People have to realize that sight reading is not the same as reading. SR means reading an unfamiliar piece that every note needs to be learned. Like you're reading someone's speech word for word without seeing it beforehand. Reading in music can refer to a piece you're familiar with and just looking at the page from time to time as a reminder. Part of the piece would come out from your memory / muscle memory. Nobody expects you to perform a new piece without spending time to learn it. If you spend enough time on a piece, you won't be reading every note or every other note like you got the sheet music yesterday. A useful way to get both hands to play together is to practice scales with 2 hands playing the same notes 1 octave apart and then do the scale in contrary motion (like Hanon exercises). You can also pick a melody and get 2 hands to play the same thing an octave apart. Do it slowly first and gradually speed up. When practicing a complex piece, work on it in small chunks... have different starting and stopping points. At each starting point you assume all the notes would be at sync. The spot where the notes start to get out of sync you'd use it as the next starting point. After mastering a small section of music, go back to the previous section and connect the 2 together.
Really good suggestions. On my way to practice now, which has been extremely frustrating recently. Love the idea of setting a timer to practice one measure for 3 minutes ( or whatever).
Great tips. Another thing that I was told was to tap the rhythm out on your knees. I use this a lot as I'm a bit unco and you can practice it pretty much anywhere, anytime. The tapping somehow internalizes the coordination.
As always, you are so incredibly helpful -- thank you! ETA: okay, this is only one day later. I focused on only playing two bars at a time on a piece I've really struggled with and was afraid it was way over my head. Well voila, thanks to your great suggestions, especially trying it both hands V E R Y S L O W and only two bars at a time -- I can't believe how well that is working. Wow.
Fantastic tutorial as always Allysia. I would absolutely thoroughly recommend Alyssia’s Complete Piano Path course. I’ve just finished CPP-A and can’t believe my progress, from absolute beginner to hands together simple pieces in 21 weeks. Not only is the content excellent, the course and forum is a lot of fun.
As always, this has been a very informative and revealing lesson. I can't thank you enough for the time you take in making these videos. Sorry, but i don't have the finances for lessons. Thank you, Dave, from the UK.
Loved 💙 your suggestion of sight-reading music using older/‘beginning’ books. Never thought of this; simple idea, but brilliant 👏. I will now work this into my daily practice, as I expect it will help me w/hand coordination & developing sight-reading skills. Thank you so much for sharing your 🎹 knowledge 👍😁.
Thanks for this.. I get frustrated with certain songs that carry two melodies where the left hand is not playing any particular pattern. Giving the sight reading more of a focus and breaking down the beats in sections. going slow. You have a great channel.
I reduce hands seperate practice somewhat maybe from 3. week onwards depending on piece lenght/difficulty of cource. I still practice a problematic spot maybe 3x - 12x in one go depending on how difficult I find the spot to be. I read sheets relatively well having read several kinds of sheets over 10 years, my problem is indeed reading and playing a bit too big chunks so memorizing a piece takes maybe a month longer than I would like. In short Chopin and Schumann pieces I have used the step like approach, the technical and different sound level demands are so big I just cannot tackle everything at once.
I loved the video, Allysia! It helped me to realize something and I wanted to ask you - I realize that yes indeed, I struggle to sight-read. It takes me a long time and once I know the notes, I never look at the music again. So once I know a piece pretty well, I mostly just stare at the space (so not necessarily looking at my hands at all unless there are big movements) but if I look at the sheet music trying to read the notes or to even find where I am on the page, it confuses me. Should I work on that? Because I seem to have a good feeling of the keyboard, but I cannot coordinate reading and playing unless it's extremely simple pieces, like you said.
A huge difference between the American style of teaching and the Slavic one is that we teach leaps and to grasp the whole keyboard at once. I noticed this idea to start with one specific position is not beneficial. Another truth: some people cannot improve their coordination, you're born this way. It happens more often than teachers like to admit.
