How to learn to sight read (piano)

[Catabogus]

Does anyone have any tips on how to learn to sight read music, please? My DS is feeling very demotivated with the piano, after 6 years of playing well, and says the reason is that he can’t read the music well enough to pick up a new piece and have a go at playing it.

This is true - oddly, even after years of playing, he doesn’t seem to have picked up how to read music at all well, especially in the bass clef, and just learns the pieces by heart (he is amazingly fast at this, which might be partly why he’s never had to learn actually to read it!).

We tried an online sight reading trainer, which involves identifying notes as they appear on screen, but he found it not very useful for actually playing. Other than just sitting and trying to play many simple pieces very slowly hands separately on the piano, is there any better way? He has no dyslexia or problems reading books.

Thanks very much for any suggestions!

This may be of use @Catabogus

Does he not spend part of his lesson time on site reading? What does his teacher say?

The Improve Your Sight Reading series of books by Paul Harris are very good. He should probably start at the very beginning with those.

My DC is the same, plays from memory and fell apart completely with sight reading. I got the ABRSM 'more sight reading' book for his grade and worked through it, 2 a day, in the run up to his exam.

I also found it helped for him to develop a system instead of panicking and playing something random!

He's fairly young and it was only grade 1 so it was quite simple:

• clap the rhythm
• identify the starting note (don't guess!!)
• read through and identify the intervals (also don't guess!!)
• spot any big changes in dynamics

For grade 1 we got to the point where he was starting on the right note, getting the rhythm more or less correct and changing note in the right direction even if the interval wasn't always completely correct which, added to some better changes in volume, meant that he got a reasonable score in the exam.

It was a huge improvement and he also really noticed the benefit when he started a new piece.

Might not entirely apply for higher grades though!!

Definitely second the Paul Harris books. If he's serious, get a whole set of them and work through an exercise or two a day, he'll make massive progress having a system as he's clearly a very good natural player if he can learn things quickly. You can sell them afterwards on eBay/ vinted! He almost doesn't need to be thinking of the note names in bass clef, but where they are and the patterns of where to put his hands. He sounds like a brilliant player and work on this will really accelerate him to the next level of enjoyment of being able to play even more confidently. It's a skill that can be learned.

Thanks so much everyone- some extremely helpful suggestions here! I’ve ordered the Paul Harris books and also read through the website linked by @Alicorn1707 which was very encouraging. I’m very relieved to know that he can learn it if I tries, as I and my other DC seemed just to pick it up through playing, so I’d started imagining he’d never get it.

I don't think he spends any lesson time on sight reading, no - should he? I could ask his teacher but it seems like a bit of a waste of lesson time somehow.

Your son could also try joining a group e.g. a school band. This would give him the experience of keeping the music going (playing with one hand/missing out a few bars and coming back in) and playing with others. He would read some new pieces, meet other learners and definitely improve as a reader.

Lessons should absolutely be about sight reading IMO. I wonder if because he's naturally able to remember pieces and play from memory, thats actually prevented him from learning to read music well. I'd liken it to being able to speak a language but not know how to read it or spell it (ie the fundamentals are missing). So depends what he's aiming for. For myself as an adult, being able to sight read is a major part of the pleasure of playing so I do think its pretty key and worth working on in lessons.