Sightreading Lifeline
By Philip Johnston

Page 1 of 6

If you get upset easily, you might want to close your eyes now, because in two sentences' time I will say something that might hurt. 

But it has to be said.

If learning new pieces is hard for you, it could be because your reading is not so good.

There. I said it.

Think about it for a moment. If each note takes you thirty seconds to work out, it's going to take you a LONG time to get through a whole line of music. And your grandchildren will probably be starting school by the time you finish the whole piece.

No wonder some people don't like practising.

But picture this for a moment. There are some music students who can sit down and play through just about any piece they are given without needing to practising it.  Just by reading it. I am not saying that the performance will be at tempo, or move anyone to tears, but while you are slogging through working out whether that second leger line is an A or a C, they will already be starting to polish parts of their piece. It means that they can spend almost 100% of their practice time improving how the piece sounds, while you probably to use up most of yours just figuring out how the piece goes in the first place.

In short, practising is a lot more fun, and much more rewarding for people who can read music easily. And for people who can't...well it's lots of agonizing hackwork that can be the longest half hour of each day.

So what can you do?

Learning to sightread is complicated enough that it is something that your teacher will need to help you with. But there are a few simple things that you can do that will make a BIG difference if you want to get a head start straight away...

A head start! Tell me what I need to do!