In need of sight reading advice

Irish Flute
1

Hei, everybody,

I snuck back in here, late on a Thursday evening, to stimulate your thoughts come Friday morning, and to ask for any of your suggestions.

As the matter, and the blunt truth be told, despite long exposure to the reading of music script, I simply have never been able to develop the ability to read music quickly, as to sight read. Oh, I can hack my way through just about anything, but I just can’t seem to do so at anywhere near the speed I really would like to. So, seeing as how I am in the company of musicians, and flute playing musicians at that, I thought I would put this matter out to each and all of you, please.

(Besides, just maybe I am not alone in this regard!!)

Advise, suggestions, tips, and/or tricks, anybody?

In advance, I thank you.

2

perhaps you are focusing to closely on the note that you are playing.
Try softening your focus and expanding to incorporate the coming measure or two.

Not that I was ever very good at it…but when it was getting almost reasonable I was seeing 3-4 measures at a time and my mental focus was not on where I was but reaching into the upcoming corners.

3

Be thankful for your gift! If you ever get good at sight-reading, believe me, it will make it much harder to learn tunes. I know from bitter experience that being able to play at sight makes it that much harder to commit a tune to memory.

IMHO.

4

Sorry.

5

sight-reading … will make it much harder to learn tunes.

This is so not true. Sight-reading is just another tool. In fact, you can play a tune from the dots often enough that you memorize it from your own playing. I much prefer to learn by ear – and the more you do it the easier it gets. But sight-reading does not make it harder to learn by ear. That’s just plain wrong.
If all you do is sight-read, and you neglect learning by ear, then of course it will be harder to learn by ear. But the sight-reading itself does not interfere with learning by ear.
How accomplished is your playing, that you feel competent to offer such wrong-headed advice?

6

I would have thought Cocusflute that it is self evident and widely accepted that ITM is an aural tradition and that it’s much more efficient to learn by ear than pick notes off a page. I think an experienced ITM musician who knows how the music goes can pick up tunes from paper and interpret them correctly but not a person who has not played and listened widely.

Me, I would classify myself as an ‘improver’ and a touch lazy. I’ll play along by ear for a while, pick out the main phrases/ notes, fill in the others - sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t but if I get stuck, I’ll google the notes and try and get someone’s transcription of the tune. A sort of hybrid approach. But there’s no way I’d ever want to be good enough at sight reading music to be able to play at any speed. What’s the point, you can’t eaxctly bring your sheet music into a session and prop it up in front of your pint!

7

I agree with most of what you say.

Do you think having the ability to sight-read will hurt your ability to learn by ear? I think that’s the issue.

I can’t sight read at speed. But I can casually go through O’Neill’s or Breathnach and enjoy playing and discovering tunes I’d never heard before.

That said, sight-reading is no substitute for learning by ear. I never claimed it was.

8

Why would you not want to be good at sight reading :confused: :confused: Don’t get that. I’ve discovered so many tunes that I love from just trying it from the dots. Then I can find recorded examples or get someone to play it for me. Music is hard enough without setting arbitrary restrictions.
I can play most ITM tunes through just from sight and I wouldn’t count myself a good sight reader, ITM tunes are, for the most part, pretty simple.
What is learnt anyhow I don’t think any tune is fully learnt they all seem to be works forever in progress!

9

Well, my flute playing is not very accomplished at all. However, my banjo, guitar, keyboard and dulcimer have been spread over 30 years, so they are reasonable.

My comments were based on not just my own experience, but from watching my wife (who is an extremely good sight reader) and other regulars at our session, who complain that they cannot play without music - even the tunes they have been playing for 10 years or more!

I know in my own case that I have learned more tunes on the flute by ear and from memory than I ever did on the banjo simply because I have had to work on them to even be able to play them. I remember my early years on guitar were like that - but then I got to the stage where I could sight read and I found it a real chore to memorise a tune.

I accept that my comments may have been slightly tongue in cheek - I agree that sight-reading is a skill worth having. And our fiddle-playing daughter who also plays viola in an orchestra is another example - her sight-reading is as excellent as you would expect from an orchestral player, but she prefers to learn fiddle tunes by ear.

So, I accept the admonishments of Cocus and Trees - work on your sight-reading but make sure you use it wisely.

10

First off, the person who started this thread never said they were wanting to play ITM, so anyone who would argue against sight-reading in this situation by saying “ITM is an aural tradition - learn by ear!” is barking up the wrong tree. The original poster could be wanting to play baroque or classical or some other music where sight-reading is an accepted practice.

I grew up playing clarinet in the high school band, where sight-reading was a valued skill. Indeed, in auditions for seats there was always a sight-reading component where they’d throw something at you blind and see how well you could play it. I must have been relatively good at it because I managed to win the first chair both in my own high school band and the all-county band. But if I had any secret or method for how I did it, I couldn’t tell you. The only thing I can say would be to practice. The more you do it, the better you’ll get at it - as is true with most anything.

But as to the arguments about learning by ear and how sight-reading skill will affect it, let me offer my own experience as one data point. When I took up ITM on the flute as an adult over 15 years ago, thanks to my earlier musical experience I learned most everything from the dots. I did know enough to realize that ITM isn’t played slavishly to the dots, so I learned how to read what was on the sheet and translate it into ITM, by putting in the ornaments and phrasing that were not usually included on the sheet music. But every tune I learned had its start on the page. I would play it over and over again from the sheet until it was in my head and I didn’t need the sheet any more. So I guess I was memorizing the tunes from my own playing, sort of learning by ear but not really.

Over the course of years, though, I did learn how to pick up tunes by ear, because there were always tunes I wanted to learn that couldn’t be found in written versions, so I had to work them out from the recordings by ear. Also, with the advent of the internet I was finding a lot of tunes in abc notation, and due mainly to pure laziness in not wanting to transcribe them or convert them into sheet notation, I learned to read the abc directly and play from that. Now, well into my second decade of playing I’m at the point where I’m learning new tunes but also forgetting tunes that I played a lot many years ago. If I learn a new tune now, it’s invariably by ear. I can’t deny that I’ll look for abc to jump start the process, but more often than not the abc versions that are out there are just plain bad settings, so I still end up falling back on my ear. So I have tunes that I learned from the dots, tunes that I learned from abc, and tunes that I learned by ear. I couldn’t begin to know what percentage of tunes fall into each category, but on a tune-by-tune basis I can usually recall how it was that I learned the tune. And what I can tell you is this: If a tune I haven’t played in years pops up out of the blue some night at a session and I have to jump into it cold, the ones that come back to me the quickest are invariably the ones that I never saw either dots or abc for. Next would be the tunes that I only ever had abc on, and dead last would be tunes that I learned directly from the dots. Many of those tunes are lost forever to me, it seems, even though at one time I had played them so often over and over from the sheet that they were committed to memory. So I would have to say, based on my own experience anyway, that if your goal is to learn a tune then it probably doesn’t matter if you do it by ear or from the dots. But if your goal is to learn the tune and retain it over the long haul, it’s best to learn it by ear and avoid the dots entirely.

11

Learn to read
Don’t worry about speed
Get the tune in your head
And put the dots to bed

:slight_smile:

12

Ignoring all the “ear vs. dots” advice in this thread, here’s my suggestion to the original question.

Sight-reading music should really be an identical process to reading text. When you read a book, you don’t really read each letter or word, do you? No - you read phrases, hopefully with some inflection, and comprehension associated with it. The way your brain handles this is by looking ahead, and focusing on what you’re going to read next rather than what you are reading now. Sight-reading music should be the same thing (I think Denny alluded to this in an earlier post).

I’m a pretty good sight-reader, and I believe it’s because, a) I’m a good reader in general, and have been from a very young age; and b) I started reading music at a young age (around 8 or 9), so it’s always been fairly natural.

Another thing: When reading a new piece, don’t try to play it faster than you can play it. The best way to teach your fingers to remember something is to gradually get them up to speed. Your muscles will learn how to get from one note to the next just as well (if not better) if you play at a constant, albeit slower, speed.

And finally, especially if you’re reading ITM-type tunes (or, in my case, ATM, a.k.a. fife and drum stuff), you’ll begin to recognize certain figures that keep showing up – certain arpeggios or scale fragments or drone-type jumps – and you’ll find that, say, in the key of D major, you’ll end up with a certain (finite) set of “figures” that will probably show up over and over, just put together in a different order than perhaps another tune in D that you already know.

In summary:

  1. Look ahead when you read
  2. Slow down, but keep it steady
  3. Start recognizing common “figures”

As always, YMMV.
:slight_smile:

13

Hey All -

This has always been a fascinating subject for many of us, I think. I’m a super sight-reader, working hard at learning by ear instead. IMHO - sight reading doesn’t inhibit learning by ear any more than being able to see inhibits being able to hear. Spend a little time with a blind person and watch how exquisite their hearing sense is enhanced. Reading notes well for me is an easy crutch that my lazy brain can use in order not to learn by ear. It’s also a wonderful talent that helps me enjoy more and different music, with more and different people. I wouldn’t be surprised if not all brains are wired to learn as easily with one skill as with another (duh!), so we all have to make do with what we have, use its strengths and work on its weaknesses.

Wow. Did I double-dose the Prozac this morning?

:stuck_out_tongue: Linda

(edited to fix minor grammar mistake. Still OCD!)

14

The way to learn to sight read is the same as the way to learn by ear…practice.

As someone with a classical/early music background I learned to sight read fairly competantly at an early age, and have only recently made learning by ear a real priority…apart from the fact that aural learning is an integral part of traditional music, there’s the boring fact that sheet music and progressive lenses just don’t work together comfortably. What I’m finding, and it’s intriguing me, is that they are very different skills using different parts of the brain.

Sight reading is a visual–mechanical process, sort of like dancing. Your eye sees and your fingers react. In fact, when I took up the mountain dulcimer, which was my re-entry into traditional music, I played from tablature and thought of the tunes as finger dances. The aural componant was to a certain extent absent from the process. Not to say I didn’t listen to what I was playing and try to play it better, but the auditory componants of my brain were not in charge of the playing process.

Playing by ear, on the other hand, is an aural–mechanical process. The link is between the ears and the fingers, rather than the eyes. When I took up the simple system flute a couple of years later (had played Boehm as a kid), I began to experiment by trying to play tunes I’d learned on the dulcimer. Initially, I had to visualize the finger dance in order to get the tune started…it was the mechanical aspect of the tune that I was carrying over, rather than the aural. To get over this, I took simple tunes: nursery rhymes, christmas carols and very simple fiddle tunes and started playing them by ear in different keys. It’s taken almost two years, but I am now at the point where I prefer to learn by ear…even if I can’t pick up tunes at speed on one or two hearings.

I will say, that at this stage, I find it much faster to learn a tune by ear than to memorize it from the dots. And the ones I get by ear stick in my brain better. However, I enjoy being able to sight read in order to explore new tunes and go hunting for them in all sorts of genres. What I do now when I find something I want to learn, is play it from the dots a few times till I can play it reasonably smoothly, then record myself and switch to learning by ear from the recording, plus listening to and playing with other recordings of the tune if they are available.

15

Signt-reading is a good skill to have in your arsenal. The only way to improve is to “just do it”. Spend a little time each practice session making yourself sightread. As you work through the page, keep going, even if you make mistakes. The most important thing is to keep your eyes moving accross the page in rhythm, almost like you’re following a conductor. Gradually, you’ll begin to get more and more of the notes.

Although I’m Classically-trained (music school and all that), I had always found it easier to pick up new music by ear. I memorize easily. I have not found that becoming a proficient sight-reader has hindered my abilities to learn by ear or to memorize.

Dana

16

You’re quite correct John - Corky doesn’t say what sort of music he wants to play at speed off the page. I suppose we all interpret this sort of topic in light of of own musical preferences and the majority of Irish trad players would tend to learn by ear as much as anything. They’ll fall back on written notes as an aide memoir if no one else is around to remind them ‘how it goes’. That’s my observation. I would also observe that most contributions on these pages relate to wooden flutes, played in Irish trad. style but I could be wrong there. Anyway the salient point I would have thought is that the abilty to read music (dots or ABC) is useful but the ability to sight read and play at ‘normal’ tempo is pretty pointless in an ITM context.

17

Hi there,

I do think that Fyffers post on this subject really hits the mark with this thread. Learn the tune by ear, give it some thought, inflection, understanding and comprehension. The end result one is hopefully trying to achieve, is good traditional music.

Learn a tune through notation, (you are still learning by ear anyway), give it some thought, inflection, understanding and comprehension.
The end result one is hopefully trying to achieve, is good traditional music.

How quickly one achieves that is another question, and that could be down to confidence, ability, discipline and such like. These attributes or skills however should not to be mistaken for ego, rather they are simply the result of the learning process.

Everybody accepts that learning music is a lifetime experience so they should embrace it and through practice they will gain that confidence, ability and discipline. I do also think people can be too hard on themselves regarding their own abilities. Constantly downing oneself with comments like my playing is crap compared to yours doesn’t entirely install confidence does it. On the other hand people might use this kind of comment cos they are scared of being accused of having an ego.

Call it what you will, confident attitude, belief in ones ability, EGOall musicians should have one in abundance!

Apologies for rambling a bit but it is an interesting subject

Cheers
pkev

18

Cork wrote:

As the matter, and the blunt truth be told, despite long exposure to the reading of music script, I simply have never been able to develop the ability to read music quickly, as to sight read. Oh, I can hack my way through just about anything, but I just can’t seem to do so at anywhere near the speed I really would like to. So, seeing as how I am in the company of musicians, and flute playing musicians at that, I thought I would put this matter out to each and all of you, please.



The question that Cork’s original post left me with is, what are his goals/expectations? Are they realistic?

Does he expect to play at sight a piece at an acceptable performance level after one or two passes through it? Except for very simple tunes, this is unrealistic. After all, an orchestral player or choral singer doesn’t arrive at a concert hall a half hour before a performance, tune and/or warm up, take his or her position, get passed a new piece of music, and play or sing it well in front of an audience the first time through. The musician has to do the “woodshedding,” study and practice on his or her own, and rehearse the music with the orchestra or group, along with possible practice sessions in sections. Yes, those musicians are reading music, but they already know it darned well.

Probably the most demanding sight-reading work for a professional musician is commercial recording. (ie. film scores, commercial jingles, popular music arrangements, etc.). There one does not have the luxury of practice or rehearsal. Those players “playing” the music before they ever touch their instruments or sing a note. They look at the music and begin mentally playing through it, learning, identifying problems and making decisions.

Taking their lead (and please understand I’m nowhere close to playing in that league!) I find a little time spent “pre-reading” a piece pays off handsomely. Here are some things I’ve found useful.

  1. First things first. What’s the time signature? What key is it in? Is it major or minor? What note appears to provide the basic rhythmic pulse? The quarter? The eighth? This leads to:

  2. Reading the rhythms. Most folk tunes, classical pieces and popular melodies have one, two or three reoccurring rhythm patterns. Identify and enter into to them. They are the heartbeat of the piece.

  3. Trace the shape of the tune. Does the melody repeat? If so, is it an exact repetition? Where are the lowest and highest notes? Are they going to be a problem? Where are the rhythm patterns discovered earlier? Are they constant? Where and how does the piece move away from them?

  4. Find the trouble spots. Accidentals. An odd rhythmic figure. An especially fast passage. An awkward fingering. A tricky jump. Knowing where the “landmines” lie really helps with getting past them in a new piece.

Now I’m ready to play. If I behave like a responsible adult, I go through it at a speed slow enough I can manage to play the most difficult passages on beat. Here I have to confess that I rarely act like a responsible adult. But after almost forty years of music-making, I am getting better at it (playing slowly, that is).

Developing the ability to sight-read music well is not an easy task. There’s a whole layer of cognitive activity added to the music-making beyond the neuromuscular challenges and the monitoring we do with our ears. That’s why for most of us real mastery of a piece of music comes after we’ve memorized it. That said, there’s real pleasure in an evening spent in sight-reading through a new book of tunes or a score we’re only vaguely familiar with.

19

Here I am, a day later, just to see what my original post could have inspired.

To be honest, I am all but overwhelmed.

To know just when to keep one’s mouth shut could be a blessing, so, that said, let me thank you, so very, very much, to each and to all!!

20

Ah get outa that Corks! Let us know what sort of music you want to sight read at playing tempo on the flute. We’re dying to know. You need to clarify your request :slight_smile:

I should add that I enjoyed John’s comments above about classical musicians playing off the page but knowing the music they’re playing inside out. So why do they have the scores in front of them? As an aide memoir - a sort of autocue perhaps or is it just to impress the punters? I’m sure someone here can elucidate.