Sight Reading - Professional Use

Professional Use

Studio musicians (that is, musicians employed to record pieces for commercials, etc.) often record pieces on the first take without having seen them before. Often, the music played on television is played by musicians who are sight-reading. This practice has developed through intense commercial competition in these industries.

McNerney (2008), jazz musician, professor, and private instructor, describes auditions for University of North Texas Jazz Lab Bands as being almost completely based on sight-reading: "you walk into a room and see three or four music stands in front of you, each with a piece of music on it (in different styles ...). You are then asked to read each piece in succession."

This emphasis on sight-reading, according to McNerney, prepares musicians for studio work "playing backing tracks for pop performers or recording ." The expense of the studio, musicians, and techs makes sight-reading skills essential. Typically, a studio performance is "rehearsed" only once to check for copying errors before recording the final track. Many professional big bands also sight-read every live performance. They are known as "rehearsal bands" though their performance is the rehearsal.

According to Frazier (1999), score reading is an important skill for those interested in the conducting profession and "Conductors such as the late Robert Shaw and Yoel Levi have incredibly strong piano skills and can read at sight full orchestral scores at the piano."