[jnovek]

Please don’t take this personally, but this isn’t very helpful advice.

I’ve learned how to do many things in my life, and I’ve come to appreciate that it’s very easy to practice the wrong thing and never make any progress.

Another way to phrase my question might be, “What and how should I practice to develop my music reading skills?”

[yesenadam]

Pianist here, regularly won sight-reading competitions in my youth etc. GP's answer seemed a good answer to me. Your first sentence seemed rude, disrespectful.

What kind of music do you want to be able to read? Presumably the music you like and want to play. So read that. You will always be reading new stuff you don't know, not the same thing over and over, so I'm not sure how never making any progress is a possibility. Sight reading/playing difficult music is not easy, sounds like you want a quick way of learning the skill, which doesn't exist.

    A fellow went to a Zen master and said, “If I work very hard, how soon can I be enlightened?”
    The Zen master looked him up and down and said, “Ten years.”
    The fellow said, “No, listen, I mean if I really work at it, how long—”
    The Zen master cut him off. “I’m sorry. I misjudged. Twenty years.”
    ”Wait!” Said the young man, “You don’t understand! I’m—”
    “Thirty years,” said the Zen master.

[jnovek]

> Your first sentence seemed rude, disrespectful.

Really? I genuinely trying to communicate that I was criticizing their opinion and not them personally. Did it come off as sarcastic? In any case, I apologize.

You are being awfully presumptuous. I am doing this because I enjoy it. I don’t have a destination or a timeline. I am not asking for a “quick fix”.

I’m asking how to focus studies in music because I struggled for many years with music when I was in school. I did practice quite a bit and always lagged behind.

Your response reminds me why I don’t ask people on the internet for help.

[djhn]

I don't think your question was rude at all.

I feel similarly. I've performed the Chopin/Liszt etudes and Bach's sinfonias as a kid (which I guess translate to intermediate classical piano skill) but would struggle to sight read even the two-part inventions at 1/2 or even 1/4 speed.

I'd be quite keen to use some method to upgrade my sight reading to where I find learning new music rewarding, as long as it's known to produce results.

Currently I can learn a Chopin Nocturne or Mazurka much faster by ear (listening to it to learn the rhythm/melody/harmony) to recreate it roughly and watching someone play it to get the more exact voicing (with the sheet music as a reference mostly).

[jnovek]

I appreciate your response! It’s honestly helpful to hear that people who are more accomplished than I am can also struggle with sight reading.

One piece of advice that I received elsewhere in this thread that may also apply to you is to sight read as many pieces as you can at an easier skill level than your current proficiency and accept that you’ll make tons of mistakes.

Personally, I’m going to buy a few thrift store “learning piano” books to try this out.

[scrozier]

This is fascinating to me! Although I'm moderately good at playing "by ear," I would never learn a piece the way you describe it. But maybe I should try! On the other hand, I'm a very good sight reader. Interesting how two people can get to the same destination by two very different routes.

[yesenadam]

Ok, again you are rude, not a surprise this time. I spent time giving you a more useful answer and got multiple rude comments in return.

[MandieD]

I can only give advice for “one note at a time” instruments like the flute or trumpet: practice sight reading children’s songs you know (and therefore can tell if you’ve made a huge mistake) - sight reading, not memorizing! As you get more proficient at reading those, slowly choose harder things - melody lines from a familiar church hymnal are ideal for this. If you make mistakes, finish the phrase, then repeat it, but here, you should be going for quantity, not quality.

Treat this as a separate part of your practice.

I would imagine it’s similar for piano or guitar.

[vintermann]

It really isn't. You highlight something important: musicians don't usually learn to convert notation to music in their heads. Instead, they learn to associate notation with how to make the sound, e.g. finger positions.

I remember in ear training class in high school all the brass kids playing imaginary valves with their fingers when trying to sight-sing.

It's harder for singers, and quadratically harder for instruments where you have more positions and play more notes at once.

[InitialLastName]

It seems like there's a three-way connection that forms in a musician's head between the note on the page, the sound the note makes, and the muscle memory for playing the note. Each connection is strengthened by different types of practice, and supported by each other, but often with the way we teach music the kinetic is a proxy between the aural and the visual; this is especially true of people who learn mechanical instruments.

One way to boost the aural/visual connection (when you already have strong aural/kinetic and visual/kinetic connections) is to pick up instruments that are very different from the ones you already know; I would think this is the goal of music education programs requiring basic proficiency with piano and singing, regardless of the student's main instrument. Once you have to learn a new set of muscle memory associations to go from the same note on the page to the same note in your ear, it starts to break down the strength of the muscle memory associations.

[scrozier]

However, if you can sight sing, it makes playing music on a wind instrument much easier, as you have a target in your head for what the note should sound like as you play it. Sight singing is a very good skill for instrumentalists.

[egypturnash]

I am by no means even a decent amateur guitarist but "practice with songs you know" definitely lines up with what I was being asked to do when I was taking guitar lessons as a kid.