Sightreading: Skill Up...and Bring It On!
Naomi Yandell and I are string teachers based in Cambridge, UK. We have worked together on many projects including a number of publications for young beginner string players, and we also teach together at Stringmoves, a Saturday scheme for primary-age children.
We often lead and attend ensemble events for young performers and over the years, we have seen the following first-rehearsal scenario play out far too many times: the chairs and stands are set, the students arrive - maybe they’re excited, maybe a little nervous. They find their seats and are all ready to begin. All that is, except for one student who has picked up the music for the first piece and has scurried into a corner with a parent in tow.
While the others play, this student finds a pencil and starts laboriously writing finger numbers above each note. Despite encouragement from the conductor to join in, the student prefers to continue to annotate the music rather than to play, and by the time they feel ready to try, the rest of the ensemble has moved on. The student feels discouraged and inadequate. It is heart-breaking to witness and definitely not something we would wish for any of our students to experience.
It need not be like this. Sight reading is a skill, and although, like all skills, it may come more easily to some students than others, it can definitely be taught and learnt. We are both big believers in including sight reading practice as part of our students’ weekly lessons and, believe it or not, they all enjoy it.
The secret is to go in easy – start with something so super-simple that the student is guaranteed to succeed. Even just reading and tapping a rhythm on the instrument is enough at the beginning. Then, as confidence builds, the level of difficulty can slowly and incrementally increase until, almost without noticing what is happening, the student realises that they are good at sight reading.
Duets are also a big help in this learning process, because as well as being fun and sounding great, they help the student to realise the practical reason for the need to just keep going.
We were delighted to be given the opportunity to share our methods for teaching sight reading when Trinity College London Press commissioned us to write their sight reading books for strings. There are three books for each instrument, with three grades to a book. The demands for each grade are split into ten "lessons," each with a clear objective. Starting with very basic rhythm tapping, the books build pattern-spotting skills, note recognition and key familiarity in a calm and step-by-step way. The lessons always finish with a duet, which allows the student to put their sight reading skills into practice, and to start to understand the point of learning to become a proficient sight reader.
Whether teachers use the Trinity grade system or not, our sight-reading books are designed to help to empower students to become the kind of learner who walks confidently into a new string ensemble, takes the sheet music with a smile, and thinks to themselves, "Bring it on!" Our ultimate aim for all of our students is that they will be able to do what we love doing, which is to pick up a stack of new and unfamiliar music and have fun exploring it with friends.
String teachers Celia Cobb and Naomi Yandell.
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Our Sight Reading Strings books are available from all good music retailers, and also as downloadable ebooks from Trinity College London Press (For Trinity College downloads click here, for the books on Amazon click here.)
"It is not often that a sight reading book makes one smile with appreciation. Celia Cobb and Naomi Yandell have produced an inspirational collection of books for violin, viola, cello and double bass."
- Music Teacher Magazine
You might also like:
- 15 Tips to Successfully Sight Read
- The way we test sight-reading is missing the point.
- Discussion: How to improve sight reading?
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Replies
In 1955 Ruth Gipps founded her London Repertoire Orchestra in order to fill what she felt to be an important gap in the training of instrumentalists in the London colleges, viz sight-reading. Every week she would conduct two new programmes of music, one for symphony and the other for chamber orchestra, in order to familiarise her players with as much of the repertoire as possible before they entered the profession. Also open to amateurs, the LRO was where in the 1980's I learned most of my musical skills.
Back a decade or so ago, there was a local sight-reading orchestra that met about once per month at a local private school. Unfortunately, it could not continue because of increased security requirements. But, we had a lot of fun reading some very good music. Too bad.
Good to hear they're keeping it up in the UK! I played in a weekly primary schools orchestra as a junior violin student in Bromsgrove, West Midlands. This worked well for me in a similar way, and I've always judged myself to be a good sight-reader. Now I teach in Toronto at the Oscar Peterson School of Music, and our curriculum includes rhythmic and melodic reading exercises. The students in our program go to Orchestras that progress through 4 different levels. They are great, confident sight-readers by Intermediate Level.
"Despite encouragement from the conductor to join in, the student prefers to continue to annotate the music rather than to play, and by the time they feel ready to try, the rest of the ensemble has moved on."
There's an aspect of this that I haven't seen discussed yet. The child is not improving at least partly because of their unwillingness to follow the instructions of their conductor. I teach college chemistry, and I can vouch for the importance of following instructions, not only to maximize learning, but also to be safe in the laboratory, and to avoid wasting a lot of other people's time, like my teaching assistants or even my own time. Perhaps the conductor could make a "rule" that you only introduce a fingering into a part where there is a shift, otherwise very rarely.
Rhythm patterns and notation are the first step. The way rhythms are notated frequently are not the best way to interpret them.
Playing by finger numbers is a big problem; it is a kind of tabulature approach.
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November 6, 2024 at 07:16 PM · I still vividly remember my very first day of youth orchestra, in the fifth grade. Utter panic! I'd never truly sight-read before that. The experience of playing in that youth orchestra helped a great deal, though - over time I gained much more experience and skill in reading. While my own private teachers never expressly worked on sight reading with me, as a teacher, I think it's a great idea to do so, and to have more tools for working on sight-reading, such as your books!