 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: jan
Date: 2001-08-08 14:26
ken,
(or anyone)
PLEASE dont take this the wrong way. i respect your opinions and always take your advise seriously. you have helped me many times on this BB. i am just wondering............
i read your other post regarding sight reading .you say to just read thru it not stopping or going back. but if you know youve played it wrong wouldnt it be good to go back and fix it?
....lets say your sight reading a piece and you come across some tricky rhythms and you stumble thru them -knowing- it was done incorrectly because it was your first time seeing them. wouldnt it be a good thing to go back and work it out (for a few minutes) and then replay the piece just one more time before putting it up? that way you end on a positive "note" rather than one in which youve read thru a piece to gain sightreading skill but put it away thinking you have failed in some way because in the back of your mind you know you played it incorrectly.
jan
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Sylvain
Date: 2001-08-08 15:08
I have to agree with Ken on this one.
Sight reading is not practising, the goal is to be able to go through a piece you have never seen before without stopping and making the least number of mistakes. It is not about working on a rythm you have trouble with or cleaning up a fingering.
If you are in band or orchestra and have to sight read, the conductor will not wait for you to check if you played that rythm right...
The most important is to keep the tempo, and make it to the end at the same time as everybody else, if you also play the notes and rythm right, great!
I find two things very good practise for sight reading:
1- Practising scales and arpeggios help a lot, but then again scales ALWAYS help;->
2- Sight reading without the horn, reading as many bars ahead as possible.
-S
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Mario
Date: 2001-08-08 15:17
On sight reading:
Sight reading is a skill learned like all others. Hence, it needs to be practiced over and over again. By definition, this practice needs to take place on material that we have never seen before. So stopping, working on a small portion, and starting all over again defeats the purpose of the learning exercize and is no longer developping sight-reading. It is a great way to learn the piece, but it is no longer good to learn sight reading. It certainly would not work as a technique when playing in a group of any kind for instance (a venue where pure sight reading is actually useful).
By far the biggest skill to learn in sight-reading is how to stumble, get back on his feet and keep going. Even grand masters make mistake sight reading. What they have that we do not possess is the ability to remain calm, cool and composed. THEY KEEP GOING, often filling in the blank with notes that are about right and sound OK at least for a first pass (i.e.: they improvise on the spot...). This is the skill that you need to develop in order to be a successful free-lancer, or temp, or emergency replacement where you are exposed in real-time to things you have never seen before (say, playing studio music for a recording, or replacing the second clarinet in a musical, etc.). While we all work hard at orchestral passsage (and thus avoid sight-reading the toughest part of the standard orchestral repertoire), most of the music played out there is not contained in these books.
The way I tried to sight read: It is very rare that I do not have a few minutes to look at a new piece before a first read. So, I look it over quickly, focusing on areas with tricky technique or cabalistic meter. Even just doing this in my head helps immensely. My biggest weakeness as a clarinetist is breadth control (just the right amount - not too much, not too little, at the right place) and endurance. When I see longer segment, I quickly put a comma here and there to help me out in my first read.
Going through music without having a chance to look at it over quickly is like sailing in the fog without a chart: something that must be learned and mastered, but something that needs avoiding if possible.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Brenda Siewert
Date: 2001-08-08 15:59
If you are practicing sight-reading in order to participate in a sight-reading contest (such as concert bands do), then you need to follow Ken's advise because you don't get a second chance at contest. Also, if you end up doing any professional work in the future it's possible you'll be handed music and only have one opportunity to "run through" before playing or recording. I've had that particular situation many times with the international orchestra in which I play once a year for a month. We're often handed new pieces by their composer (who is present at the time) and just have a few min. to look it over before running through and then recording or performing live in concert. Most of the time these are hand-written copies and sometimes have slight mistakes in them (wrong notes for clarinet).
So, to keep practicing your arpegios (as Sylvain said) and stay in a group that reads new music all the time--as well as doing sight-reading all the time--will do the trick. But, you really need to play it all the way through without stopping to find out which parts are going to give you trouble and then go back and fix them when you begin to rehearse the piece--unless it's sight-reading contest and you just walk away.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Todd W.
Date: 2001-08-08 17:16
Hi jan.
If I understand your post correctly, you are saying that, when practicing sight reading, you DO read straight through without stopping; even if you stumble over some notes, rhythms, etc., you keep going to the end as best you can. That's good. You are asking if it's a good idea AFTER you have completed sight reading the piece to go back and look at the trouble spots and briefly work on them.
If that is your question, I think it IS a good idea to look at those problem places, especially if it's a rhythm or notation that you have not encountered before. That way, the next time you see something similar you will have a better chance of getting it right. It also might indicate where you could focus some of your other practice time. For example: "Oh, I see now those notes form a C major arpeggio. I should find some arpeggio studies and work on them."
As far as reading through the piece again, as a confidence builder, it seems to me that would be OK, particularly if you compare how you feel the second time through to the initial reading. Are you more relaxed and confident? Why? Try for that feeling the first time around on the next sight reading piece by taking time to look the piece over before you play it. Check the time and key signatures. Look for unusual rhythms, recurring accidentals, abrupt meter changes, etc.
Hope this is helpful. (I haven't yet read Ken Shaw's post that you refer to--sorry about any redundancy here.)
Todd
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: jan
Date: 2001-08-08 17:55
yep, thats what i meant todd. i probably didnt explain it right. after you have used the piece as a sight-reader, instead of putting it away, go back over the spots that were difficult. i dont mean spend hours on it, just a little xtra time to work thru some stuff before putting it away. then there would be a double sense of accomplishment.
jan
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2001-08-08 18:57
Jan -
In re-reading my message, I realized that I should have been clearer. In your original posting, you asked about how to learn music from the written notes rather than by hearing your teacher play.
I wrote first about imitation, which is what you do well.
I then thought getting from here to there -- about learning to work out music from the printed page, without imitating your teacher.
In getting from one skill to another -- from imitation to working from printed music -- it seemed to me that it might help if you got more fluent in sight reading -- a third distinct skill that falls in the middle between the two others.
Sight reading and performance are distinct skills. When you're sight reading, you need to put mistakes behind you and keep going. You can't let mistakes continue to bother you or clutter your mind.
But sight reading is also a stepping stone to what you originally asked about Once you get the notes out any which way, you're ready to do exactly what you describe in your first message on this thread -- correct mistakes, work out difficult passages, think about the phrasing, and make the notes into music.
You're absolutely right in asking about this, since it's what you wanted in the first place.
Best regards. Please ask again if you're having trouble.
Ken Shaw
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
