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5 Steps to Mastering Sight-Reading

Gandalfe

Striving to play the changes in a melodic way.
Staff member
Administrator
A reader recently asked:

At my college, to get into the lab bands you have to be a really great sight-reader. What are some ways to become a great reader besides just saying read whatever you can. I am decent at sight-reading, but I want to take it to that next level. How do I go about doing this?

It goes without saying that sight-reading is an important skill to have as a musician. You sight-read new pieces in your rehearsals, you need it when you sub for a big band, and it's a dreaded part of the audition process. It is by no means the most important skill to have as a musician, but if you want to be a "working" musician, it is something that you definitely need.


This is a great question, but it's also one that often gets answered with the vague, apathetic answers that you mentioned. Telling someone to just sight-read more, no matter how well-intentioned, is not going to help them improve.

Sight-reading, like many other techniques that we develop as musicians, is a skill, a skill that can be learned and continually improved upon. Rather than putting yourself in a room and trying to blindly improve your sight-reading chops by doing it over and over again, look at the specific elements involved in this skill and work on developing them.

Read more: http://jazzadvice.com/5-steps-to-mastering-sight-reading/
 
Those are excellent points in that article. There is another dimension to sight reading besides rhythms. That is being technically comfortable in all keys and with reading accidentals. My sight reading Achilles heel has always been when a challenging rhythm includes a lot of accidentals. It's like my brain goes into overload and either the rhythm suffers or I miss some of the notes. That said, I always "sight read" a piece much better the 2nd or 3rd time through. :)
 
Same with the bands I play in.
Those are excellent points in that article. There is another dimension to sight reading besides rhythms. That is being technically comfortable in all keys and with reading accidentals. My sight reading Achilles heel has always been when a challenging rhythm includes a lot of accidentals. It's like my brain goes into overload and either the rhythm suffers or I miss some of the notes. That said, I always "sight read" a piece much better the 2nd or 3rd time through. :)
 
Sight reading is definitely a good skill to have. I've found a good resource to practice reading music called Chromatik. They have a ton of different stuff, with full melody and chord charts, and different instrument options
 
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