Unit 12 — Sight-reading
Read music you have never seen, in time: look ahead, keep the beat, and let a missed note go. Unit 12 plays fresh pages along in time in C, G and F, taps rhythms at sight, and ends the path with the Minuet in G, Pleyel and Scarlatti.
Songs in this unit
Read music you have never seen, in time: look ahead, keep the beat, and let a missed note go. Unit 12 is the last unit of the path. It plays fresh pages along in time, in C, G and F, taps rhythms at sight, and finishes with three pieces and a final checkpoint.
- Prerequisite: Unit 11.
- New notes: none.
- Idea: keeping going.
Before, during and after
- Before you play: the key, the time signature, the lowest and highest notes, and where the hands move.
- While you play: eyes a note ahead of the hands; keep the beat; skip what is missed and come back in at the next beat or bar.
- After: play it once more. The second reading is the reward.
The sittings, in order
- Keep going (concept). Eyes a note ahead; the beat matters more than any one note. You play a page along.
- Read in time. A new page, played along: a slip doesn't stop it.
- Rhythm at sight. Every value so far (quarter, half, dotted half, whole, rests and eighths) in 4/4 and 3/4.
- Mix. Lightning round, play it, a phrase, rhythm taps and echo.
- Read in G, in time.
- Read in F, in time.
- Use it: Minuet in G, with bass, in time.
- Use it: Pleyel, Rondo (melody), in time.
- Use it: Scarlatti, Sonata in C (melody). In 12/8 with dotted quarters, which no rhythm sitting has taught, so the music waits for each note instead.
- Final checkpoint. All notes, in C, G and F, in time.
Teaching notes
- The beat outranks the notes. A steady beat with a few wrong notes is music; stopping to fix each one isn't.
- Pages are generated fresh. Every Read in time page is new, so you never run out of music you haven't seen.
- Choose a slow tempo. Slow enough to keep going through the hardest bar.
- From here, any song in the library is practice. The Songs tab marks the ones you can read now.
Common mistakes
- Stopping to fix a slip. Let it go and come back in.
- Skipping the look before playing. A missed key signature is the most common cause of a bad first reading.
- Only replaying known pieces. Sight-reading grows with new music, a little every day.
Related guides
Back to the whole path.