Monday, June 11, 2007
Sight reading improvement
As I child, I was taught to learn a piece by learning the right hand and the left hand separately until they were both pretty good and then work on putting the hands together. This has the advantage of making sure you really know the notes but the disadvantage of not really understanding how the piece fits together until late in the process. It also disadvantages your sight reading ability. Obviously I need to work on complicated pieces by doing some hands separate practice, but this time around I am doing hands together in the first week that I have a piece. As a result, I think my sight reading in improving because I have to keep track off all of the complexities while the piece is still unfamiliar. Last week I picked up a grade 9 piece, a George Shearing arrangement of Arlen's Over the rainbow. It is a jazz arrangement with lots of funny chords. In the past, I would never have been able to sight read this piece, even at a very slow speed. Now I can pick my way through it, slowly, with a good degree of accuracy and musicality. Woo hoo! It helps that it has a fairly straight rhythm, I'm still not very good at sight reading complex rhythms.
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4 comments:
You're becoming a Hitchens!
excuse me, have been one for many years...*sticking out my tongue at you*
Very cool. One of the things that frustrates me the most about piano is my inability to sight read multiple notes simultaneously. Having played a lot of jazz on sax, I'm pretty good at complex rhythms, but that darned left hand!!!!! If I can't do chords, I suck.
I have also noticed that jazz composers write in the stupidest keys. When it comes to piano, I'm all for C,G,D and sometimes F and A!
Actually, some of the keys with lots of flats or sharps are easier to play in than ones with only 2 flats or sharps. Often easier on the fingers. The problem with the jazz is the amount of accidentals that they add in which makes your brain go numb during sight reading!
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