Of all the instruments, the piano probably has the greatest amount of printed music available. The sheer number of piano methods, supplementary materials, solo sheets, popular music, and piano literature is staggering and overwhelming to anyone who attempts to explore the piano repertoire. The main difficulty is finding music that is appropriate for your current sight-reading ability. Many pianists recommend playing through hymnals or Bach Chorales to improve sight-reading skills. These scores, however, may not be the best starting place for everyone, especially in the early levels of study. So the question remains, just where to begin and what to sight-read. And how do you go about finding material for sight-reading on your own without relying so much on the recommendations of other pianists or piano teachers?
The first consideration is your current playing level. Are you a beginner or still at the elementary stages of piano? Or maybe you are more advanced, but you still consider yourself a poor sight-reader. If these categories describe you, the best place to start is at the very beginning. There is no shame or humiliation here. If this stage describes your ability, this is the raw material you have to work with on your sight-reading. Nothing should be considered too easy for sight-reading practice. Begin sight-reading Primer level or Level 1 method books. Don’t use the method that you initially learned (that wouldn’t be sight-reading). Don’t be embarrassed by the childish pictures or juvenile lyrics either. You will improve your sight-reading skills by using books at this level. There is absolutely no point in attempting to sight-read harder material if you make mistakes all over the place. It is better to sight-read “easy” music very well than it is for you to stumble your way through more challenging music. And there is no rush here. It makes no sense to move quickly though sight-reading beginner music just so you can move on to the next level. Instead, when you finish sight-reading a Primer or Level One piano method book, sight-read another one at the same level. What you need is skill reinforcement and the more practice you have sight-reading at the same level, the more confident you will become. You want to be a confident sight-reader! And the way to become one is to take the advice from piano professor John Mortensen (to be featured in an upcoming blog): “play piles of easy music.”
Now if you find that you can sight-read beginner level piano methods with great ease, then you have a greater variety of material for sight-reading. Of course, you can always work through the higher levels of piano methods, specifically levels 2 and 3. More interesting materials may be found in books correlating with a piano method such as Hymns Level 2 or Classics Level 3. But what about material that is not correlated with a graded method? How do you know if it is appropriate for you? Sometimes the leveling can be difficult to tell from just from looking at the music. Many times the music appears to be easier than it really is! Fortunately many publishers label supplementary music with categories including early elementary, elementary, and late elementary. Early elementary corresponds to the Primer level and Level 1, elementary covers approximately levels 1-2, and late elementary covers an area somewhere between levels 2-3. Please note that depending on the publisher, a category could denote a range of difficulty. In other words, what one publisher labels as “elementary” might be what another one calls “late elementary.” Sight-reading elementary and late elementary levels could take you a couple of years before you have really mastered these levels so please take your time.
Once the elementary levels of sight-reading have been achieved, you may proceed to the intermediate level. The intermediate levels encompass a much greater range of advancement than the elementary stages. Early intermediate levels begin approximately at the completion of any piano method book series and are roughly the equivalent to level 4. Intermediate and late intermediate or upper intermediate levels progress beyond the scope of most piano methods and approach the advanced levels. Many pianists remain at the intermediate level indefinitely and sight-reading at the upper intermediate levels is actually quite advanced.
But let’s begin with the early intermediate levels. At this stage a pianist is just beginning to play classical music in its original form. The beautiful thing about the intermediate levels is that there are many graded series of repertoire for sight-reading. Good starting places would be Masterwork Classics Level 1-2 by Jane Magrath, Piano Repertoire Level 1 by Keith Snell, and Celebration Series Level 1. Each of these series has 10 levels starting with the lower intermediate levels and progressing through the early advanced levels. When using these books for sight-reading as opposed to repertoire study, read through level 1 of all three series before moving on to the next level. Doing this does two things: 1) gives you more practice material for sight-reading and 2) slows down the pace of advancement so the levels are not rushed. Along with sight-reading through these repertoire books, it is advisable to specifically work on a sight reading book series on the same level. Use Sight Reading Levels 1-10 by Keith Snell and Four Star Sight-Reading and Ear Tests Levels 1-10 by Boris Berlin and Andrew Markow. These books give more manageable material for sight reading and focus more on developing sight-reading skills in a systematic way. Also before preceding to the next level, read a variety of other literature. If you are in books 1-4, look at material labeled early intermediate, if you are in books 5-7, look for material labeled intermediate, and if you are in books 8-10, look for material labeled late intermediate. A great resource for locating material labeled levels 1-10 is Jane Magrath’s A Pianists Guide to Standard Teaching and Performing Literature.
At the Intermediate level, the introduction of reading hymnals and Bach Chorales is especially important. Sight- reading any hymnal, regardless of the denomination, provides opportunities for rich musicianship. For one thing, a typical hymnal contains hundreds of hymns for ample sight-reading practice. Even more, hymns employ frequent harmonic changes so that you can become proficient in chord reading and harmonic thinking. Because hymns are rhythmically simple, more attention can be placed on the accuracy of reading thicker textures without worrying about wrong rhythms. Hymns are valuable in that they require four part textures not commonly found in piano literature. In sight reading, the more variety of styles you can play the better so hymns are a plus. After you can read through several hymnals easily, you are ready for the more advanced Bach Chorales. For a more in depth discussion of hymns and chorales see Dr. Cory Hall’s Sight Reading & Harmony.
Although this discussion of sight-reading materials covers a lot of ground, it is also very incomplete. There is simply too much material written for the piano for anyone to be able to sight-read it all. Yet it is the abundance of material available that affords the pianist with a lifelong challenge of sight-reading as much as possible.
Stay Tuned for more,
Robert
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