Building Sight Reading Confidence

by Alan Rinehart (2016)

Are you a good reader? By what standard?

Ideally a guitarist should be a confident enough reader to play chamber music comfortably,
happily explore new repertoire and-especially for teachers- assess fingering at sight and be able
to make changes to assist your students.

Preface

One of the most fundamental aspects of life is competition. Whether for food, a mate or territory
(the source of food and mates), competition drives activity. Humans also have the added
capacity to compare with other humans and make improvements to better their competitive
chances. Tightening the focus to the playing a musical instrument, particularly the classical
guitar, we have objective means for comparison: accuracy of playing of the notes and rhythms,
speed of playing the same, academic understanding (historical or compositional practice), and
subjective means: artistic quality, tone and dynamics and the subject of this talk-musical literacy.
Judging sight reading ability is problematic. What are the criteria? ‘Cold-reading’ skill
(essential for studio work, ensemble playing or tests in school exams )? Comfortably playing a
piece from beginning to end for enjoyment or research as one would read a book? Improving
one’s sight reading starts with the confidence developed by seeing clear advancement.

Guitarists are generally thought of as poor readers, either by themselves or other instrumentalists.
Reading notation on the guitar is a complex process with the reader having to think and process
music vertically (harmony) and horizontally (melody) as well as dealing with many situations
where a note occurs in multiple places on the fingerboard. The obvious solution to this is
reading as much music one can get their hands on but that does not necessarily lead to having
confidence in one’s reading ability. I’ve known quite a number of fine guitarists who read well
but don’t consider themselves good sight readers. This is likely a result of reading practice
where there is no gauge of progress.

With other aspects of playing we have measures by which we can clearly see improvement;

-a metronome will help us with maintaining tempo, gain rhythmic accuracy and
achieving a goal such as the required speed of technical tests

-written fingerings can guide us in following a method/style of playing (guide fingers,

Score reading however is usually done out of some sort of necessity;

-learning a new piece for your repertoire or at the instruction of a teacher (often
undertaken reluctantly with struggle)
 -being presented with a part in an ensemble ( ‘I hope I can keep up and not make a fool of
myself’)

-a sight reading example in a test (arrrgh).

The end result of such reading may be successful but it does not help give the reader a sense of
improvement in reading skill.

The simple method described below will help one gauge progress and sharpen reading at any
level and open the door to the joy of exploring new music and playing with other musicians with
greater confidence.

The Story

My experience with reading scores was not unusual. I was attracted to the classical guitar by
hearing music played by someone, in my case Mudarra’s Fantasia 10 played by Narciso Yepes.
Trying to learn it by ear quickly led to finding a score and slowly stumbling through the painful
process of finding new notes in strange places on the guitar. That led to listening to more music,
being attracted, finding the score etc. etc. Curiosity led to acquiring a large stack of various
scores that I then chopped and hacked my way through until the reading felt more and more
comfortable. Many lessons, concerts, master classes and chamber music sessions later I felt that
I had a pretty good handle on reading. Then...after enrolling in an intensive lute study course in
London, England I was faced with learning to read German lute tablature in a very short time. I
had already become fairly proficient with Italian tab and was pretty fluent with French/English
tab but German tab had been almost totally avoided. German lute tablature is as close as we get
to musical notation in a completely different system. Without going into detail, the fact that it
was developed by a blind organist may give an idea of the task at hand.

Out of necessity I used a version of the method described below to gain a basic German tab
reading skill..success! Moving forward 5 years I was faced with a similar dilemma. Recently
hired to help develop a guitar performance program at UBC, I was introduced to an incoming
student that had a problem. He was a proficient guitarist in other styles and had passed his
audition playing from memory and his general reading skills were sufficient to do the written
theory entrance exams. It became quickly apparent that his reading skill on the guitar was very
elementary-at best! How was he going to cope with the demands of a 4 year intensive study
program? I adapted my German tab experience and found that the same approach worked
beautifully to help my student gain the confidence and skill to finish his studies with much less
stress.
 Getting Started

Here is a list of what you need:

1. A maximum of 10-15 minutes of every practice day. This is essential: true sight reading,
the reading of totally new music for the first time, is arguably the most mentally taxing
and tiring activity. You need to be totally focussed, present and alert. As with technical
practice, short, attentive and intense work bears great fruit. If you wish to browse scores
later that is fine-this practice is about sharpening sight reading skill and developing a way
to gauge progress.

2. A supply of reading material that is not overly advanced for your current comfortable
reading skill and ideally a mixture of music from different periods in different keys. The
RCM Bridges graded repertoire series is an excellent example. You need enough music
that it takes at least several days to read through.

3. a determination to be a better, relaxed music reader!

The Method

Though it seems a bit rigid at first, this is not a performance! It is not about learning new
pieces, this is a focussed and disciplined practice aimed at seeing clear improvement of a specific
skill.

1. Set a time for the exercise: 5/10/15 minutes. Stay aware of time, don’t go overtime!

2. Have a collection of 20+ pieces ready. For example let’s use the grade 2 Bridges book
that contains 56 pieces.

3. Start with the first piece in the book. Look it over before starting then count yourself in
and begin.

Avoid looking at your hands as you play-if you stall completely, stop, breathe, regroup and
pick up where you left off.

4. Don’t repeat notes or passages to ‘get it right’. It is very important to keep your eyes and
awareness moving- if you can only play half the notes correctly, you are 50% correct!
(Be patient)

5. IF there is a repeat sign or da capo in the music feel free to do it, otherwise, when you
finish a piece, go to the next piece.
6. Continue until the 5/10/15 minutes are over-don’t go overtime.

7. At the next session, start where you left off, wherever that was, as soon as you see the
time is over, stop. That is where you start the next session and continue until you reach
the end of the book-you should have done at least 20 pieces that way when you return to
the first piece it is almost like a completely new piece.

8. Go through the entire book again noticing anything that seems more familiar or
comfortable, (you may get 75% of the notes instead of 50%). You should start to see
patterns and positions that you may have missed on the first pass through the book.

9. After reading through the book twice, go to a new book and repeat the process.

Important things to remember

-Speed is not a factor, continuity and smoothness is the goal, keep your eyes moving!

-Counting rhythm is an important part of this process-try to keep your rhythm as accurate
as possible, especially with slow notes- count and hold them for their full value!

variations on the method that can be done anywhere and that become useful practice and
teaching tools:

Primary- -rhythm only

Secondary- -Dynamics
-Articulation (including slurs)
-Fingering (left alone, right alone, together)
-Pattern recognition: seeing arpeggios, chords and sequences
(words) instead of individual notes (letters)

Tablature
Some strengths and weakness of tablatures:

Tablatures, by nature, reflect fingering for the left hand and can contain right hand fingering as
well.

Tablature is not pitch related. Using tablature makes transposing and learning to read new
tunings (i.e. DADGAD or open chord ) unnecessary.

Used traditionally, tablature was simpler and cheaper to print (numbers or letters rather than
more abstract symbols) and takes up much less space on the page than pitch notation, there is no
need for ledger lines or the rhythmic spacing needed to make pitch notation more readable, a real
consideration when paper was expensive. This is the complete opposite of modern books that are
printed in pitch notation with tab underneath. These books are very cumbersome with far too
many page turns for even short pieces and they discourage use of the pitch notation.

Tablature does not reflect voice leading, an essential element in contrapuntal music that is left to
the understanding of the player.

Tablature is not used by other instruments-a player showing up to a chamber rehearsal or studio
recording that has to depend on tablature is inviting scorn from the other musicians.

tablature has it’s place-it is not a substitute for musical literacy-