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 Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: Grendel McGrenadill 
Date:   2023-11-10 00:38

Hello again,
as a sort of follow up to my question about a good music theory book/system, I'd like to ask what your concepts are on practising sight reading.
I tend to basically recite from memory when I try to sight read. As in: I do not play what I see as a note but more as a word/sentence which I played before when figuring the notes out.
As much as I like to play music by memory and not by reading I guess if I'd wanted to become better at proper sight reading there has to be a different way of leaning to do it.
Any pointers from the pros here?

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: SecondTry 
Date:   2023-11-10 01:23

https://www.sightreadingfactory.com/



Post Edited (2023-11-10 01:23)

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: brycon 
Date:   2023-11-10 04:43

My general concept with practicing is that passively consuming material isn't going to make you much better. "Klose scales are great to practice!" "No, Baermann is better!" But ultimately, it doesn't matter. What matters is how you engage with the material, how you uncover your unique weaknesses and then curate a regimen to turn your weaknesses into strengths.

There are two main components to sight-reading: rhythm and pitch. Perhaps start with rhythm exercises (you can find many online or use something like the Starer book). Can you accurately perform them counting or clapping? Do you get hung up on particular types of rhythms, such as dotted notes or tied notes? Do you get hung up on particular meters, such as compound ones? Make a note of what's difficult for you.

Then perhaps solfege or say note names (without the notated rhythms) for a piece of music. Can you accurately recite the note names? Do you get hung up on certain registers, such as above or below the staff? Do you get hung up on particular patterns, such as leaps back and forth? Again, make a note of what's difficult for you.

You don't need material or "content." You need a process: discover where exactly the difficulty lies and then work on it.

Having said all that, I think you're correct in reading music as "words" or "sentences." And because most of us read music this way, I would actually avoid sight-reading generators, such as the one posted above. They generate completely idiosyncratic music. Using them would be like learning to read English from non-grammatical constructions: "Car the went red house to man's the." To become a good sight-reader, you need to become quicker at grasping musical constructions larger than individual notes or rhythms, just as to become a good reader of English, you need to grasp grammatical constructions larger than individual letters or words.

To that end, practice from actual tonal music. To keep yourself honest: 1. Read through something you played a long time ago but somewhat remember so you can tell when you screw up, or 2. Record yourself and listen back to check accuracy, or 3. Play with other people (preferably who are themselves accurate). And again, make a note of what's difficult.

Good luck!

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: SecondTry 
Date:   2023-11-10 20:21

brycon wrote:

> My general concept with practicing is that passively consuming
> material isn't going to make you much better.

I admit to not knowing what passively consuming material means here.

Drucker, who was an awesome sight reader (by second hand account) use to, as a student, put any music he could find on his stand and play it. The more music I throw at you, that you can listen to how it sounds, the better you will become at memorizing rhythms and reading notes, i.e. a better sight reader.

"Klose scales are
> great to practice!" "No, Baermann is better!" But ultimately,
> it doesn't matter. What matters is how you engage with the
> material, how you uncover your unique weaknesses and then
> curate a regimen to turn your weaknesses into strengths.

Hmm..engage the material. I'm not sure what this means. I will though tell you what I think.

Etude work is essential, but it often focuses on notes and technique more than on varied rhythms, and thus is limited in its ability to efficiently teach sight reading, which requires mastery of both. It DOES matter that you delve beyond etude books to become a good sight reader.

Again, getting your eyes in front of music with more diverse rhythms, whether that comes in the form of composed music, or rhythm/note randomizing software like my link, either of which allows you to hear where you've played mistakes, or even Tom Heimer's The Most Advanced Clarinet Book, whose rhythms and notes are so varied, is what I think you need.

>
> There are two main components to sight-reading: rhythm and
> pitch.

On this I agree, but I'd say rhythm and notes. Here again, to "beat a dead horse," getting your eyes in front of lots of diverse music helps you memorize rhythms and read notes faster. That your unique method of becoming a better sight reader may or may not involve different cerebral process from others in no way negates the simple fact that exposure to diverse musical rhythms and melodies is key for all those seeking to advance their sight reading skills, independent of the differences in the cerebral mechanisms each musician may incorporate to improve at this task.

> Do you get hung up on particular patterns, such as leaps back and forth?
> Again, make a note of what's difficult for you.

Difficulty with playing leaps is far more, I think, likely to be a product of technique, not reading limitations. Here's where etude books and slowing down the metronome do shine.

>
> You don't need material or "content." You need a process:
> discover where exactly the difficulty lies and then work on it.

You need both material or "content" and a process. I could teach you in a classroom how to throw a frisbee. Only getting out on the field (exposure to the printed page) will allow you to practice that you learned sitting in my class.


> I would actually avoid sight-reading generators, such
> as the one posted above. They generate completely idiosyncratic
> music.

I would tend to agree, much that I was the one that recommended a sight reading generator. But here's why I disagree. First off, idiosyncratic material is exactly what you need. Idiosyncratic music is, well, unique in its generation of rhythms and musical patterns, the more of which are thrown your way, the better you will become at sight reading. This is where software randomization shines. By NOT having a known tune to work with (but that you can hear how it sounds) you are not given other cues as to rhythm and melody. That said, if you had access to the music of known melodies this is often a useful way to say to yourself, "ah, that's what that rhythm and tune I know looks like on paper." In absence of access to such content though, sight reading generators are indispensable.

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: Grendel McGrenadill 
Date:   2023-11-10 21:01

Hello folks,

thanks a bundle!
You do support what I was basically thinking:
One gets to know how to deal with things by dealing with things :)
I should have mentioned that I have worked as a professional drummer and I am quite capbable of reading even the more complicated forms and charts in that regard.
My difficulty with the clarinet now is basically revolving around the different kind of some of the rhythmic notation ( slurs, ties etc. ) which very seldomly happen in drum notation as well as ( and more significantly ) the accidentals of different harmonies and then finding the appropriate keys.
Right now the intellectual process is still:
- Ah, I see an A
- the piece is in Eb Major.
- Let me see: Eb Major has A, B and E flattened.
- Where is that Ab key again?
- tooooot

I guess just throwing various random musical pieces at myself should do the trick in the long run.
Found the examples on the mentioned website very interesting and also challenging but musically a bit unrealistic ...

Thanks again!

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: kurth83 
Date:   2023-11-10 22:50

I'm not a pro, but as a newer student sight reading is one of my top priorities.

I admit most of my practice is sight reading and then going over the pieces a bit, trying to emulate what playing in a group would be like. I have a classical background so I know the styles already, but listening to great players is still quite helpful to me.

Here is my thinking:

- Practice sight reading by sight reading.
- Always try to make music. Style, expression, tone, accuracy, speed.
- Slow and careful wins the race, mostly read at the speed you can play. Speed will come. Although pushing it every once in a while doesn't hurt anything, it's fun to test your limits too.
- There is a vast amount of literature to use, you won't run out any time soon.
- Keep it fun, make music, it's never about just hacking out the notes.
- Play both parts of duets - develops top and bottom ranges - I love duets.
- Read a piece several times and work on the parts you had trouble with. This simulates what an ensemble will do, which is your goal, to play in one.
- you still have to work on scales and arpeggios too. There is a vast array of technical studies in the literature too, and this area of study isn't optional.
- The goal is to be able to sight read in all keys across the entire range of the instrument.

Above all keep it fun, it takes long hours of practice for a long time to get good on an instrument, my thinking is to enjoy it as much as possible.

I recommend all the Rubank clarinet books (methods and duet books, the mozart duets in the advanced one are a blast to play for example), Klose is great too, although it gets pretty advanced in the second half so you have to go pretty slow. If struggling with crossing the break trumpet books are fantastic (Arban and St Jacome - I prefer St Jacome as it has more musical etudes to work with but both are great).

Aging classical trumpet player beginning to learn clarinet as a second.

Post Edited (2023-11-11 06:55)

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: lydian 
Date:   2023-11-11 00:22

This is one of the best videos I've seen about sight reading:
https://youtu.be/WcsuofdtOy4

But if you're still thinking about fingerings, you need to take a step back and practice reading very basic material until the fingerings are automatic. You should first be able to instantly play any note on sight without thinking about fingerings. Then try more advanced stuff. Otherwise there's no way you'll be able to play what you see in real-time.

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: brycon 
Date:   2023-11-11 01:57

Quote:

Right now the intellectual process is still:
- Ah, I see an A
- the piece is in Eb Major.
- Let me see: Eb Major has A, B and E flattened.
- Where is that Ab key again?
- tooooot


It sounds, then, as though you might want to start by working toward more fluency with scales and triads, especially in the more commonly encountered keys. Playing and thinking through the various keys should be as easy as reciting the alphabet.

Moreover, to build the connection between the pitches you see in the music and your instrument, you might want to remove the rhythms, set a metronome to a relaxed tempo (perhaps 60), and then say the note names and push down the fingerings directly on the downbeats. See if there are some areas of the clarinet, such as the higher registers, more difficult than others and work more on them. As you become comfortable, move your tempo up so that your processing time becomes shorter: eventually the recognition of a particular pitch with a particular fingering on the instrument becomes nearly instantaneous. (I would suggest practicing it in this way so that you don't have to worry about actually playing the clarinet or the other notated aspects of the music but can focus all your mental energy on the pitch/fingering connection.) And here, for simply churning out pitches to look at, I can see those random music generators being pretty useful.

Quote:

I admit to not knowing what passively consuming material means here.


It means that sitting down everyday and playing through etudes, scales, etc. in and of itself will not make you a much better clarinet player.

In a similar way, going to the gym and shooting 100 free throws a day will not make you a good shooter. It might make you slightly more accurate: perhaps you go from terrible to slightly less terrible. Or it might even make you worse because you develop some bad habits, trying to catapult the ball toward the rim.

If, however, you were to have a friend video record you shooting some free throws, you watched the video in slow motion, and then compared your shooting form to that of a professional, you would begin to see some areas for improvement. If, for example, you found that your elbow flairs out compared to the professional, you could design an exercise to practice this component of your free throw.

So the content, in this case the 100 free throws, isn't so important (could be 50 free throws, could be 20 shots closer to the rim, could be 30 shots a bit farther away, etc.). But the way you engage with the content, critically evaluating what you're doing, breaking down the larger task into smaller components, analyzing which components are working or not working, etc., is vitally important.

Quote:

You need both material or "content" and a process. I could teach you in a classroom how to throw a frisbee. Only getting out on the field (exposure to the printed page) will allow you to practice that you learned sitting in my class.


This is a strawman, so I'll just leave it alone.

Quote:

First off, idiosyncratic material is exactly what you need. Idiosyncratic music is, well, unique in its generation of rhythms and musical patterns, the more of which are thrown your way, the better you will become at sight reading. This is where software randomization shines.


But to become a fluent sightreader, you have to recognize very quickly larger structures, such as scales, triads, dimiunitions, voice-leading patterns, and so on. It seems to me that randomization would keep you locked into reading music at the individual pitch and rhythm level and therefore arrest your development as a sightreader. But I suppose your mileage may vary.



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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: ruben 
Date:   2023-11-11 10:36

I find that sight-reading and transposing at the same time helps. It's so much harder than just sight-reading that it makes the latter seem easy!

rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com


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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: Grendel McGrenadill 
Date:   2023-11-11 12:07

Quote:

It sounds, then, as though you might want to start by working toward more fluency with scales and triads, especially in the more commonly encountered keys. Playing and thinking through the various keys should be as easy as reciting the alphabet.

Quite obviously so. Thank you.
So far I played the scales ( focussing on major but also melodic minor and pentatonics ) mostly by ear. Abstracting it from the intervals I hear. Of course while doing this I do not really anchor the note names / positions on stave into my brain.
Should I maybe practise the scales while looking at a stave with the note names added?
Quote:

set a metronome to a relaxed tempo (perhaps 60), and then say the note names and push down the fingerings directly on the downbeats.

That sounds interesting. Thank you. I guess you mean that in context of looking at a score?
Quote:

And here, for simply churning out pitches to look at, I can see those random music generators being pretty useful.
I tried an app called "Read Music - Faster" which basically shows you random notes and the detects what you play. A sort of quiz game. I got a bit bored by the missing musical context though.

Quote:

But to become a fluent sightreader, you have to recognize very quickly larger structures, such as scales, triads, dimiunitions, voice-leading patterns, and so on. It seems to me that randomization would keep you locked into reading music at the individual pitch and rhythm level and therefore arrest your development as a sightreader. But I suppose your mileage may vary.

That concept is nicely explained in the video that lydian posted above. Thanks for that as well. Very educative.

Again: Thanks to all for giving me hints and suggestions.

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: Grendel McGrenadill 
Date:   2023-11-11 12:44

Quote:

I find that sight-reading and transposing at the same time helps. It's so much harder than just sight-reading that it makes the latter seem easy!

I am afraid that at my current stage this might make my head explode.

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: ruben 
Date:   2023-11-11 16:09

Grendel: Not really. Take vey easy pieces and transpose them to the b-flat clarinet. My strategy is to make sight-reading appear easy compared with other skills. It is a psychological trick. I'm convinced that many people can't sight-read because there's a mental block somewhere that makes them lose their confidence.

rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com


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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: SecondTry 
Date:   2023-11-11 19:36

Brycon, you originally wrote:

You don't need material or "content." You need a process: discover where exactly the difficulty lies and then work on it.

This is wrong and I corrected it. You're welcome.

No strawman here: You've claimed that all one needs is a process. If that were the case I could simply explain to you, by analogy, what your training regiment for building muscle should be in terms of what muscle groups to work out each day, and that alone, sitting on the couch eating donuts rather than putting in the gym time would build you a great physique--that is if you don't prefer my prior frisbee analogy.

I must commend the simple approach of a newbie, kurth83:

"Practice sight reading by sight reading."

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: brycon 
Date:   2023-11-11 23:28

Quote:

That sounds interesting. Thank you. I guess you mean that in context of looking at a score?


Yes: whatever music you like; doesn't particularly matter.

Quote:

So far I played the scales ( focussing on major but also melodic minor and pentatonics ) mostly by ear. Abstracting it from the intervals I hear. Of course while doing this I do not really anchor the note names / positions on stave into my brain.
Should I maybe practise the scales while looking at a stave with the note names added?


Yeah, you might want to try practicing scales while looking at the music (you can easily find scale sheets online). Just a quick thought on practicing scales or other musical fundamentals:

I had a rather severe but brilliant ear training professor named Mary Anthony Cox. She would have our class stand in a semi circle, conduct in 4/4, and recite intervals, scales, triads, scales in thirds, etc. The idea here is that the pulse from the conducting (or could be a metronome) doesn't allow for you to stretch out time and think: your thought processing must be automatic. Over time, the tempo was increased and the tasks were made much more difficult, such as reading quickly in the soprano, alto, or tenor clef for transposing purposes.

At any rate, what professor Cox was getting at is that we knew our fundamentals of music as well as possible. Someone could stop you on the street and yell, "Hey, what's a triad above scale-degree 6 in Db major!" and you wouldn't hesitate to respond with Bb, Db, F: no thinking, no air fingerings to figure out pitches, etc. And as the various scales, triads, etc. became ingrained in us, muscle memory when you played them followed. But importantly: the muscle memory followed the mind, not the other way around; that is, we didn't have to think through our fundamentals on the instrument.

At any rate, you could easily adapt these exercises for your purposes. Find some scales and/or scale patterns, put the metronome on, say out loud the note name and press the fingering down, and then increase the tempo over time. I find these exercises to be among the most beneficial in terms of musical fundamentals and will even make doctoral students, who claim to "know" their scales, recite them in tempo. Maybe you'll find some use for them too: good luck!

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: brycon 
Date:   2023-11-11 23:43

Quote:

Brycon, you originally wrote:

You don't need material or "content." You need a process: discover where exactly the difficulty lies and then work on it.

This is wrong and I corrected it. You're welcome.


If this out-of-context sentence is all you took from my post, you're either being disingenuous to win an internet argument on a clarinet forum or you're being a moron.

At any rate, if you want to have a good discussion about music that may or may not be of help to someone, I'm here for it. If you want to turn pedant to win debates and feel good about yourself, I'll pass.

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: Fuzzy 
Date:   2023-11-12 01:01

Brycon,

Wow!

Quote:

At any rate, what professor Cox was getting at is that we knew our fundamentals of music as well as possible. Someone could stop you on the street and yell, "Hey, what's a triad above scale-degree 6 in Db major!" and you wouldn't hesitate to respond with Bb, Db, F: no thinking, no air fingerings to figure out pitches, etc. And as the various scales, triads, etc. became ingrained in us, muscle memory when you played them followed. But importantly: the muscle memory followed the mind, not the other way around; that is, we didn't have to think through our fundamentals on the instrument.


This is quite a tangent from the way I normally learn, but I'm intrigued by this excersize as you've described it. I can definitely see the benefits of such an excercise. It is a neat way of looking at things in bite-sized pieces - outside of their usual context. (I've enjoyed all your posts in this thread - very good stuff! But this, "6th of Db, build a triad" excercise is great!)

Thanks for sharing,
Fuzzy
;^)>>>

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: brycon 
Date:   2023-11-12 06:09

Quote:

This is quite a tangent from the way I normally learn, but I'm intrigued by this excersize as you've described it. I can definitely see the benefits of such an excercise. It is a neat way of looking at things in bite-sized pieces - outside of their usual context. (I've enjoyed all your posts in this thread - very good stuff! But this, "6th of Db, build a triad" excercise is great!)


Professor Cox studied in France with Nadia Boulanger, for the entire 7- or 8-year Boulanger curriculum. I'm not sure if this particular exercise was her own or Boulanger's. The idea behind the exercise, though, is definitely Boulanger's. She felt as though a proper musician should have a link between his or her mind, ears, and body. When you're riding in the passenger seat of a car, for example, you might see a red-light, recognize the color red and it's meaning, and tell the driver "Hey! Stop!" All this happens nearly instantly. In the same way, you should be able to hear the bassoons play a note, recognize by ear that it's a C and that it's sharp, and then play your G a bit sharper still to match: again, nearly instantly.

Boulanger felt as though Americans lacked fundamentals in terms of hearing and thinking music but were highly skilled in the physical aspects of it (such as precise
technical facility). She started teaching Americans to rectify this issue, as she saw it.

Another torturous one, which illustrates the mind-ears-body connection, is to stand at the blackboard with a staff drawn on it; the instructor plays a pitch on every downbeat at around quarter note is 60; on the upbeat, the student solfeges whatever note was played and writes it on the staff. This exercise, of course, strengthens the connection between what we hear coming from the keyboard, what we produce with our voice, and what we see on a staff.



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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: nellsonic 
Date:   2023-11-12 06:46

Sight-reading is learned the same way any kind of reading is, by starting with easy material and doing lots of it on a regular basis until fluency is gained, then reading slightly harder material and going through the cycle again. Rinse and repeat until sightreading is a strength. Then keep doing it to maintain and further develop the skill.

All of my students have subscriptions to MakeMusic (formerly SmartMusic) specifically because it is an excellent platform to practice to fluency on a wide range of material that progresses from very easy to quite difficult.

With MakeMusic, you can work with rhythm reading exercises, sight-reading exercises, method books, solo pieces with accompaniment, and ensemble music (band, orchestra, and jazz band (Tenor Sax 1 is usually the best part to read on clarinet for jazz band - great for rhythmic development). You can read along with the accompaniment/ensemble or with your part being played alone, or totally on your own - all have their place in the process. Playing with the tracks helps to develop tempo stability, intonation, and style - just as playing in an excellent ensemble does. Reading alone develops true independence.

The interface can be slightly frustrating and the piano accompaniment tracks don't sound great. The old SmartMusic from 6 or 8 years ago was much better in that regard, but it's still very worthwhile. I wish I had had something like this when I was a student! The ensemble library is graded by difficulty and quite large. The recordings are all of pros and can be tempo adjusted, looped by section, tracked with a metronome, etc.

That said, you also need to develop vocabulary outside of just sightreading. That's where technical studies (scales, arpeggios, etc.) come in. Etudes are the middle ground between pure technical studies and actual music (although good etudes can also be good music!). Sightreading easier etudes and working for a full week each on a succession of harder ones keeps developing the brain's ability to link technical elements together fluently.

I would advise starting with sightreading material that you can be about 90% accurate on and moving to harder material once your average at that level is above 95%. Don't avoid hard music altogether, especially if you have an audition coming up that involves sight-reading, but sticking primarily with easier things for some months in the beginning will yield better results in the long-run. Remember the goal is fluency, so practice reading with some degree of that. Struggling through things note by note can be beneficial at times and is often necessary in certain phases of music life, but it's not really the way to develop actual sight-reading skills.

Bottom line - work for fluency, which means working regularly with a variety of materials and levels, but mostly at a rather moderate level of challenge. Enjoy the process as you observe how a 'moderate level of challenge' advances over the months and years. Along the way you'll hopefully enjoy getting to play lots of nice stuff.

Anders

Post Edited (2023-11-12 07:17)

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: Grendel McGrenadill 
Date:   2023-11-12 12:26

Hello all.
Thanks for all the wonderful suggestions.
They are basically in line with what I guessed from life experience. I should have mentioned that I am in my late fourties, so I do grasp some aspects on another level as I would have when I was young.
Wish I could have learned all of that theory and practise earlier.

Quote:

All of my students have subscriptions to MakeMusic (formerly SmartMusic) specifically because it is an excellent platform to practice to fluency on a wide range of material that progresses from very easy to quite difficult.

That sounds like a good thing. However I do have a subscription to tomplay already. It is quite similar I would guess. Will take a while until I have exhausted it's library :)

Quote:

Yeah, you might want to try practicing scales while looking at the music (you can easily find scale sheets online)

I made some sheets for myself figuring that writing music also helps with the process.
In the regard of scales I have a question:
Should I write the accidentals before the note without a key signature while I am still practising the basics, or shall I go all-in directly?

Again: Thanks a lot for the carefully considered posts here.

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: Philip Caron 
Date:   2023-11-12 18:13

Eye muscle coordination can be factor. A higher percentage of sight-reading errors seem to occur at page breaks or line breaks. How they are spaced and done varies considerably between pieces and publishers. (I've spent a minute here and there "training" this.)

There seems to be a stamina factor with sight-reading.

There's usually a bit of time to prepare, or cheat, if you will. Visually scan what you'll sight read beforehand, see the layout of the piece, try to see what developments it undergoes. Estimate the character of the music: the better your estimate is, the more it will help you.

If you're good at music, you'll be good a sight-reading whether you practice it or not. It becomes like reading English without needing to translate: you know at first glance what is written, and you can reasonably expect what will be written next. Yet, practice and frequent use certainly do improve the facility, whatever else being equal. That there are these two aspects is no surprise.

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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: brycon 
Date:   2023-11-12 23:24

Quote:

Should I write the accidentals before the note without a key signature while I am still practising the basics, or shall I go all-in directly?


Why not do both? In actual music, of course, you'll have to play from the key signature. But also, when a composer momentarily expresses a different key (what theory nerds call a tonicization), they'll provide accidentals. So you'll need fluency with both.

Quote:

If you're good at music, you'll be good a sight-reading whether you practice it or not.


Fantastic point! This is why some places outside of the U.S., relying on the old conservatory methods, start students on solfege and piano and transition to an instrument once proficiency has been acquired: you get good at music, then you express it on an instrument of your choice. This approach seems closer to learning a language as a child than as an adult. But because most people here don't learn music this way, I'm not sure you can recreate this "immersion" approach in adult learners.



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 Re: Sight Reading practising concepts
Author: Philip Caron 
Date:   2023-11-13 01:32

I think my proof reading is worse than my sight reading.

There are legends of famous musicians who were incredible sight readers. The pre-adolescent Mozart was said to have astonished his father's string quartet members the first time he sat in with them; he replied that he didn't think one needed practice to play *second* violin.

When Grieg showed the barely legible manuscript of his newly composed piano concerto to Liszt, the elder musician immediately sat down and played it through, orchestral scoring and solo at once, all the while commenting to the composer, voicing praise and suggestions about the piece as it unfolded.

I saw a YT video that I surely can't find now of a composer showing Ricardo Morales a new clarinet concerto, wherein, as the composer plays it on keyboard, Morales joins in and just nails the tricky solo at sight. I think he later premiered the piece.

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