Sight Reading - Pedagogy

Pedagogy

Although 86% of piano teachers polled rated sight-reading as the most important or a highly important skill, only 7% of them said they address it systematically. Reasons cited were a lack of knowledge of how to teach it, inadequacy of the training materials they use, and deficiency in their own sight-reading skills. Teachers also often emphasize rehearsed reading and repertoire building for successful recitals and auditions to the detriment of sight-reading and other functional skills (Hardy 1998).

Hardy reviewed research on piano sight-reading pedagogy and identified a number of specific skills essential to sight-reading proficiency:

• Technical fundamentals in reading and fingering
• Visualization of keyboard topography
• Tactile facility (psychomotor skills) and memory
• Ability to read, recognize, and remember groups of notes (directions, patterns, phrases, chords, rhythmic groupings, themes, inversions, intervals, etc.)
• Ability to read and remember ahead of playing with more and wider progressive fixations
• Aural imagery (ear-playing and sight-singing improves sight-reading)
• Ability to keep the basic pulse, read, and remember rhythm
• Awareness and knowledge of the music's structure and theory

Beauchamp (1999) identifies five building blocks in the development of piano sight-reading skills:

1. Grand-staff knowledge
2. Security within the five finger positions
3. Security with keyboard topography
4. Security with basic accompaniment patterns
5. Understanding of basic fingering principles

Grand-staff knowledge consists of fluency in both clefs such that reading a note evokes an automatic and immediate physical response to the appropriate position on the keyboard. Beauchamp asserts it is better to sense and know where the note is than what the note is. The performer doesn't have time to think of the note name and translate it to a position, and the non-scientific note name doesn't indicate the octave to be played. Beauchamp reports success using a Key/Note Visualizer, note-reading flashcards, and computer programs in group and individual practice to develop grand-staff fluency.

Udtaisuk also reports that a sense of keyboard geography and an ability to quickly and efficiently match notes to keyboard keys is important for sight-reading. He found that "computer programs and flash cards are effective ways to teach students to identify notes enhance a sense of keyboard geography by highlighting the relationships between the keyboard and the printed notation."

Most students don't sight-read well because it requires specific instruction, which is seldom given. A major challenge in sight-reading instruction, according to Hardy, is obtaining enough practice material. Since practicing rehearsed reading does not help improve sight-reading, a student can only use a practice piece once. Moreover, the material must be at just the right level of difficulty for each student, and a variety of styles is preferred. Hardy suggests music teachers cooperate to build a large lending library of music and purchase inexpensive music from garage sales and store sales.