If you are attempting to sight read a piece of music, here are some steps that are a good guideline to help you be successful. What is important to point out that there can be so much preparation done in your head, in just a couple of minutes, before you play a single note. These steps can also be a useful way of learning a new piece of music without the assistance of a piano teacher.
Look at your music and notice whether you have a treble clef for the right hand and a bass clef for the left hand. Most of the time it will be written that way but sometimes it will be 2 treble clefs or 2 bass clefs. This is an obvious step but so many people don’t even bother to notice and presume its a treble clef and a bass clef and then wonder why it sounds horrid.
Look at the key signature and work out what key your music is in. Your key signature will give you 2 options of what the key is, so have a look further along your music to see whether there are other sharps or flats in the music. Remember that sometimes you will see a natural scattered through so take note. Now you should be able to work out whether your piece of piano music is in a particular major or minor key.
While you are still looking at the beginning, have a look at what the time signature is . The time signature is important because it will determine the rhythmical feel of your music and it will also help if you need to count in your head while you are playing the piece of music through.
The next step is to pay attention to the length of the notes. Do you have crochets, minims, dotted minims, semibreves (or as the Americans would use quarter notes, half notes, eighth notes etc)? Have a look to see whether there are any quavers or even semiquavers. By looking at how long your shortest note is, you can work out what speed you can comfortably play the whole thing. It is such a common mistake for piano students doing a formal sight reading exercise to not look at how long the notes are and basically get started only to realize too late that they started too fast for them to keep a consistent speed.
Have a look again at the notes, but this time take note of what the actual notes are. Are there a lot of C’s and G’s or maybe many B flats and E flats? While you are focused on the notes, have a look to see if you can find any patterns – are there any scales hidden in the music? Does your left hand have a pattern that is repeated quite regularly? Are there sections of the music that is repeated or repeated with a slight variation? Taking your time to look for these things because they will actually make quite a difference.
Check for indications of fingering. Usually the more complex the piece of music , the less fingering indications there are because the more advanced player can figure out fingering for themselves. Having said this, I would still advise anyone, whether they are very experienced or a beginner, to use the fingering that is indicated.
Before you play a single note, the very last thing to consider is placing your hands over the keyboard in a good starting position. I’ve seen so many piano students just start without thinking of where they start from and then they get themselves into a mess.
Now start to play the piece of music. When you are playing, keep calm and focused. Don’t worry about any mistakes as they will often go unheard by someone who may be listening.
For those of you that piano exams are part of your plan to learn to play the piano in your retirement, these steps will definitely help you to do really well with any sight reading in the context of an exam. Just remember that in an exam, if you make a mistake that the examiner can hear, you loose a mark, if you go back to fix the mistake, you loose more marks. Basically, just keep going, regardless of whether you think you are doing well or not.
I hope you find these steps helpful, whether you are using them for formal sight reading exercises or just learning to play a new piece of music.