Instrument Players - Come and chat (Part II)

[CoteDAzur]

Previous thread is here.

We filled one thread, so here’s another

"Step away from the ornaments, cote. "

I can't I play an instrument for which different ornaments play a large role in every piece of music.

While we’re on the subject of sight-reading (or just reading music actually) – can I ask exactly HOW you do this?

I have no problem reading / sight-reading flute music – it’s just one note after another, one line. I just read the notes. And of course they aren’t random notes – your brain is anticipating that it will follow certain rules of Western music – eg notes in the key / phrases finish with predictable notes etc. Fine.

Piano is a different matter – two lines coming at me all at once! Multiple notes in both hands at the same time! I've always struggled with processing all that info so fast.

Since my (somewhat overdue) realization that there is actually harmonic structure underlying it all (ie chords!) I’ve approached written music in a different way – I find it hugely helps to decode the chords to help me read the music (at this point I'm actually writing them on the sheet). So to give a basic example, with Fur Elise - once I saw it was an A minor arpeggio then an E major arpeggio, then A minor again etc it was SO much easier to play than previously - when I was treating the notes in the left hand as just separate entities.

So, back to my question – when reading piano music, and particularly sight-reading – do you recognize and decode the harmonic structure (ie, work out the chord progression), either consciously or unconsciously? Or do you process all the notes more individually, but just somehow (through loads of practice?) do it very efficiently?

Hope that makes sense. I’m pretty new to theory so not sure all my terminology is right – please feel free to correct me if so!

I was completely incapable of "deciphering" (translating from French here) music with two hands when I started my journey at Conservatoire about 4 years ago, but now I can do it if the music isn't too complicated. Fur Elise should be easy enough.

I do approach the notes as separate entities, although my brain must know the harmonies somehow because I auto-correct when something doesn't sound right even at 1st reading.

I really should get that book that triggered your musical epiphany. What was it again?

I don't know how I do it. I think you read ahead, guess what the notes are (here knowledge of harmony comes in), get the rhythm in your head, decide which notes are unimportant and don't play them, and forge ahead. Basically play the top and bottom notes and some in between if you feel like it.

DS2's teacher in the early days said to cover notes one bar ahead.

That's very interesting - thanks. Sound like your brains may be subconsciously deciphering / understanding the harmonies etc? Now...how to make my brain do that?!

Never - when you say "guess what the notes are (here knowledge of harmony comes in)" do you mean you are actually saying to yourself "Ah! Here's a bar coming up with notes of the C major triad!" or is it much more subconscious than that?

(The book is "How to Really Play Piano" by Bill Hilton.)

Tintini It's probably just that - look, this is a thing in C major, and that looks like the a C/F/G major chord.

...and if you're in C major then the most frequent other chords are going to be G and F because they are the V and IV. (That was a big part of my epiphany - it's not random!) I guess with time your hands start going to those chords automatically when you expect certain cadences etc...?

And so if we follow this reasoning, sight-reading atonal music should be fiendishly difficult.

This is very helpful. I think for reading music, what I need to get better at is identifying notated chords. I can play many of them by name (ie C, Dmin, G7, Cdim etc), so I can read a fake book / lead sheet, but recognizing them as notes (ie a collection of dots on a stave) is hard for me.

Actually it's not just atonal music. Sight-reading Bach is almost impossible...

Tintini: like everything else, sight reading is about practice.

If you learn your pieces by heart and learn only a small number of relatively difficult pieces your sight reading will improve very slowly (this is my DD! After three years of piano she had an impressive repertoire of grade 8 and diploma standard romantic piano pieces but she can't sight read to save her life).

Conversely if you play a wider range of pieces and regularly sightread easier pieces, you'll get better at it.

There is probably some individual variation as my DS who learnt to read sheet music this summer can sight read reasonably well considering how little time he's been playing (he's better than his sister). He also has a lot of theory which probably helps plus he learns the first few bars of a lot of different pieces lol.

I can sight read fairly well - always got full marks in sight reading as a teen doing ABRSM exams and even now I can fairly easily sightread the easier classical repertoire as long as I take it slowly. Easier if there are not too many sharps and flats.

A lot of it is about NOT reading individual notes but reading intervals and directions. Knowing scales and to a lesser extent arpeggios helps. I find sight reading harder when the notation is denser, like the Mendelssohn I posted a pic of yesterday (I could have a stab but it would be very scrappy). Obviously a lot of Bach, though by no means all, falls into that category - although it's easier to sightread Bach than romantic music because the notes are closer together so you're not trying to sight read while moving a hand up and down two octaves!

Re your specific question, I don't think I do use knowledge of harmony when sight reading (not consciously) but if you have played scales and arpeggios then your hands just know where to go. I do simple transposition exercises as part of my warm up and after a while your fingers just go to the right notes.

I find that explicitly using theory knowledge is more useful when learning pieces by heart - I find it easier to learn if I understand what's going on.

This is very helpful. I think for reading music, what I need to get better at is identifying notated chords. I can play many of them by name (ie C, Dmin, G7, Cdim etc), so I can read a fake book / lead sheet, but recognizing them as notes (ie a collection of dots on a stave) is hard for me.

It actually sounds to me as if improving interval recognition would be more helpful. A lot of sight reading is about knowing your intervals and the hand position they require (in any given key).

Yes! It's about interval recognition!

AH-HA! Thank you!

Ok - so I have definitely always been trying to read the notes. And I find this particularly hard in the bass clef because I still find I need to 'translate' it into treble (I think because I learnt recorder and flute for so many years before piano).

I feel like I'm learning more on this thread than from my lessons years ago. Perhaps I just didn't listen properly.

At the moment the main bulk of my playing is scales, broken chords and transposing simple tunes into all keys, so hopefully that will be helping. Next thing: go for easy pieces to sight-read and try to recognize intervals and think of those not the notes.

So is part of the idea that if your hand is in the right position then you just need to know the interval and your hands will find the notes..because the interval is proportional to the actual distance your fingers are apart? Then you could transpose that to another key fairly easily by just shifting your whole hand position?

The hand-position thing - I never really knew this until I started teaching my kids.

I heard that you should be able to sight-read things 2 grades below.

Hand positions can be quite key-specific especially once you have a few sharps or flats, but recognising an interval and knowing roughly how far your fingers need to stretch is a key skill for sight reading.

A lot of it comes down to just reading a lot of music though. It's one of those skills that once learnt doesn't get unlearnt: I didn't play piano for nearly 30 years and had "forgotten" how to read music but it came back very quickly and, interestingly, although my dexterity isn't what it was when I was 15 I haven't lost any sight reading ability at all.

Playing regularly with a metronome is also good for sight reading, as you get used to keeping going come what may and it trains you to think on your feet.

But as a general comment, I think sight reading for piano is difficult because the two lines of music mean that you have to use several strategies at once and it's cognitively demanding.

Intervals are important but you do have to be able to recognise notes too - it's just that if you see a three note chord, you probably don't need to read all three notes simultaneously: you can just identify the top or bass note and find the others by recognising the intervals. Ditto with a scale or arpeggio type sequence: you will probably need to read some of the notes, but a lot of the time your brain will use intervals to fill in the gaps rather than reading every note in sequence.

That's exactly it, my piano sightreading is awful because I can't cope with more than one line at once. On clarinet I'm fine. My piano sightreading is about grade 2 (to get a good mark). Agree knowing scales and arpeggios helps.

Cote thanks for scaring me less than a week before the exam but I agree, she's not getting them right. They're meant to be triplets, so taking up half the quaver on the beat. Pic:
This is better I think.

Pondering the important question - what to wear? I might dress up. I'll be terrible, so might as well look good for extra confidence. Not full Yuja Wang but smart. Heels do not work with the pedal, had some lovely sparkly Irregular Choice flats but they got stolen years ago. Could go shopping
The pieces are really starting to resemble actually performing them. The Dussek is the best now I've got the ornaments. The Haydn still needs to be much faster but is fun. Valse Lente is sadly neglected because it's technically easier, but I actually don't find pieces with big chords easier, I'm a pretty and fiddly person...it's going to be a bit slow and heavy. If only I had another week, but I always feel like that

As Mistigri says, sight reading improves dramatically with practice. Several years ago, I couldn't even recognize the notes (I was counting the lines ) an was quickly memorizing the music because I couldn't play and follow the notes at the same time, let alone sight read them. Yesterday I played a fairly recognizable version of a Handel 'Allemand' at first go.

"What to wear?"

Broken Full update required.

Broken it would be truly amazing if you turned up to your exam dressed like Yuja Wang! The examiner would certainly take notice.

But yes I think smart is good. I've never had that decision to make - I think I've only ever attended music exams dressed in school uniform.

I know you've been feeling a bit under-prepared (sounds like you're feeling better about it now though), but it does make the whole thing a bit more thrilling...?

Did my g5 exam this week - could have gone better. I didn't play very well. Same old story, nerves always get the better of me in an exam. Time will tell. My lovely teacher wants to concentrate on sight reading and playing more by ear for a while, which I'm really looking forward to. He is an incredible musician, exceedingly good at improvising and very versatile, so I'm hoping her can help me broaden my skills a bit - I'm very much a piece learner. I've got the g6 pieces - will prob start to look at them slowly, mixed in with other stuff. I've raced through the last few grades, time to slow down a bit. The g6 scales etc certainly up the anti... Melodic minors...

Fingers crossed for the results! More importantly, what did you wear?

Gr 6 - isn't there a Schubert scherzo? I like that.

Fluke I'm sure you did well! It's a big achievement to have sat the exam in the first place. Have fun choosing some grade 6 pieces!

Its more a question of what DIDNT I wear, it was so cold I had a million layers on the try to keep my hands warm enough to play as I'm always cold... Looked like the Michelin man 😂