How to Sight Read Piano for Kids

How to Practice Sight Singing

past Leon Harrell

Original article on I Minute Music Lesson: Practice Smart, Not Hard

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When you lot are offset learning the music notes for piano or any other instrument you volition desire to practise reading lots of piece of cake music to go your note-reading reflexes sharp.

In the early stages of learning how to read music or how to sight read music the act of identifying notes is the first hurdle to cross. Once you know the notes of the treble and bass clef, I highly recommend you become a great book for sight reading. There are a couple of criteria that I would recommend you look for in a sight reading volume, including:

• Get a book with many easy examples.
• Get a book that progresses in difficulty from very like shooting fish in a barrel to more complicated fabric.
• Get a book with both treble and bass clef, even if you lot just need to acquire simply i clef. A well-rounded musician can read all musical clefs (even the alto and tenor clefs).
• Become a book with a teaching component, especially rhythm since it is the ane of the most difficult hurdles y'all will need to cantankerous in learning to sight read properly.
• Get a volume with an like shooting fish in a barrel to read layout and loftier quality construction. You want the music to be a large plenty size to read at a comfortable altitude of about ii-iii feet. Also spiral-bound books prevarication flat and are less decumbent to closing or falling off music stands or the piano'due south music desk.

With all of these criteria in heed my #ane recommended book for sight reading purposes is Robert W. Ottman's volume "Music for Sight Singing".

Now you may exist asking yourself "what is sight singing?" and how could this mayhap relate to my piano music reading skills or my guitar playing?

Sight singing is simply the act of reading sheet music without any instrumental assist. This skill teaches you lot how to look at a piece of music and sing information technology based only on your knowledge of music theory and your audible retentivity of musical intervals. This skill is beyond our needs at this point, but down the road I highly recommend you learn how to sight sing to ameliorate your musicianship overall.

For our purposes this volume is incredible considering of the sheer volume of short, piece of cake-to-read exercises. The "Music for Sight Singing" volume is a standard college textbook for ear training courses and musicianship skills classes. It is based on the principles of pedagogy how to read music through thousands of short excerpts from existent musical literature. Also it is available on Amazon for merely $3.00 used, which is a steal for a book that retails for $86.00 at most book stores.

Permit's have a look at some sample excerpts for our 15-minutes-a-day exercise.

15-Minutes-a-Solar day Sight Reading Exercise

Here are the four steps for our sight reading practise. Don't skip any of them. When you are practicing whatsoever skill for music, think that quality is much more of import and quantity. Slow and highly focused practice will become you faster results in your musical development that any other method.

1. Use a practise periodical. Download a re-create of the Ane Minute Music Lesson practice journal here. Use it to track your 15-minutes-a-day sight reading exercise.

two. Go your materials gear up. Find a page of excerpts in the "Music for Sight Singing" book to read. Our examples below are from pages 156-157 of the 7th edition of the book. If you don't take this book, here are ten sites to observe gratuitous sail music for sight reading.

3. Stay focused. Focus on one aspect of music reading, either pitch or rhythm until you lot are comfortable with both.

• If you need to practise reading the notes, write in the pitches for each note earlier you play. The more you write in the names of the notes, the faster y'all volition get at reading them. This is a vital stride in the learning process that also many teachers discourage their students from doing. Here is a sample of what this would look like:

• If you need to practice reading rhythm, write in the Eastman counting organization higher up the music before you lot play the extract. Then verbally speak the names of the notes in the rhythm. Then move on to playing the excerpt on your instrument. Here is a sample of what this would look like:

4. Use a timer. Employ an online timer or the timer on your jail cell telephone and ready it to 15-minutes. By setting a timer you are consciously creating a goal for developing your skills. This is the key to your progress over fourth dimension. Past using the timer y'all will exercise this skill until the timer goes off without think about how long this task will take. Too you will non be focused on how much time is remaining to your sight reading practice thus keeping you goal-oriented during the session.

Need More Assist? Email Leon any questions you accept near reading music, music theory or anything else music-related, and get the answers you've been searching for.

About the author:

Hi, I'm Leon Harrell and I teach people how music really works by explaining the basic fundamentals so they can larn how to read and write music and play better, one minute at a time. The One Infinitesimal Music Lesson with Leon Harrell is dedicated to teaching music step by step to anyone who wants to truly sympathize how music works from the ground upwards.

You can contact Leon the following ways:

• Email:OneMinuteMusicLesson@gmail.com
• Facebook:One Minute Music Lesson Fan Page
• Twitter:twitter.com/1minMusicLesson
• Websites:OneMinuteMusicLesson.com

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