PIANO
PEDAGOGY
FORUM
v. 2, no. 2/May 1, 1999

FORUM ON GROUP PIANO

THE 'BUILDING BLOCKS' OF READING
Suggestions for Developing Sight Reading Skills in Beginning Level College Piano Classes

BUILDING BLOCK #2: SECURITY WITHIN FIVE-FINGER POSITIONS

While students are gaining security with the grand staff, they should also be developing their ability to read, hear and play five-finger oriented reading examples.

My first goal in this area is that students become totally comfortable with intervals through a fifth. I like to give their hands and ears a lot of experience playing and recognizing intervals before they have to read them from the staff.

Suggested Pre-Reading Interval Drills

1. Playbacks. This activity is best done through the headphones, first hands alone, then hands together. With everyone in a five-finger position, I give the starting note, then play one or more notes to be played back. I initially start out with patterns of repeated notes and 2nds, then gradually introduce 3rds, then 5ths, and finally 4ths. Over time I increase the length of the patterns from a few notes to one or two measures. For variety I'll have the students sing the solfege of the pattern while playing it back. Rhythms are usually quite basic.
2. Interval Chains. After naming the starting note, I'll call out a series of intervals for the students to play (keeping them within a 5-finger position), then ask them to name the last note they played. If they all say the same note, I know they're on track; if not, I repeat the example or do a similar one. I insist students do this activity without looking at their hands.
3. Solfege Singing. With everyone oriented to the tonic after a short vocal warm-up, I have the class put their hands in a five-finger position and close their eyes. As I name each interval in a series the students are to sing the notes in solfege while "ghost playing" on the piano.

Intervallic Reading from the Grand Staff

In my classes I use a lot of supplementary reading material, especially in the first semester when students spend most of their time in five-finger positions. My sources include multiple copies of sight reading books and beginning methods, overhead transparencies of selected examples, and handouts of various patterns and melodies. Early on the reading and transposition examples I choose have very basic rhythms, easy key signatures, and feature a lot of parallel or similar motion. I introduce hands together coordination into the sight reading with carefully selected examples, being sure to find music that has more than blocked chords in the left hand.

Suggestions for Sight Reading in Class

To help my students develop a sight reading "routine" I do a lot of reading with them in class, which allows me to guide them through important preparatory steps. When looking at an example together, we first tap and count it until secure, especially if there are rhythmic complexities or coordination challenges. We then discuss the music in terms of its melodic direction and shape. I usually ask questions like the following:

• Do you see scales or triads?
• What is the general direction of the notes?
• The example seems to be in G major but what five-finger position(s) do you play in? (The position and the key signature are not always the same...)
• Can you identify and locate the starting note and finger in each hand?

Before playing, I often have students "ghost play" while naming intervals or counting outloud, and we frequently sight-sing melodies, especially for harmonization examples. When students are ready to play the example I usually set the tempo and play along so they can hear me through their headphones. I do this for several reasons: it communicates to them what is an appropriate sight reading tempo, it allows them to assess their accuracy, and it forces them to keep going.

As long as a realistic tempo is selected, teachers can use MIDI recordings to provide the performance model while students sight read. The advantage to using disks is that the teacher can get up and circulate the room while the students play, observing things like posture, hand position and fingering that are often hard to see from the console.

While playing sight reading examples, I have students either name intervals, sing solfege or count out loud. Depending on the technical difficulty of the excerpt they will transpose it to several keys, and as with other reading and technique drills, I discourage them from looking down at their hands. To prevent this common problem I frequently have students sight read from overhead transparencies. Besides preventing "rubbernecking," overheads serve another purpose-they improve posture because students have to sit up and hold their heads higher than usual to read the music!

Suggestions for Assessing Sight Reading Progress In Class

In our curriculum students are always given 5-10 minutes to practice sight reading examples before playing them for quizzes, tests and exams. To prepare for these events, I do a lot of timed activities in class. I give the students several minutes to look over the music, and when the time has run out I have them record themselves while sight reading. (Most laboratory keyboards have some sort of record feature.) They can only make one recording - retakes are not allowed.

To reinforce the importance of choosing an appropriate sight reading tempo I will often give the count off and play the examples along with the students while they are recording. Almost without fail, they tell me my tempo was slower than the one they were using!

To assess progress and provide individual feedback on a recorded sight reading example, I will ask the class to work on their own for a few minutes so I can use the lab controller to listen to their recordings with them one at a time. While this can be time-consuming with a large group, I value the one-on-one contact with each student.

To assess the class's sight reading without taking valuable class time, I tell everyone to leave their recorded performances in their keyboard's memory for the remainder of the class. After everyone has left I quickly go around the lab and listen to the recordings.

Most lab controllers allow teachers to listen to more than one student. Some of the newer systems can even be set to "scroll" through a class; they will give the teacher several seconds on each person while working their way through the lab automatically. With sight reading, listening to the students while they play helps teachers monitor a class's progress and make on-the-spot decisions about the types of instructions to give, or which example to use next. When "eavesdropping" on a class like this teachers should make sure that the students continue to hear just themselves and not everyone else, which would be too distracting.

� 1999 University of South Carolina School of Music