Amazing sight reading piano tips to help piano learners!
Is the term sight reading familiar to you? Sight reading is one’s ability to read music without preparation, this means the piano player can look at the music and know the notes, and play the corresponding piano keys. Sight reading is a skill that is developed over time, on average it can take 1-2 years for a student to become comfortable and familiar with piano music enough to begin sight reading. This takes time, practice, and dedication to learn to read piano music. Sight reading is an incredibly helpful skill especially as you progress in your piano lessons. This gives the player the ability to learn and play music much faster and feel confident and proficient in their musical skills.
Within our piano lessons for kids and adults, we help with teaching and providing sight reading practice for our students. Our piano teachers help with providing sight reading exercises for students as well as working 1:1 with students to meet them where their reading music level is and help them progress individually with sheet music reading.
Let’s dive into some tips!
Look ahead in the music
When you’re first looking at a new piece of music look ahead, and get to know what the melody and rhythm are like. As well is there anything you need to be aware of before playing, such as are there any sharps or flats in the piece? Take look over the entire piece, imagine you’re reading it like a book. If you have a child sit with them and go through each section of the piece together. Once you’ve completed your look feel free to recite what you need to keep an eye on as you play the piece to remind yourself.
With each new piece of music, you should look at it all the way through, this will help as you’re learning to sight-read piano music as it helps you better anticipate what’s coming and prepare ahead of time. As your skills grow you’ll learn you will be able to do this faster and faster as your confidence grows with your skills.
Practice different types of piano music
This is a simple tip that can be so impactful while learning about piano sight reading. Choose different genres and varieties of music, don’t just play similar songs. To help grow your sight reading you need songs that are different from each other have unique attributes in them and keep you learning and challenging yourself. Simple things such as different time signatures, or a different melody can help keep you on your toes of not relying on knowing and predicting songs.
Gathering as much new music as you can is very helpful when learning to sight-read so you are always seeing something new and not relying on playing similar pieces time and time again.
Sound out the music in your head
To help you with learning how to improve your sight-reading start with sounding out the piece in your head. When looking at new music take a minute to hum or sound out how the music will sound. You don’t need to go through the entire piece but start off with the beginning so you can learn where you should be starting. This will help you with gaining confidence and quickly learning new music while growing your skills with how to sight read piano music.
Start slow and be forgiving
As we mentioned above, learning how to improve sight reading doesn’t happen overnight. This can take a lot of practice and dedication. Start slow, when beginning to learn how to sight read take your time with pieces. The more pieces you play, the more likely you will feel comfortable. In the meantime, when you’re just starting out with piano sight reading be forgiving and know that mistakes will happen! It’s okay, just keep moving forward and playing the piece. With time you’ll find fewer and fewer mistakes happen. With children, be encouraging and supportive as they learn to sight read for piano.
If you have any questions about our piano lessons or how we can help you with piano sight reading please reach out to us!