, though I don't even remember having ever heard of it before: Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 22, by Iain Hamilton. I proceeded to sight read it, not quite dogmatically, stopping a few times at difficult or interesting spots.

It was fun to do, though whether the exercise made me a better sight reader is debatable. I didn't do too terribly. The piece is quite fascinating, but I won't be working on it systematically any time soon. I'll probably repeat the experiment with other pulls from the pile.

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