Kenneth Saxon serves on the faculty at the University of Texas at Bronwsville where he also teaches piano, class piano, and music appreciation. Previously, he served on the faculties of Mississippi State University, Talladega College, Mississippi University for Women, the University of Alabama, and Shorter College. As a pianist, Saxon enjoys presenting diverse programs and is dedicated to performing contemporary works. Saxon has performed as a soloist and collaborative pianist throughout the United States and in Mexico. He holds a doctorate in piano performance from the University of Alabama where he was awarded a Graduate Council Fellowship. His teachers include Amanda Penick , Anthony di Bonaventura, Bela Nagy, Elizabeth Buday, and Helen Ramsaur. His recordings include Kawai Shiu's clear shade for the CD, music of kawai shiu (SSR0004) and Shiu's Winter Tide for the CD, eXchange:China (CRI805).
Kenneth Saxon
University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College
Department of Fine Arts
Brownsville, TX 78520
956.882.8267
kenneth.saxon@utb.edu
I was asked to join a contemporary music ensemble as a student. During my tenure in the group, I received some hard knocks and tough lessons in sight-reading. As a student pianist, I had almost no experience playing with a conductor and scant experience reading music with an ensemble. To say that the music we played was difficult would be a gross understatement -- frequently in manuscript, it was often practically illegible. Despite these difficulties (and at the first rehearsal!) the conductor raised his baton, and boom, we were off to the races. Maintaining the beat in tempo was the number one priority, and I was frequently left at the gate, struggling with notes and rhythms while the beat and the ensemble simply left me behind.
As I gained experience in similar situations, I became better able to maintain a steady beat, and I found that maintaining the beat was the key to playing correct rhythms and notes. I began to understand the advantage instrumentalists received from years of ensemble playing, the ability and even necessity of sight reading without stopping or losing the beat. I realized that the techniques I learned reading thorny contemporary scores worked just as well for traditional literature, and best of all, could be taught in a straightforward manner to my piano students by encouraging them to follow a few simple guidelines.
Student pianists face two distinct disadvantages:
1. Pianists are not forced to learn to keep going and so they don't.
Rarely do they rehearse with ensembles. If they did, they might learn the craft of sight- reading as other instrumentalists learn it, with an ensemble encouraging their continuity and a conductor dictating their beat.
2. Pianists' hands are not within their field of vision when they look at the
music nor is the music in their field of vision when they look at their hands. A student who struggles with sight-reading always seems to have his eyes in the wrong place.
Below, I have outlined the guidelines I ask my students to follow during sight reading practice. Of course, sight-reading must be practiced regularly! However, little progress is made by practicing the wrong way.
Keep your eyes strictly on the page.
Teachers are frequently heard making this demand when they witness their students looking back and forth from score to keyboard in a confused manner. We teachers need to do more than just blurt this out during the particularly frustrating moments of a lesson.
Take the time to establish the importance of "eyes on the page." If the student still struggles, break the task down into manageable sections by asking him to play just one measure with eyes strictly on the page, followed by two measures, then three measures, etc.
Although I've tried blocking a student's view of his hands with a book, I don't find this technique as effective as breaking the music up into manageable units along with frequent gentle reminders to look up at the music. Students often continue to glance down despite an obstruction placed between them and the keyboard.
If a student is extremely handicapped by the habit of glancing up and down, be sure he is assigned music that doesn't require the hands to shift positions on the keyboard. Again, break the task down into manageable sections.
To progress in sight-reading, students absolutely must be able to keep eyes on the page. First, make sure the student is accomplished at reading music that does not demand changes in hand position. In my experience, the ability to read music with eyes strictly on the page is simply a matter of encouragement, discipline and practice.
In addition, encourage students to keep their eyes strictly on the page anytime they are using the score. The habits of good sight-reading should be maintained as long as the music is used, whether for accompanying or just during the process of learning a new piece. A clear differentiation needs to be made between pieces played with the score and pieces played from memory.
Poor sight-readers always seem intent on learning the hardest repertoire around, and it is in the process of learning a new piece that they often reveal their worst reading habits. The teacher is told, "I knew it by heart at home," but in the lesson, the piece is a mess both with and without the music. The student doesn't know whether to look up or down and neither way is effective.
When I audition transfer students with poor reading skills and inappropriately difficult repertoire, I emphasize the importance sight-reading will play in my studio. In addition, I try to gauge their willingness to compromise on repertoire before I take them on. By selling the student on the idea that with the right tools, they can really make progress in sight-reading, and by choosing repertoire that is rich in content, if not in difficulties, I find most transfer students more than willing to make the changes I suggest.
Keep the eyes focused on the beat.
In the beginning, students should be encouraged to keep their eyes focused on each beat as they are playing it. Students are frequently told to look ahead while sight-reading. This time honored instruction may cause some problems for the student trying to develop good reading skills. The confusion of looking at one thing while playing another can cause the reader to lose the beat, the rhythm and/or get entirely lost in the music. In addition, trying to force the eyes ahead tenses them so that they do not respond in an optimal way to the demands of seeing the music.
Sue Haug in "Sight Playing and Visual Perception: The Eyes Have It" (The American Music Teacher. December/January, 1990/91) points to research that demonstrates how advanced readers' eyes move in a rapid and elusive fashion back and forth across the page. I think this sophisticated behavior is a result of good habits, practice and skill. I do not think it is a regulation that a teacher can enforce upon a student's reading practice. However, teachers should be able to point students in the proper direction, and orienting the eyes on the beat can serve as a good starting point.
Teachers might also suggest that the student try to consciously relax their eyes before beginning. Next instruct the student to train their eyes on the notes contained in each beat. The best way to keep your students' eyes on the beat is to have them counting out loud! With practice, the student will soon begin to group notes within the beat together. This skill can serve as a starting point from which the eyes can gradually develop the more sophisticated skill of roaming freely across the score.
Count out loud!
This really encourages eyes on the page. Students seem to be almost incapable of counting out loud and looking at their hands at the same time! It also keeps the reader focused on the beat and the rhythm as opposed to a specific note or notes that might tie them up and cause a pause.
Very few students like to count out loud, and some will insist that they cannot. Tell them that playing and counting at the same time is something they must learn to do by practicing it at home. Then cajole, encourage, applaud, whatever works for each student.
Keep Going
Counting out loud and "eyes on the page" are powerful tools to help the student keep going. Students seem to place the greatest value on playing the correct notes, regardless of any rhythmic or metric mistakes. Point out that stopping for a wrong note creates additional rhythmic and metric mistakes that can be avoid by continuing. Instrumental majors can be encouraged to keep going as they would in their ensembles. Relate their piano playing to their ensemble reading. Class piano students can learn the value of continuity by reading and playing together as a group.
Help students value the ability to keep going by first encouraging them to keep the beat. Maintain a hierarchy where the beat is most important, the rhythm comes second and the notes come last. First, praise students' ability to keep going despite some wrong rhythms and notes. Next, point out their progress when the beat and the rhythm are being adhered to. Never stop a student while they are reading because of a wrong note or accidental. Notes can be corrected later. The student who can keep the beat and play correct rhythms will dramatically improve their note reading accuracy.
Read by intervals.
Here is another tool that encourages continuity and "eyes on the page." The student who reads note-by-note will always have a tendency to look up and down as they locate each note first in the music and then on the keyboard. Compared to students who read note-by-note, students who read by interval are less likely to look down at their hands, even when they make a mistake. As the student measures intervals visually, they perform a similar process on the keyboard, measuring intervals with fingers and hands.
Method books that gradually introduce intervals to the student are one of my preferred materials for teaching reading. Students can learn the visual line-space relationship of a second as they gain the tactile sense of seconds on the keyboard. Visually, the interval of a third is line-line or space-space, and on the keyboard, the fingers learn to play a skip. Simplistic as this may sound, it is vital to emphasize this sort of relationship between the visual and the tactile from the start. Even more advanced students may need a dose of this sort of teaching to get them moving.
I remember teachers telling me that if I would group more notes together I could improve my sight-reading. Unfortunately, at that time, I'd never even heard of intervallic reading, and I wasn't counting out loud. Unable to group two notes together in an interval, I was hardly prepared to group multiple notes into phrases and chords. I feel that the essentials of sight-reading are to be found in simple yet fundamental ideas like intervallic reading. Sometimes, the time it takes to insure that a student understands a concept like intervallic reading, "eyes on the page" or counting out loud can mean the difference between success and failure.
Give the student something they CAN read.
Practicing sight-reading requires that a great deal of reading material be kept on hand. These materials need to be divided into levels of difficulty. It is best to have a generous amount of music as well as a wide variety of music for each level.
Start each student at a level where they can read successfully (placing the highest priority on a steady beat without pauses and playing correct rhythms). Give the student plenty of material to read at that level; yet don't hesitate to move on to the next level if they are not being challenged. Keep the idea of a steady beat foremost in the students mind. When they are able to keep a steady beat and read correct rhythms and notes with relative ease, it is time to increase the level. However, if a student canŐt keep a steady beat, you may need to lower the level.
The main problem here is financial. I maintain a lending library for the purpose of sight-reading. In addition, I have each student invest in one or two sight-reading books, and I simply circulate the books among my students as necessary. Sight-reading books, method books and graded solo literature all make good reading material. These types of pedagogical material are both plentiful and graded into recognizable levels for easy assignment.
Go over sight-reading frequently at lessons and make new assignments at every lesson. Also, try to allow time for students to read sections of new repertoire pieces during their lessons. This is an important activity providing as it does the opportunity to continually access the relationship between a student's reading skills and their repertoire level. It is another way for the teacher to see that good reading techniques are used at all times.
These simple directions have led to dramatic improvements in my students' reading abilities. With success has come an enthusiasm on the students' part that makes the entire process more pleasurable and effective. Whether the student is a beginner, a class piano student or a transfer, this enthusiasm keeps students interested and engaged and helps them get excited about a skill some thought they might never acquire.
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