When you rehearse, do you keep your phone nearby? When you make a mistake, do you always start over? Do you take notes on what each note is called? Everybody has some practice routine, but certain things might hold you back from being a fluent music reader. Your playing and ability to read music on the spot will suffer if you indulge in these practices.
How To Break Music Reading Habits?
What can you do to break each of these habits? We’ll explain. And if you find out that you don’t engage in any of these practices, then kudos! Uphold the status quo. You may choose to either watch the movie below or keep reading (or do both):
Quick Memorisation
Memorisation is not inherently negative. We do not, however, advocate memorising a piece the moment you master it to avoid consulting the score. This behaviour indicates that you are trying to make up for a reading disability. You’re taking the easy way out by trusting your memory instead of keeping track of the score. To get better at reading music on sight, you must do what’s hardest: play along. It would be best to practise your sight reading to stay caught up.
Solution
Even if you think you know the piece by heart, it’s important always to read the score while you practise. Pay close attention to the smallest nuances, such as the notes, rhythm, articulation, tempo, dynamics, accidentals, etc. There’s always more to pick out in the tunes. Take a close listen to make sure your performance matches the sheet music. Strive for precision.
Staring At The Palms Of Your Hands
Avoid the terrible habit of reading slowly because you keep looking at your hands instead of the music. To read music smoothly, as we teach in our piece on improving sight-reading, you must always keep your eyes on the music.
Solution
Refrain from glancing down when you’re practising your parts. Instead, try practising scales, arpeggios, and chords while focusing on the feel of the black keys and the space between them, either with your eyes closed or open.
Bonus Tip
Whether you’re checking your hands to see whether you hit the appropriate key, it’s possible that you can’t make out the notes on the page. You’ll want to practice hearing individual notes and chord progressions in such a situation. Apps like Tenuto (for iPhone) and Perfect Ear (for iPhone and Android) may help you train your ear quickly. In addition, you may check if you’ve played the wrong note by listening to a tape of yourself before you perform.
Writing Note Names Or Fingering In The Score
Stop noting every note’s name or fingering, whether you’re a student or a teacher. Having this bad habit is the worst! Not only does this make the score look sloppy, but it also makes it harder to understand the notes. Why? You won’t get better at reading music if you focus on reading the note names or fingering instead of the music itself.
Solution
Avoid taking notes at any cost. Unless necessary, just the first note or a note with many ledger lines. It would be best if you forced yourself to remember the notes repeatedly to learn them. The more you think about the notes, the more likely they will remain in your memory.
“Effortful retrieval” can be put into practice using musical flashcards. Use a single deck to begin. Next, sort out the problematic cards and use them to create a new deck. It would be best to spend the most time reviewing the latter set. Read it several times over a few days. After being comfortable with its meaning, you should return a card to the main deck. This process takes from one week to two weeks to complete. If there are still cards you need help remembering readily, review the deck again in a few days and repeat the procedure.
Bonus Tip
Instead of attempting to name each note as you read it, focus on the overall contour of the melody. Is the tune ascending or descending? Does it hop or take discrete steps? How far apart are they, exactly?
Using The Same Old Pieces
It’s possible that your auditory recall, rather than your reading abilities, will become your go-to if you play pieces you’re already familiar with. Even if it’s not written that way, you may play it how it sounds best.
Solution
Pick difficult compositions that will challenge you to learn to read music.
Constantly Revisiting The Initial Stage
If you continually start from the beginning after making a mistake, you’ll eventually rely on muscle memory and stop reading the score consciously. You’ll get so used to the first bar that you won’t be able to utilise any other one.
Solution
In the future, if you make a mistake during a piece, try starting at the beginning of the bar instead. Then, look at the notes in that bar and play them exactly as they appear. It will take some time to become used to reading the music instead of just playing by ear and muscle memory, but the time savings will be well worth the effort.
Bonus Tip
If you want to get somewhere, don’t begin from the beginning. Instead, please start with the final bar and play it again thrice. Doing so will challenge your reading abilities and provide valuable practice at the beginning and the finish of the text.
Putting Up With Distractions
If your phone is within earshot during practice and you have it set to alert you to every incoming message and notification, you will never be able to achieve a state of calm and concentration. Instead, it would be best to practice concentration for extended periods, which requires minimal interruptions. Why? You need to be able to concentrate on becoming proficient in either practice or sight-reading. You need to train your mind to concentrate.
Solution
Make sure your phone is silent and out of sight. Use your phone for music-related tasks, such as using a metronome or recording oneself. You’ll find that your concentration improves dramatically.
Not Counting
If you tend not to count, break it now to avoid a world of difficulty in the future.
Solution
Be sure to count in before beginning to play, and maintain that counting throughout, especially on the longer notes. Count in unison from the beginning to the end. If you get into the practice of mentally counting every time you play, you’ll eventually be able to feel the beats without using numbers at all.
Separate Hands For Learning New Parts
While learning new pieces by ear is wonderful and sometimes essential, you must catch up if you never get to sight-read hands together.
Solution
Practice your sight-reading skills with each new piece. Before practising by yourself, give it a shot with a partner. You’ll get the opportunity to hone your sight-reading skills and experience the finished product of your labour.
Playing Too Fast
Most people start too fast and must calm down for the difficult parts. As a result, you get work with varying tempos. When sight-reading, starting at a moderate speed wherever possible is important to avoid stumbling over challenging sections.
Solution
For a quick solution, take it easy at first. Then, find the challenging sections and use a metronome to determine the speed you can play them without rushing the rest of the composition. Finally, put the pace in the heading to find it easily.
Ignoring Marks For Articulation And Expression
You may be the type that concentrates on nailing the basics before worrying about showcasing your talent with articulation and expressiveness. Of course, including everything in the front is preferable, but it will be more difficult. Why? Since the articulation and emotional marks call for particular body motions in the music. For instance, there’s a physical difference between playing the piano and playing forte. Similarly, a lengthy legato passage calls for a different motion than a passage with two-note slurs.
Solution
If you want to master a new piece, initially commit every nuance to memory. This may seem impossible, but if you get into the habit of doing it when studying simple works with few details in the score, you’ll be able to do it when you’re learning a more challenging repertoire.
Bonus Tip
Figure out how to connect music notation’s articulation and expressive marks with physical motions. For instance, if you notice a two-note slur, your arm should naturally descend on the first note and raise on the second. Likewise, employing extra arm weight when doing a forte would be best. The less mental effort you need to put into translating musical symbols into physical actions during sight-reading, the better.
Targeting Perfection Rather Than Improvement
Developing your ability to read music by sight will take some time. You can only expect to learn to sight-read sheet music fluently after first learning the fundamentals of music theory, and there’s no quick fix for that. Therefore, reward yourself for sticking to your sight-reading programmes and setting reasonable goals for each practice session. Remember that you can only improve by dividing the work into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Note-by-Note Reading
In the early stages of sight-reading, note-by-note reading is a common approach. To improve sight-reading skills, it is recommended that the reader must not read ahead. After mastering sight-reading in treble and bass clefs (or alto if playing the viola), it is suggested to start reading by an interval.
An example of interval reading from actual sheet music is provided, where the reader should follow the intervals between notes rather than the note names. The composition provided in the example is in D major, and familiarity with general intervals and the music’s key is necessary to read by intervals.
Learning to read by intervals requires a fundamental understanding of music theory. Once the reader has grasped these concepts, most music can be written on the staff without accidentals, as it will naturally fall within the key. Reading by interval becomes natural when coupled with understanding the degrees of the chromatic scale, revealing the underlying structure of the music. Unlike note-by-note reading, contrast reading presents the music in more manageable portions.
Conclusion
There are effective methods for overcoming the anxiety associated with learning to read sheet music for the first time. This essay covers all the bases, starting with the absolute basics and progressing to more advanced topics like clefs and accidentals. Each note is represented by one of the staff’s five lines, with four rests. The flag signifies the note’s final point, its stem, its duration, and the head’s fullness or openness. It’s impossible to give a song justice on stage if you don’t know its metre.
Most scores will include a metronome and tempo indication to help players stay on beat. Since the C major scale has a relatively broad tonal core and a relatively small octave, it serves as a good starting point for studying other major scales.
Learning to read music by ear requires a firm grasp of basic musical concepts, including time signatures, scales, and rhythm. Scale practice can help you commit the unique finger and hand position for each key signature to muscle memory. Even though solfège is a standard method for practising singing by ear, singers still need to learn the distinctions between major and minor keys and the intervals between notes.
Try new things, listen to music outside your comfort zone, analyse the piece to learn its annotations, take notes, mentally practise the entire thing, and zero in on the difficult parts. The stakes of sight-reading are high; therefore, it’s important to be well-versed in and appreciative of various musical genres, tempos, and tonalities.
Studying the music by listening to and reading the notes is the best way to learn the piece’s rhythm. You should locate the annotations, record your ideas, mentally rehearse the piece, and pay special attention to the challenging sections.
Content Summary
- Everybody has some practice routine, but certain things might hold you back from being a fluent music reader.
- Your playing and ability to read music on the spot will suffer if you indulge in these practices.
- And if you find out that you don’t engage in any of these practices, then kudos!
- We do not, however, advocate memorising a piece the moment you master it to avoid consulting the score.
- This behaviour indicates that you are trying to make up for a reading disability.
- You’re taking the easy way out by trusting your memory instead of keeping track of the score.
- To get better at reading music on sight, you must do what’s hardest: play along.
- It would be best to practise your sight reading to stay caught up.
- Even if you think you know the piece by heart, it’s important always to read the score while you practise.
- Take a close listen to make sure your performance matches the sheet music.
- Avoid the terrible habit of reading slowly because you keep looking at your hands instead of the music.
- To read music smoothly, as we teach in our piece on improving sight-reading, you must always keep your eyes on the music.
- Instead, try practising scales, arpeggios, and chords while focusing on the feel of the black keys and the space between them, either with your eyes closed or open.
- Whether you’re checking your hands to see whether you hit the appropriate key, it’s possible that you can’t make out the notes on the page.
- Top noting every note’s name or fingering, whether you’re a student or a teacher.
- Having this bad habit is the worst!
- Not only does this make the score look sloppy, but it also makes it harder to understand the notes.
- You won’t get better at reading music if you focus on reading the note names or fingering instead of the music itself.
- It would be best if you forced yourself to remember the notes repeatedly to learn them.
- “Effortful retrieval” can be put into practice using musical flashcards.
- Sort out the problematic cards and use them to create a new deck.
- After being comfortable with its meaning, you should return a card to the main deck.
- Instead of attempting to name each note as you read it, focus on the overall contour of the melody.
- It’s possible that your auditory recall, rather than your reading abilities, will become your go-to if you play pieces you’re already familiar with.
- Pick difficult compositions that will challenge you to learn to read music.
- If you continually start from the beginning after making a mistake, you’ll eventually rely on muscle memory and stop reading the score consciously.
- If you make a mistake during a piece, try starting at the beginning of the bar instead.
- It will take some time to become used to reading the music instead of just playing by ear and muscle memory, but the time savings will be well worth the effort.
- If you want to get somewhere, don’t begin from the beginning.
- Instead, please start with the final bar and play it again thrice.
- Doing so will challenge your reading abilities and provide valuable practice at the beginning and the finish of the text.
- You need to be able to concentrate on becoming proficient in either practice or sight-reading.
- You need to train your mind to concentrate.
- Solution Make sure your phone is silent and out of sight.
- Use your phone for music-related tasks, such as using a metronome or recording oneself.
- Count in unison from the beginning to the end.
- While learning new pieces by ear is wonderful and sometimes essential, you must catch up if you never get to sight-read hands together.
- Practise your sight-reading skills with each new piece.
- You may be the type that concentrates on nailing the basics before worrying about showcasing your talent with articulation and expressiveness.
- Since the articulation and emotional marks call for particular body motions in the music.
- For instance, there’s a physical difference between playing the piano and playing forte.
- Figure out how to connect music notation’s articulation and expressive marks with physical motions.
- Developing your ability to read music by sight will take some time.
- You can only expect to learn to sight-read sheet music fluently after first learning the fundamentals of music theory, and there’s no quick fix for that.
- In the early stages of sight-reading, note-by-note reading is a common approach.
- To improve sight-reading skills, it is recommended that the reader must not read ahead.
- After mastering sight-reading in treble and bass clefs (or alto if playing the viola), it is suggested to start reading by an interval.
- The composition provided in the example is in D major, and familiarity with general intervals and the music’s key is necessary to read by intervals.
- Learning to read by intervals requires a fundamental understanding of music theory.
- Unlike note-by-note reading, contrast reading presents the music in more manageable portions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is The Most Common Mistake Made By Beginners When Reading Sheet Music?
The most common mistake beginners make when reading sheet music is not recognising the key signature of the piece. This can lead to playing wrong notes or missing notes altogether. It is important to take the time to understand the key signature before beginning to play a piece.
How Can I Improve My Ability To Read Sheet Music?
The best way to improve your ability to read sheet music is to practice regularly. Start with simple pieces and gradually work your way up to more complex pieces. Take the time to identify the key signature, time signature, and tempo markings before you start playing. Also, try to visualise the notes on the page as you play them.
What Should I Do If I Make A Mistake While Reading Sheet Music?
If you make a mistake while reading sheet music, don’t panic. Stop playing and take a moment to assess the mistake. Identify the note or notes that you played incorrectly and figure out what the right note or notes should be. Then, practice that piece section until you can play it correctly.
Why Do Some Sheet Music Pieces Have Different Symbols And Markings Than Others?
Different sheet music pieces have different symbols and markings because each piece is unique. Some pieces may have tempo markings, dynamics, or other symbols specific to that piece. It is important to familiarise yourself with the different symbols and markings so that you can understand what they mean when you encounter them.
How Can I Avoid Making Mistakes While Reading Sheet Music?
The best way to avoid making mistakes while reading sheet music is to be well-prepared before playing. Take the time to study the piece and understand the key signature, time signature, and tempo markings. Visualise the notes on the page as you play them and practice regularly. Also, try to stay relaxed and focused while playing to avoid making mistakes due to nervousness or distractions.
