Sightreading v. Practicing

Imagine the most challenging piano piece you've ever heard or wanted to play. Now, picture your child (or yourself!) picking up that complex sheet music, with notes that look like tiny bugs crawling across the page, and being able to play through it on sight. It might not be perfect the first time, but it's close. With a bit of polishing, it can become one of the songs they (or you!) enjoy playing regularly.

This ability is called "sightreading"—playing through a new piece of music with minimal difficulty. You can only sightread a piece once; the second time you play it, you're practicing. To excel at sightreading, you must play a lot of new music. Practicing, on the other hand, makes you good at playing familiar music. Let that sink in.

Sightreading is a skill that needs to start developing at the very first piano lesson...and prioritized from the moment the fingers touch the keys, and throughout your musical journey!

It's the students who are good at sightreading who feel comfortable playing in recitals, who enjoy being part of ensembles and school productions, and who don't have to shrink away when asked to play in public.

Of course, Practice is essential for reinforcing note names and placement, building a strong musical foundation...and it's fun to polish songs until they sound like art. It is with practice that we build repertoire, technique, become familiar with composers, and begin to understand music theory.

However, traditional private lessons often focus almost entirely on practice. As a result, sightreading skills either never develop properly or deteriorate quickly, replaced by memorization and repetition. And, as soon as this process sets in, progress and lessons come to a grinding halt.

Our lessons at The Music Studio are different from the traditional one-on-one style. We believe that to achieve musical goals, a student must equally balance the ability to sightread and to practice, at all levels.

Without the ability to sightread (music fluency), one is confined to learning songs note by note, relying heavily on memorization and dedicating countless hours to repetitive practice. Furthermore, without effective practice skills, students will merely skim the surface of their pieces, lacking a deep understanding of the underlying structure and the ability to transform mere "notes on a page" into a true musical masterpiece, thereby hindering the development of a substantial repertoire.