So often we read music in performances and rehearsals with only half of our concentration, and what’s worse, we don’t even realize it. In fact, most mistakes we make in performing music can be attributed to a lack of concentration. Without it you miss notes and accidentals, you screw up rhythms, you find yourself disconnected from the time, and you lose your place in the music. This may seem painfully obvious or even unimportant, but your mindset and concentration as you look at a page of music is the single most important factor to your success in reading that music. If you implement each of these factors every time you read a piece of music, your sight-reading will infinitely improve. Each skill is dependent on the next and they all add up, so don’t skip over any of them. Sight-reading is not some magical skill that will just come to you one day because you attempt it every so often, it’s a skill that has finite elements that can be learned in a short amount of time and applied with success.īelow I’ve outlined five components of reading music that will greatly improve your ability to sight-read. There are specific elements that go into successfully reading music, and these elements directly affect your ability to sight-read. If you want to improve at sight-reading, you first need to examine the way that you read music. You may be looking at this music for the first time or it may be something that you haven’t practiced, but the bottom line is that you’re reading music. When you take an honest look at it, sight-reading is simply your ability to read music. The ability to sight-read stems from all of the aspects of your musicianship and thus, can be improved on a daily basis with a little attention to detail. Somehow, we’ve all had this idea put into our heads that sight-reading is this completely new skill that we must learn, separated from the other aspects of our musicianship. 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. Sight-reading, like many other techniques that we develop as musicians, is a skill – a skill that can be learned and continually improved upon. Telling someone to “just sight-read more,” no matter how well-intentioned, is not going to help them improve. This is a great question, but it’s also one that often gets answered with the vague, apathetic answers that you mentioned. 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.

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 goes without saying that sight-reading is an important skill to have as a musician. 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. A reader recently asked: At my college, to get into the lab bands you have to be a really great sight-reader.

Music tutor sight read