Hi everyone

I had a private lesson on tuesday, and my teacher said that today we are going to site read some duets,
i was like in my head, omg no sight reading plz, not 2day...I told her i'll take the duets home...,
she said no! no!, we are sight reading today and now..i wasn't that bad honestly, but still horrible,.. .

she told me afterwards 'sasha ur good but that sight reading, we have to do somethingabout that!!!'

honestly ppl,i can't sight read( i wander how i passed those on my RSM practical exams) many of my friends who play other instruments have the also same problem...

Anyone got any tips

thanx

Just sightread as much as you possibly can. The more music that paces in front of you the better you'll get. Also practice your scales, as a lot of music has scales or scale fragments in it.

I hate to give such an obvious answer, but practice sight reading. Daily. Get some music books, borrow some from your teacher, get a hymn book...anything. Spend a few minutes each day.

Go slowly. Hitting right notes slowly and carefully is a lot better than blazing through with tons of wrong notes. Use a metronome and force yourself to keep in time, and do not stop while sight reading. Keep going even when you hit a wrong note. And don't ever announce your wrong notes by saying, "oops". That's a bad habit I had to break.
Before you begin make sure you know what key your in and if there's time play a quick silent scale to make sure you've got the right notes under your fingers.
And of course practice your scales and appegios (shudder)....

www.fluteninja.com

Practice! That's how I learned how to read both the treble and bass clefs. After awhile you'll get a lot better.

follow the advice you have already been given, and be sure to know your scales. Sight-reading is a combination of skill and talent, if you plan on being serious about music, you need to get really good at it.

Start with something very easy and use a metronome. I like the "Tune a Day" series. They start pretty easy and progress. Borrow some old method books from your BD. If you sightread hymn tunes, holiday music or pop music just make sure you look at the rhythms carefully, the rhythms are usually changed or simplified. Just read a few lines a day and you should notice an improvement.

I like the whole "know your scales" thing mentioned. I have to say, though...do your scales, but instead of doing C then C# down the line...Take the C Major, and then start on D with the C major key sig. Go through all of the scales you can with that key sig. So, C D E F G A B...then do C#...D# E# F# G# A# B#...So basically you are doing the same scale just starting on a different note within that scale each time. This makes you more fluent in your scales, and comes in handy when you have runs that are partial scales...or scales in other modes. If this freaks you out...just practice regular scales...but I recommend the Taffanel and Gaubert #4 in the 17 Big Daily Exercises book for the scales...which almost does what I was talking about previously.

-Dennis

Dennis, do you mean modes?

I wish Sweet16notes would have given some more information on her level of playing. Unless she already knows all of her major scales 2 octaves I think "modes" could be confusing. If she is a "terrible sightreader", I think starting with very easy material and a metronome is better, it will build her confidence level and her sighreading will improve a lot faster.

I think Dennis did a pretty good job of explaining modes so that they're not confusing, and he's right that they will help improve her sightreading. They aren't any more difficult than scales starting on the tonic, and I'd encourage sweet16notes to try playing through the various modes on a given scale.

The only problem with calling them modes is the fact that if I said do D in all of the modes...you would have 7 different keys for D now...and that might get REALLY confusing...in a way I was explaining about how the modes worked without all the confusion as to how to "make" the modes. I hope that clears it up a little...

-Dennis

Thanx!!!!
Oh and i do know what modes are