Piano SIGHT READING is one of the most important skills for any pianist to develop. Even if you’re not interested in performing professionally, being able to play the piano and sight read can help you learn new pieces faster and improve your overall musicianship.
Instead of laboriously piecing together a composition note by note, with good sight reading skills, you will be able to more easily play through the piece right away, even if it’s not perfect yet, and then go from there. In this blog post, I’ll share with you the four most common mistakes I see students make while sight reading.
I also created a step-by-step sight reading checklist that summarizes the process I coach my students through. You can download the checklist here!
Watch the video version of this tutorial here:
The RICE Sight Reading Framework
To more easily remember the four components I will describe here, I have created the acronym RICE! RICE Stands for: Rhythm First; Intervals Matter; Continuity Always; and Easy is Best!
Rhythm First (R)
When we listen to music, two main factors make it recognizable: rhythm and the actual notes played. However, most sight readers focus on correcting the notes rather than maintaining the correct rhythm. This is understandable, because it frankly feels uncomfortable to play the wrong notes. It can feel upsetting to play something at the piano and miss notes, without going back and fixing them.
So, there is a strong temptation – and, sometimes even a compulsion – to go back and clean up the wrong notes right away as you go. However, this approach disrupts the rhythm.
To illustrate, I’ll use the example of Happy Birthday song. If you play just the rhythm of the song on a single note, it’s still possible to guess that it’s “Happy Birthday.” However, if you play the correct notes and distort the rhythm, either by hesitating or by making errors and then correcting them, it becomes virtually impossible to identify the song.
Therefore, when you sight read, make sure you understand the time signature and the rhythms before you play. This is why on my downloadable sight reading checklist, I start by looking at rhythm and meter before looking at key signature and melody.
Intervals Matter (I)
Another common mistake when sight reading at the piano is trying to identify each individual note as you play it. This approach is not very efficient for sight reading. Instead, it’s crucial to notice the relationships between the notes rather than identifying them in isolation.
To do this, work on identifying common visual patterns, like chord inversions, and understand how they feel under your fingers.
For instance, a skip (line to line or space to space) feels different from a step (adjacent notes). A chord in root position feels different than a chord in first inversion. Focusing on this and teaching yourself to notice the physical distance between the notes based on scanning intervals on the page will help you improve your sight reading skills.
Continuity Always (C)
“Continuity” refers to playing a piece without stopping. Starting and stopping is one of the key challenges people face when sight reading at the piano.
If you miss a note, it’s essential to keep going, and adjust on the fly if you miss a note, rather than going back and correcting it. I touched on this in an earlier point, but it can be a real psychological challenge to prevent yourself from going back. It can also be disorienting to be sightreading and miss notes but keep going, because your ear is hearing dissonances and it’s not always easy to know where you are in the piece or how you need to adjust your hands, without stopping to fix it.
It may be challenging to avoid the urge to correct every mistake as you play, but remember: everyone misses notes while sight reading. Sight reading is a complex skill that involves transforming visual information into physical motions to generate sounds. Therefore, embrace the imperfections and focus on maintaining the flow.
Learning not to stop is something that takes practice. If you struggle with continuity, try sight reading at a slower tempo so you have time to process the visual information on the page.
Easy is Best (E)
Finally, it’s essential to choose pieces that match your current skill level. Many people make life more difficult for themselves by choosing material that is far too difficult.
Sight reading should not feel like a huge struggle. If a piece is too difficult, it will take a lot of effort to get through it, and you won’t learn much from the experience.
As a rule of thumb, choose a piece that you can play with about 80% accuracy and that doesn’t feel too challenging.
Improving your sight-reading skills involves making incremental gains over time. Think of it as a four-to-six-month project where you gradually build on your progress. Just as we start learning to read words with phonics and patterns before jumping into complex texts, start with pieces that are at least two to three levels easier than your current repertoire.
To progress gradually, consider using a graded repertoire series or a method book and work your way through the books. If you have to go note by note, it’s too hard. Choose something easier and practice it for a few minutes, until you can play it correctly. The benefit comes from the process of spending a little time learning something briefly and quickly, then moving on.
I recommend spending about 10-15 minutes per day practicing your sight reading at the piano.
Remember: focus on RHYTHM over melody; practice scanning INTERVALS rather than naming individual notes; work toward CONTINUITY when you play; and keep it EASY!