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Re: good books for sight reading

Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-09-11 17:53

Online, I like the Sight Reading Factory program. For the small fee, you get a great variety of rhythm and melodic patterns to practice, and you can choose the level of difficulty you are prepared to attempt. https://www.sightreadingfactory.com. Some studio musicians, whose job depends on sight reading finesse, recommend Joe Allard's Advanced Rhythms book. Rhythmically, it takes over where the old Pasqual Bona Rhythmical Articulations leaves off. They also recommend Joe Viola's Chord exercise book, which forces you to read endless series of double flats and double sharps. (The better your "ear" is the more you can play these "by ear.") The Bugs Bowers Bop Duet and Rhythm books are good (Jon Manasse uses them) and so are the 3 jazz concepts volumes by Lennie Niehaus.

Sight reading is never really "on sight"; it is always a matter of applying, recognizing, (or, at a level of greater difficulty, altering) patterns you already know. The process would more aptly be called "recognize and play" rather than "sight read." If you already know the scale and arpeggio patterns found in Baermann's Clarinet Method, book III (and the etudes in Baermann Book IV), and the Stark Arpeggios, then your brain and fingers will just recognize them as "chunked" patterns and automatically play them. If you don't know the Baermann and Stark material (whether you learned it from those books or in some other way), then you will not be able to "sight read" it. When confronted with such patterns in a piece of music you will have to stop and take the time to learn it on the spot.

Good sight readers collect and mentally hoard patterns of music. They push themselves outside their comfort zone and practice those Bartok scales and Stravinsky changing meters. Oliver Nelson has some patterns in his Patterns for Improvisation book that most clarinetists would never think of playing. Fred Lipsius' book Reading Key Jazz Rhythms is compendium of rhythms you might not expect to see but you can bet they will turn up somewhere. If you know them, you will be able to "sight read" when you meet them on the road.

Brazilian choros make excellent practice and sight-reading material; they are especially good for developing nimble articulation and accurate rhythmic subdivision and syncopation. Internet has hundreds of choros available for
free download. You can start with the first hundred or so here:
https://www.slideshare.net/jairoflute/songbook-choro-vol-1.
https://www.slideshare.net/jairoflute/songbook-choro-vol-2.

Don't overlook the Klose method. Especially the duets. They give you practice in the rhythms and harmonies of the classical and early romantic periods (great for Mozart and Rossini). Henri Sarlit's 20 Etudes de deciffrage is another valuable duet book for practicing sight-reading.

A quick source for (about 70) familiar melodies is Sally Adams' Mini Fake Book for Clarinet. Presto Music has it for under $12.

Post Edited (2020-09-12 20:09)

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