Sight Reading Should Be Easy: 4 Simple Strategies - PHH 036

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want the way they want. But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, I although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave, or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show. How do you feel when you think about sight reading? Do you feel a sense of freedom, of being able to play the music you love the first time you see it? Or maybe even play it at least well enough that you don't have to struggle measure by measure to learn it? Or maybe sight reading for you just feels like being able to try out music you see in the harp store without having to ask the staff to play it for you? Or maybe sight reading feels more like a scary test, something you're going to be judged on and and maybe found lacking in. Like something you ought to be able to do but have no idea how to start trying to learn how to do it.

Sight reading often seems like magic, both to the musicians who can't do it and, believe it or not, to the musicians who can. The people who are good at sight reading often have a difficult time trying to explain exactly how it works. The standard answers I just read ahead or I keep a steady tempo or I just hear the music in my head really aren't very helpful. Certainly those are some of the processes that happen when you sight read, but alone, those aren't sufficient to explain sight reading. Those skills don't even seem related to each other. So it doesn't really explain how sight reading works. And of course, if you can't explain how it works, it's nearly impossible to figure out how to learn it, practice it, or even teach it. Yet sight reading is an important component of musical study. I mean, it's part of any college or conservatory music curriculum. It's a part of many music exams or auditions, and for some very good reasons, which I want to dive into today. After all, there's no point in working on a skill that you don't think will be useful to you. And if you're one of those harpists who say, oh, I will never need to sight read anything because I'm not in a school program and I don't take auditions or exams, I just practice my music, then you need to know the real benefits of practicing sight reading. For me, practicing sight reading is the point whether or not you ever become a wizard at sight reading. The point is to practice it. And I promise on today's show to not just tell you why you should practice it, but to tell you how. I believe both of these. Knowing the why and the how are crucial to successful learning. It's not enough to know that you should know something. You have to be convinced that it is relevant and to some extent necessary for you. And then you need the how. A path forward with steps that feel logical and achievable for you. That's where progress lives on that path. And that's what's so hard about sight reading. It's very hard to find the path, but hopefully by the end of today's episode, you're going to know exactly what that path looks like and you're going to be able to see where you are on that path and how to move forward from there. But before we get started on that, I wanted to remind you that time is running out to register for our getaway retreat in Orlando, Florida or in the Orlando area, March 23 to 28. We do still have a few rooms left, and I don't want you to miss your opportunity, especially if you feel like you've been flying solo on your harp journey for these last couple of pandemic years. The retreat will refresh, re energize and renew your playing and rekindle that fire that you know you have playing the harp. Even more important is that personal factor, right? I mean, we all know that learning from a person in person is the best way to learn. And it's something we have been seriously missing these last couple years. I myself can't wait to have this opportunity to work with my students in person to watch those light bulbs go off, those aha moments. I mean, let's face it, those kinds of experiences are transformational, right? And they happen in in person learning. They do happen at the retreats. I mean, at every retreat, the students who leave the retreat are really different from the ones who arrived. I mean, naturally, they're the same people, but I mean that they have a new belief in themselves and their abilities. They show more joy and happiness in their playing and they leave with the support of new harp friends. I mean, I don't think transformational is too strong a word for that. So if that feeling is something that you want for yourself and your heart playing, I urge you to consider our getaway retreat. Just use the link in the show notes or click on the Upcoming events tab@heartmastery.com and you can register for one of those remaining rooms today. I certainly hope to see you in Davenport at our retreat. But now on to our discussion about sight reading. First of all, I need to make a confession here. I. I have always been a very good sight reader. And while that seems like a benefit, and it has, I have benefited from that particular skill very much in my professional life. I also think that that's what made me a very bad practicer early on in my harp journey. After all, especially as a kid, if I could read it pretty well, why should I spend time practicing it? So I would use my sight reading to substitute for practice, which was a bad habit and one I had to address when I got into college and was really much more serious about my heart playing. So, like many people for whom sight reading comes naturally, for a long time, I couldn't tell you how I did it. Frankly, I probably thought I was just a superior being. But of course, that idea was proven wrong a long time ago.

But once I had to teach sight reading, I gained a completely different perspective. As you might know, I taught music theory and ear training and all those different aspects of it at the Curtis Institute of music for 19 years. I went to school there for harp performance and graduated and came back a year later as a theory instructor. And one of the things that was part of the curriculum that you would, you know, wouldn't surprise you, right? Was sight reading. And it was one thing for me to teach sight reading at Curtis to those students, because although there were lots of different levels of, you know, sight reading ability among the students there, they all accepted it as part of their training. But it was quite another thing when I had to teach sight reading to my private students. And I ended up having to do this when they would take some of those standardized exams like the abrsm, the Associated Board of Royal Schools of Music Exams. A component of those exams was always sight reading, and always the first time, particularly a student had to take one of those exams. While they were excited about most of the rest of the exams, the sight reading terrified them.

And the thing was, they'd already been working on the skills they needed but they didn't have a really good way to apply them to sight reading. So to help them learn how to sight read and how to practice their sight reading, I had to define exactly what we meant by sight reading and what the metrics were. You know, how we could actually measure sight reading. I mean, it seems pretty elusive, right? I mean, how do you measure anything in music? How do you quantify and objectivize, if that's a word, some of what you need in music? So figuring out what sight reading was, especially in that particular context.

Gave us the opportunity to figure out how we were going to practice it once we knew what it was, right? Once we knew what we meant by sight reading, then we could break down that result and that set of skills into the separate component skills that went into it. And what we discovered was that the students were already learning and practicing the skills. These were things that we worked on in every lesson. But we hadn't made the connection between those separate skills and the single outcome of sight reading. So that in itself was kind of a breakthrough, not only for them, but for me as well.

But most importantly, I found that what I had to talk to the students about.

Was why sight reading was necessary, why this was a part of the exam to start with, and why sight reading meant more than just something you did to pass that examination. Because sight reading isn't just for passing an exam. It's not just for approaching a new piece of music. Sight reading, I believe, is truly freedom. It's the sense of being able to play a piece of music, to explore it, to experiment, to learn it without getting bogged down in. In the. In the notes and the details, but being able to experience the music.

Think just for a moment, because you've heard me talk about that before, right? So think for just a moment about what it feels like to listen to a piece of music. When you listen to something you really enjoy, you're listening to the whole thing. You're listening to the combination of everything, and you're getting that entire result. Just like when you taste a dish, think about taking. Taking a bite of a piece of cake. You don't taste the flour and the sugar and the baking powder and the eggs and the milk and the vanilla or whatever else is in the cake. You don't taste the ingredients. You taste the cake. And that's what music from a listener's perspective is like. They don't hear the fingering and the lever or pedal pushing. At least we hope they don't. And the. The individual notes, the crescendo they experience all those things as combined in this one piece of music. And when you sight read, that's exactly what you are doing too. You are looking at the whole piece of music, stepping back and seeing it from a distance. But if we define sight reading in that larger perspective as just playing music.

That'S not necessarily helpful for what we want to talk about today, how to get better at it, right? So let's see what sight reading is. If you sight read a piece of music right now, what your sight reading would show you is a snapshot of, of where your musical and harp development is right? Now that's what sight reading tests are for. When you are. When you have a sight reading test as part of an exam, it's really a snapshot of exactly what you have learned in a number of really critical musical areas. It's kind of like that, you know that mark on the door jamb that shows how tall you are, right? So that's what sight reading does. It shows you what you're good at and what you're not. But if you don't know the skills that are being measured and assessed when you sight read or are being even used when you sight read, then it makes it really hard to practice things. And sight reading uses all your skills, just about all your skills of technique and musicianship, some that you can think of and that will come to mind automatically and some that you might not have considered. So let's go through the key skills that are involved in sight reading. First of all, sight reading is dependent on your technical facility, particularly your hands together playing. But the easy way to think about it is this. If you can't play it easily, you won't be able to sight read it, right? So that if you have trouble playing four note chords, sight reading four note chords is going to be a disaster for you because you need to be able to play them first. Because sight reading is about recognition. It's about recognizing those patterns and having your fingers be able to play them. So that if your technique isn't up to won't happen in your sight reading makes sense, right? So in that sense, it's a measurement. It's a measurement of where your technique is. Now think about it the other way for just a second. I gave it to you sort of a very negative example. Let's make it a little bit more optimistic, right? So any piece that has technique skills in it that you know are within your grasp, they're things that you play all the time that should be technically sight readable. For you, or I should say sight readable for you from a technique standpoint, because there are some other things to consider, but technique is a big one, so. So let's take that, put that one aside and let's look at a couple of these other skills. Note reading is an obvious one, isn't it? You have to be able to quickly pull the information that you need from those little dots on the musical staff. So your note reading has to be fluent and easy. And you know this from your own experience, right? In the beginning of your note reading journey, whether you were, you know, like a little, little kid when you started reading notes, or maybe bass clef was new to you when you started the harp. Once you got more comfortable with the notes, it was easier to learn the music faster. And that is true at every level. The more fluent you are in your note reading, the more fluent your sight reading will be. Makes sense, right? I mean, that was a pretty reasonable one. Easy to see. And the same goes for your rhythmic reading, right? How familiar are you with the rhythms that we see most often every day? How many of those make you stop and think and subdivide or count or figure out? The more fluent your rhythm vocabulary is, the bigger that vocabulary is, the easier it will be to sight read. Okay, so we've dealt with a few of the ones that you might have already put on your list before we started talking about them. Thinking, yep, I know my technique is part of this. My fingers have to be able to do it, otherwise I'm not going to be able to sight read. And I need to be able to read the notes and I need to be able to understand the rhythms. And of course, part of that technique is pattern recognition. Knowing, you know, those standard patterns like chords and arpeggios, scales, all those things, those, you know, my fingers need to be able to recognize them and do those easily. Okay? But beyond that, there are a few more considerations. One level up would be a recognition of dynamics and the ability to interpret and add those dynamics quickly and easily, right? So that those dynamics aren't, you know, aren't something you ignore on the page, but something that you automatically incorporate into your playing, recognizing them and doing them. So think about. I'll come back to that exam idea for sight reading. One of the metrics that students are graded on in their sight reading exams, not at the very earliest levels, but further on, is whether or not they observe the printed dynamics as they sight read. Now, I know that there are some of you saying, wait a second, I don't do those. The first time I look through a piece, I add the dynamics in later. Yeah, I know. And I understand that there are so many things to think about, that the dynamics seem like you can put them off until the end. But here's the thing. If you have the focus and the attention to spare for those dynamics, when you read through a piece, that's another level up in sight reading. And so, as someone is sight reading, if they're able to observe the dynamics, we know that they have achieved a higher level of musical fluency than someone who can't do that and sight read at the same time. Right now, you can see that it might be easier to pay attention to dynamics if the piece didn't require so much attention in terms of just getting around the notes and rhythms. And this is true.

So now you can start to see where the levels of sight reading are and how all these skills need to be blended together.

Now there's yet another level, and that would be not just recognizing and interpreting the dynamics and, of course, the things like, you know, retards and rubato and accelerando and all those kinds of things, but going beyond that, a certain understanding of musical styles and musical periods so that you can appropriately choose a tempo and a tone and a mood, an affect that represents the piece that you're sight reading. I know. Whoa. Okay, so that's a biggie. So. But in general, what that would mean is, you know, if a piece says it's a minuet, can you find a tempo and sight read it at a tempo that feels like a minuet? Can you use the dynamics and the tone color that would reflect the qualities of a minuet? So you can see that that is yet a higher level of sight reading, isn't it? So we've gone from.

The fundamental level of sight reading, which would be getting the, you know, getting the notes and the rhythms out at a steady tempo, and, of course, being able to play them. And the next level up, where you can also pay attention to some of the other markings on the page as you play those dynamics, for instance. And then there's that next level where you are actually thinking in a larger musical perspective.

So that's how sight reading grows. And those are, in a nutshell. I think those are the snapshot levels that you're looking for when you think about developing your sight reading. But the key thing for any sight reader is that you need to have as your key necessity the desire to make the music happen without letting the details get in the way.

And that is what many people find difficult with sight reading. And we'll come back to that, because I'm going to have to. I'm going to help you work around that just a little bit. But sight reading is about going on no matter what. And so this is when you can't get bogged down in the details. You just have to make the music at the expense of maybe some wrong notes and a whole bunch of other things. You never know with sight reading, but it requires you to put that musical focus first.

Okay, I. That may sound like a big list to you, and it. It is a big list when you think about it that way. But really, I have four strategies that I want to share with you that will help you practice your sight reading. And at the level where you are right now, I think the place to start when you're practicing sight reading, the most important of the skills that we're talking about is, is to practice sticking to a tempo. This is where the metronome is your best friend. And if you don't feel like it's your best friend, it's time to make friends with it. We'll be talking more about that for sure on another episode. But I think you have to practice sticking to the tempo no matter what. This will develop some important skills. It will help you learn to read ahead instead of reading backward. And here's what I mean by that. We all know what reading ahead is, right? Reading to that next note that's coming up. But what often happens when we play a wrong note is that our eyes go back to check. And as soon as you go back to check, you've stopped the flow of the music. You can't check your wrong notes. You can't and go on at the same time. So you have to ignore what's coming up and make sticking to the tempo your main objective. Now, when you practice something at a steady tempo, like steady enough that it's with the metronome without going back, without hesitating, just sticking to that tempo, you are actually developing the most important skill in gosh, in learning and playing music. And that's the coordination of all the processes that you need. It's going to coordinate your actual reading, your recognition of everything that's on the page. You're translating that to the strings and to your fingers and your playing of it. All those things, those many skills that have to happen all at once as it seems, will become coordinated and more smooth, more regular, more dependable. When the tempo is steady, that doesn't mean it has to be fast or Slow, it just means that at tempo we have the time to get everything in its proper place. And everything can happen in an order without frenzy. You might not be even conscious of the amount of back and forth sort of thinking that you're trying to do as you practice or play. But spending some of your practice keeping that tempo steady no matter what happens.

Is a huge step toward being able to sight read well. You must stick to the tempo. It's the only way to keep moving forward. So practicing with the metronome, a big step in sight reading.

Then let's address the reading portion of this next. You do need to strengthen your note recognition. If this is at all slow for you.

One of the ways you can do this is simply by saying the names of the notes as you practice them and play them. And once again, the metronome is really good for this. We're going to coordinate those processes. So what I mean very simply is this, as you look at the notes on your page, you're going to say the name of each note as you play it, like E, C, F, D, G, F, F, E, D, C, or whatever those notes happen to be. So that's what I mean by say and play. And doing. Some hands separately work like this, particularly in a passage that's a little bit tricky for you, will help you learn the notes well, but it's also key to sight reading. It's a fabulous thing to do. Now, it will also one of the things you might find when you start doing this is it will draw your attention to the patterns that are there. For instance, if you find yourself saying C, E, G over and over again, you might think, oh, look, that's a C chord. And it's happening here and here and here and here in the music. So it will help you recognize those patterns a little bit. Also important and very helpful for speedier reading. So we have sticking to the tempo. We have strengthening your note recognition. And by the way, if you have one clef that's harder for you than the other, like bass clef is lagging behind. Do a little bit more work in bass clef. Have it catch up to your treble clef skills. Right? Why not.

Strategy number three?

Now this is has to do with your technique and with your pattern practice. I recommended this just a podcast or two ago. Do a lot pattern practice. Those exercises that have repeated patterns. Let your fingers and eyes get used to seeing them or your eyes get used to seeing them, your fingers get used to playing them. You're training essentially an automatic response in your fingers. And the more pattern practice you do, the more you're likely to see them and the easier they will be to play in your music when you get there. One other hint here.

When it comes to fingering, fingering is helpful, right? I mean, we pay a lot of attention to our fingering. We harvest. But when you're sight reading, don't pay attention to the fingering. When you're sight reading. When you're sight reading, any finger goes right. All you have to do is try to get to the right note at the right time. If you play it. If you play something at the right time, it's kind of like getting half credit. If you play the right note at the right time, you get full credit. Doesn't matter what finger you've played it with. So when you're sight reading, ignore the fingering.

When you're starting to learn a piece, let's pay attention to the fingering, because that will help. But if you're absolutely trying to sight read something, don't let the fingering hold you up. That's not the way to sight read. Okay, so we have. What do we have so far? We have practicing with the metronome so that you're sticking to the tempo, making a steady tempo. You're going to work at your note reading by saying, and playing was one of the things that I gave to you, right? Play those, play that line. And while you're playing it, say those names of the notes. You can speed that up. I mean, you can make a drill out of that if you like. Right? Then for your fingering, pattern practice, lots of pattern practice. And don't pay attention to the fingering when you're sight reading, because that just isn't going to help. Strategy number four. I want you to not fear sight reading. I want you to do it every day. So here's a quick system for you so that you can feel like you're practicing sight reading and it's going to call on all those skills we've been talking about. What I want you to do is just open a piece, any piece, even one you've been practicing. That's okay. And choose a line or two or maybe even just a few measures if it's a piece, you know. Well, I suggest you start in the middle of the piece because that's going to test your skills a little bit better than starting at the beginning. So you've opened, put a piece of music on your music stand. You've chosen a section of it, and then I want you to follow this System. First of all, check the key signature and set your.

Levers or pedals. Boy, that's hard to say. So check the key signature. Now, if you're in the middle of the piece and you're not using the same accidentals that the key signature has, be aware of that and start appropriately, right? So you're going to set your levers or your pedals for whatever accidentals you need for the section you're playing. Then check the meter, that's the time signature and the tempo, and count a few bars. So I want you to be sure that, okay, I'm in three, four, and it's allegretto. So it's, you know, not too fast. So it's going to go 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. And the reason you're doing this is because you need to keep a steady beat when you sight ready. So if you haven't established that beat and been very sure about it before you start to sight read, it's going to make starting that much more difficult. So let's get that time signature and that tempo started. Then once you've got that going, then I want you to count or tap that, you know, that time. Oh, 1, 2, 3, and tap the rhythm. You can say it, you can hum it, you can tap it. But of those measures that you're going to play, right, so that we're not starting with notes, we're not even starting at the harp. We're just starting with the tempo and then the rhythm of the piece, you know, maybe ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta. Okay, good. All right, so we need to get that established. Do that a couple of times. Then, keeping that rhythm in mind, play those bars, go in. It's now time to actually sit at the harp and play them. So now you're going to play those bars. Keep that tempo steady. Don't stop, don't check the notes or the fingering. Just play and you can do it again. Do it as many times as you like, but always the same way. Playing it, not fixing it as you go. Now, I know this may go against the grain, right? You want to fix it, you want to get it right. But this is precisely the instinct that you need to suppress in order to sight read. Well, you can come back and practice it at a different time, but right now we want to practice getting through it. Getting through it. So those are your strategies, and they are simple. I mean, they're almost ridiculously simple, aren't they? Work at a steady tempo, stick to the tempo, practice Staying to a steady tempo and not going back and fixing this steady tempo will help you coordinate those processes. Practice your note reading fast, slow and in between, in both clefs, say and play. Work at your practice of patterns for your technique. Get as many patterns practiced as you can. The more your fingers know, the more they will be at your disposal. When you're trying to sight read. And then do some of it daily, just for a line or two or maybe just a few measures of music. And follow that system that we just talked about that's going to level up your sight reading. No matter where it is right now, it's going to level it up. Just remember not to pick something to sight read that's way too hard for you. If you couldn't play it when you're, you know, in your practice, you're not going to be able to sight read it any better. So, you know, that's an important part, that sight reading as a snapshot. And one last thing to leave you with today. I want to sort of leave you with the sight reader's mantra, if you will, but this is just something to keep in mind. And remember, it's never about the note you just played. It's only about the note that comes next, right? The note you just played, it's water under the bridge. It's over, it's done. What matters is the next note, the one that's coming next. You need to prepare for that. This is a completely different way to focus than you might be focusing when you're practicing and worried about fixing things. So think about that and keep that particular attitude, right? That mindset as your sight reader's mindset, by the way, it's the same mindset that you need for performance too, right? Because once you've played it, it's done. But you better be worrying about the next note and the next note and the next note. Now, speaking of performance strategies, that's what we are going to be discussing on next week's show, which is all about playing without fear. So we know that, you know, we do fear being nervous. We fear a bunch of things before we play. But you know what? You don't need to. And you don't need to play from a place of fear. So we're going to be talking about a system that I share with my students for playing without fear doesn't mean we're going to banish all your nerves. I wish I had a magic wand for that. But we're going to show you how to do it and still survive. And maybe even enjoy it. And so that will be next week's show. In the meantime, thank you so much for being here. Remember to check out our getaway retreat. You'll find the link in the Show Notes for today, or you'll find it on the heartmastery.com site. As always, if if you have a comment, question, or suggestion about the show, you can email it right to me@theshowpodcastartmastery.com and I'll be happy to read those emails as well. In the meantime, have a wonderful week, enjoy your heart playing and do some sight reading this week just for fun. See you next week. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your Harp happiness every day. See you next time.