Trinity Grade 1 Piano Sight Reading Pdf
Hedvige Ransonet
I find very difficult to sight read. I usually play the passage once very carefully and memorize it well so I don't have look at the music while playing. I play while continuously looking down at the keys and find it difficult to lift my head up and register the notes and then play. I know all the notes on the staff, but I can't register them in time to play them on the spot.
Since your problem is looking down at the keys, devise a practice method that prevents you from doing so. My teacher growing up always held a notebook above my hands so that I couldn't look at them. Do you have someone in your household or school that would be willing to do that for the 10 minutes a day you practice your sightreading? If not, you could always try rigging something to blog your view. (Or you could really be ridiculous and get one of these.)
Once you've mastered this, you may eventually have a problem with not looking ahead while you sightread; to address this, have someone cover up the current chord you're on, which forces you to look ahead. And so on.
I'm doing Grade 3 exam piano pieces but my sight reading is poor. I suppose it can be explained. I spent many hours practising and polishing pieces. Comparatively, I worked relatively little on sight reading. I'm now evening up the emphasis and I hope it will pay dividends.
To train, I think you have to avoid becoming familiar with the music. So I have bought lots of short exercises (over 100 in all) and I play them at random. If I am in danger of knowing the music to the point where I can play from memory, I stop playing it for a few weeks which usually does the trick. This is different from reading the notation as one would the text in a book. I really want to develop the skill where you read the notation and hear the music in your head without playing a note on the instrument.
There are various method books, YouTube videos, phone apps and books of practice pieces at the right level out there. I had to experiment to find what worked for me. I have not found a magic method that doesn't require a lot of work. I'm on my third method. It has taken me a while to get here. I am now happy enough with the method that I decided to stop looking for a better (magic) method and just get on with it.
I set myself an aim to practice for at least 20 mins every day. It takes a lot of mental effort, so I make sight reading practice the first exercise of the day. If it goes well I might do more; if it goes poorly I might go back to simpler exercises or stop after 10/15 mins if my head just won't take it in. I found sight reading exercises too hard to be tacked on to the end of practice after working on exam pieces and technical exercises.
As with any skill you need to start very slowly in order to build the physical and neurological mechanisms to operate faster and more competently. And when I say slow, I mean 30 or 20 BPM. If you have never payed with a click I suggest you begin to learn and as you get used to it, it will start act as a guiding hand, sharpening your timing and sense of rhythm. This leads me to my next point.
You know all the notes on the staff and that's great but how is your knowledge of rests? Knowing when not to play is as important as knowing when to play. Learning typical rhythmical groupings is also important because then you can view these groupings as single entities rather than as a collection of individual notes. I suggest you youtube drumming tutorials that have sheet music accompanying their instructions. You'll get a better sense of what I mean then. If you develop strong sense of timing and rhythm, irrespective of the key, melody etc.., and begin to see note placement patterns at first glance, you'll have moved a good way down the road of becoming a competent sight reader.
When you say you play it carefully once through and then memorise it, are you really playing it through or do you make a ton of mistakes on the first attempt and then begin studying the piece, foregoing any other sight reading? Improving at sight reading should be a long term goal with consistent observable progress. The little aphorism of 'little and often' should become your mantra - do a little bit of sight reading often. How often? Well, if you do twenty minutes of practise everyday devote 2-5mins to sight reading. Short focused blast of deliberate and intense concentration that will find satisfying and beneficial to your practise.
How little? Try one to four bars of music and then move on. Make mental notes of your weaknesses (you missed the rest, I can't read those ledgers lines, You've never seen so many accidentals!). Wash rinse repeat daily or whenever you practise ;). Consistency is King.
(0-10 seconds): identify time signature, key and tempo. Mentally play the main scale or mock-play it (think of Adrien Brody in the Pianist). If there are awkward notes (accidentals and sharps for example) rest your fingers on them for a moment and internalize the fact that you will have to play them at some stage.
I'm going to approach this answer from a different perspective, my own. For years I had trouble sight reading because it took more time to focus on the notes and be certain of their place on the stave. I have problems with my sight where I see double images when I look at things from certain angles so I can see double notes, double staves etc. when trying to sight read. Very confusing when sight reading. I had my eyes checked by several doctors with no solution, but I kept trying and finally found a doctor who knew the solution. He tested me, gave me a new prescription for glasses and now I don't see double when I'm wearing them. If your problem stems from eye problems, you'll need to get that fixed before you do anything else.
My first reaction to hearing about this book was admittedly mixed, on the one hand delighted that this wonderful resource has been extended to accommodate the needs of early elementary players, but the other hand stifling a weary sigh that in a year which has seen exam boards straining to dominate the music education agenda, yet more grade material has appeared for review.
Trinity College London Exams have offered an Initial Grade as a pre-Grade 1 assessment for several years now, and from 2021 onwards ABRSM have decided to follow suit.
In both cases, the repertoire selections are only a little easier than the actual Grade 1 pieces, although the supporting tests are generally quite a bit easier. When it comes to the sight reading tests, both boards stick to a simple five-note range without any black keys, one hand playing at a time, and with simple terraced expression marks.
It should be possible for the student to learn one of the pieces between each lesson, without hearing it, independently, without assistance. This exposure to working from a score alone aids the development of good literacy, while also shining a spotlight on aspects of notation which the student might not have encountered or understood aright.
While most of the pieces stay within an octave of Middle C with each hand, a few towards the end venture to the further reaches of the piano, written with ledger lines rather than resorting to the 8va indication. In those cases, the pieces are preceded by a written identification and short explanation of where to find the new notes.
The pieces towards the end of the collection could probably pass as Initial Grade repertoire, and hopefully by this point the book has truly done its job, enabling the early elementary player to enjoy learning music directly from notation.
Certainly I anticipate using more initial demonstration here than I typically do with later books in the series, but I have no doubt students will respond enthusiastically to this material, and indeed at this early level most of my students learn 2-3 pieces every week anyway.
What makes this book so successful, in my view, is the joy of the imaginative content, which is beyond superb. Kudos to Paul Harris for his seemingly endless ability to produce material of such consistently high musical and pedagogic content!
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This progressive method provides a carefully paced approach to the sight reading requirements of Trinity grade exams at Grades 3 to 5. For each grade there are ten lessons, each with a clear area of focus. Stage-appropriate sight reading tips, both general and specific to the instrument, are given along the way.
Each lesson presents four or five preparatory exercises leading to a duet, included to encourage the development of ensemble sight reading skills. While duets are not required for grade exams, they are vital in building confidence and rhythmic fluency. Each duet builds on the same musical ideas as the preceding exercises, consolidating the learning and assisting the student through familiarity.
Official Trinity specimen sight reading tests from Trinity's Sound at Sight Piano (original series) conclude each grade section. By the time the student has completed the ten lessons they should be well prepared to cope with the demands of these tests. Further specimen tests are available separately in Sound at Sight Piano (2nd series).
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