Four years of sight reading practice

This is cool, though the notes in your example look pretty random? Are they actually randomly or is it just too modern for me to hear it without playing it?

I'm a fairly average pianist, but sight reading is a (relative) strength. Being able to play random notes is definitely part of it, but I think for me sight-reading is more about getting a sense of the gist of the music (a lot of pattern matching of common phrases, cadences, hand positions etc) - this is kind of subconcious, then my focus is on keeping my internal version aligned with what's on the page (spotting where the written music is doing something different or interesting and making sure you hit those notes). The latter part would definitley improve by practicing random notes, but the first bit is more akin to improvisation - you've got some lossy, distilled version of the music in your head (from memory or from your first mental parse of the full manuscript) and you're trying to recreate it (or expound on it).

I think what really helped my reading was having lots of cheap/free sheet music on hand and just trying to play it (simplifying massively if needed, but trying to get the sense of it, even if only playing 20% of the notes)

>I am mostly counting the number of sharps and flats and translating that to the keyboard through a pattern I figured out early on. The sharps “activate” from left to right across the groups of black notes, starting with F♯, alternating between the two groups of black notes. This is easier to get into your fingers than any other memorisation technique. The order for flats is mechanically symmetrical – you just start from the right and move left, again from the “first” note in the group of three, which in that case is B♭. I am still not quite sure how other people are learning this, since most of the materials I’ve seen have focused on learning the actual names by rote, using mnemonics like “Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle”

Is this what self-taught looks like? I have never heard of that mnemonic and it was never hard to learn the order of sharps/flats in a key signature. You just look at the way it's written on the staff - two lines of sharps a 4th apart going up progressively, two lines of flats a 4th apart going down progressively.

I don't want to discourage the guy, but practicing every day for 4 years straight and he's only gotten to 60bpm... there are better methods to learn piano sight reading.

I was going to make an app like this years ago but got lazy and didn't. Oh well, nice to know I had the right idea!

Thanks for writing this up, I'm definitely going to incorporate this into my practice routine

I was using this free browser based app ( https://sightreading.training/ ), but the fact that there were random notes drove me crazy.

I love data visualizations like these.

OP if you want to improve sight reading faster, I would recommend using non-random notes - context is very important when sight reading and if you get a professional pianist to sight read random notes they will be much, much slower.

Sight reading factory is one site I know that does this a bit better

I've been playing the piano for 30 years, and although I'm pretty good at sight reading I don't think I would manage well on random notes. Music is generally not random (even jazz): there is structure, there is alternating tension and resolution, lots of patterns etc... However, I can see the appeal of just getting good at translating symbols into sound, I'm pretty sure that if I practiced with random notes I would also get better with patterns.

Having started with traditional piano lessons, being able to sight-read notes without knowing what they are is something I’ve picked up, but not what I want. I think of this as “player piano mode.”

I want to sight-read chords, chord progressions, and other patterns, and get better at playing those.

The best ear training is really solfege. It's been used for centuries. You basically learn to "sing" to create an internal "muscle memory" of the intervals, chords, etc much faster than the typical ear training app.

Edit:

I used singing in quotes because you only really intonate (generate an accurate pitch with your voice). You don't learn actual singing technique.

I have been using the same M-Audio Axiom 49 key MIDI keyboard for years

Used these can be found for cheap, and short of MPE, hammer action, and a build for touring these might have everything a MIDI controller needs.

Layers, splits, onboard programmability, plenty of controls, DIN ports, USB, and afterfouch (but like the author's keyboard, the faders are always missing the custom keycaps for the non-standard size fader stems).

They are a plastic fantastic in gorgeous oughties silver.

> I was not learning to name the key signatures

It was mentioned the person was trying to memorize all these with anki or something. There's actually no need. You only need to memorize 2 key signatures and the rest follow a pattern.

C major has 0 sharps/flats F major has 1 flat

Every sharp key is a half step up from the last sharp shown. G major has 1 sharp F#. G is a half step up from F#. In A major the last sharp is G#, etc.

In flat keys, it's the second flat to the right. Bb has two flats in the signature. Bb and Eb. Ab has 4 where Ab is the 3rd.

All minor keys are a minor third down from their major key. Of course, you have to look at more of the music to determine if it is a in major or minor key.

If you can remember that you can tell what any key signature is pretty quickly.

You mention you are looking for a good resource for training listening - have you tried https://tonedear.com/?

Doesn't practicing with random notes become very boring?

I imagine it would be far more engaging (but also far more complicated) to tap into an archive of songs and present those randomly, either selected by or transposed into the key that you want to practice.