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Originally Posted by GuitarStudent
I knew an excellent classical violinist who could only play that way. She could not improvise or play by ear.
Very odd. A simple blues improvisation was impossible for her. I'm sure with practice she could have learned to do it.
Reading music is like reading a language. It takes years to become fluent and it's best to start young.
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04-04-2020 08:17 AM
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I'm a geezer, and promised myself I'd get serious about sight reading many times over the years. In the last year my skills have vastly increased using a program called Sight Reading Factory. It is highly customizable, preset levels, can separate rhythm from melody, any key, any instrument, unlimited material of any length The best part for me is tempo control...i.e, starting slow and working up.
SRF has been working great for me--and it is so convenient being a click away on my desktop. Doing 30 minutes or so a day, I am truly making progress. I do lots of rhythm only practice to start, and melodic practice--a different key every day, in 3 or four positions. I do both easier reading at fast tempos, and harder stuff slow as necessary.
I have no connection with the company, aside from being a highly satisfied customer. I feel like I'm making up for lost time, having started really late. (I was a jock in school and missed out on the orchestra experience.)
Anyway, I think the program is great and may help someone here. And has free trial!
Sight Reading Factory(R)
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Respectfully: I find it predictable that classical musicians (players) can’t improvise. Their job doesn’t call for (allow) improvisation.
Classical composing is a different kettle-of-fish altogether. I recall reading that improvisation is real-time composing. Prerequisites include chord-spellings, chord progressions, diatonic chord sets, rhythm-vocabulary, etc.
Classical players (vs. classical composers) don’t compose. They interpret. Their job is bringing to life what’s written. A core skill is to sight read. And not just notes but rhythmical figures too.
Different jobs. Yes?
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Originally Posted by Onlyserious
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Originally Posted by bob32069
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04-04-2020, 09:40 PM #131joelf GuestOriginally Posted by Jason Sioco
You use a different part of your brain and different skill set reading. That gives a rounded picture, taken with the ear and improvising skills. And it makes you know the board and all the possibilities, LH-wise. And as you memorize you will see those patterns again, and it becomes that much easier. When you put the ear and craft skills together it's pretty powerful. And it opens up work opportunities.
Earlier I read through Chopin's famous Prelude #4 on piano. I had analyzed it before, but I didn't peek, just did it slow---it's marked Largo anyway, so what's the rush? Then I dug out a Debussy piano collection I've had for years, but never cracked. Didn't feel up to going to the keyboard again, so I checked out a few analyses. Tomorrow I will go back to the Chopin and do some guitar studies I've been checking out. It holds the attention more IMO when the reading is useful and connected to things you actually play routinely. Barry Galbraith's Fingerboard Workbook is very jazz-based. All the phrases are 8th note and harmonically mother's milk. I want to get his 2-part Invention arrangements next. Then there's an old classical studies book I found years ago in a library basement: Mauro Giuliani etudes. It's a lot of 3rds and 6ths that I use anyway, and I can try different fingerings.
For sight-reading and more intervallic studies,sheet music is very good. Just go through the tunes w/o stopping for mistakes. If it helps use a metronome.
I'm trying to make use of the forced shut-in time. Aside from composing and general shedding this is a great opportunity to get rusty skills up to speed...
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Originally Posted by FatJeff
Ya, but he never let it get in his way!
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Now we're quoting 10 year old posts....must be a jazz history day.
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04-05-2020, 09:24 AM #134joelf GuestOriginally Posted by Doug B
Until he couldn't take Julliard's racist s$$t anymore, and was learning what he really wanted on The Street, so he split...Last edited by joelf; 04-05-2020 at 02:45 PM.
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04-05-2020, 01:44 PM #135joelf Guest
I am SO slow reading at piano! Spent 1 1/2 hours reading and analyzing (my real purpose) Clair de Lune. Don't care if it takes til next year. I'm seeing those delicate, floating voicings with implied pentatonics. You see where so much of what we use came from, just using different names. 'They' were way ahead of 'us' harmonically---no earth-shattering insight.
Got the Galbraith and Giuliani out for after a well-earned break...
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After being bored to tears playing "Twinkle Twinkle little Stars" and other assorted goodies
up and down the guitar neck, I chucked sightreading for the time being. Some blokes I know are
into gypsy jazz guitar. They can play all the standards under the sun but not ONE of those little
black dots. I don't know, guess reading music is cool, but...
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#1 reason why guitarists are poor sight readers is that they don’t do it all the time from early childhood.
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Yep. we don't do it. Beginner guitarists can sound pretty impressive within weeks without knowing more than a few chord shapes and most don't get past that. I came round, when I started to study harmony, scales etc.
The Hendrix books make me laugh - like Hendrix spent time writing out his 1/4 bends and vibrato.
I wouldn't worry about it; all this 'you better be prepared to read it perfectly from the off so you can be with 'the pro guys' for whom time is money' is yet more willy waving - certainly of no importance to the majority of people here.
My reading has developed mostly as a result of having to play in big bands, and significantly in composing using score software. For me, the biggest help was realising the importance of 5th position. Low A to high C in the range where most melodies take place. Took me ages to venture out from 3rd.
And true, you have to do lots of it, too.
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I read like xxxx because once I've decided where to fret the note and a fingering too memorization wants to take over
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What I've done is go out and get the Wohlfart (spelling?) books and I practice some single lines as much as I can. I also take my Real Book (which a lot of people don't recommend for different reasons) and I practice reading the melody lines and I combine them with chords where the melody is played on the instrument. Over the last year, I've dramatically improved on single line sight reading but now I have to tackle chords. It just takes time to learn. Don't be afraid to give the technique the time to be learned. It may take longer than you think but in time you'll get there.
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My emotional path through sight reading so far:
1) This is impossible. Everyone who says they can sight read is lying.
2) I have early onset Alzheimer’s.
3) I am actually reading B-C-D whole notes in open position on the B string. At 40 beats per minute. With only a few mistakes. I am Mozart reincarnated.
4) Wait.... the guitar has more than one string?
5) I am reading E-F-G quarter notes in open position on the E string. At 50 bpm. Mostly playing the wrong notes. No matter! I will be composing the next Concierto De Aranjuez next week!
6) Eighth notes are the devil’s spawn. I am in hell.
7) There’s a thing called sixteenths? I will sell my guitar collection and begin collecting drier lint. I will have the most awesome drier lint collection in North America.
8) I am reading the entire C scale in open position at 65 bpm. Steve Vai should start looking for a new career.
9) What’s that curly thing? A ‘rest’......??? I am in hell.
And so it goes....
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I think of sightreading as kind of a split skill between deciphering the page and reproducing on your instrument. Most of my sightreading deficiencies on the guitar stem from the former, deciphering the page. Once I became a good reader on bass, which happened in my late 30s, reading bass clef, I subbed a gig playing guitar in a big band, and found I could read almost as well on guitar in treble (it was a snarky puppy arrangement, it required legit good reading).
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Originally Posted by pcsanwald
Cheers!Last edited by Jazzism; 04-16-2020 at 12:47 AM.
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Originally Posted by ccroft
I would offer a suggestion that sometimes reading on the instrument is complicated by the fact that some arrangers and people that write charts don’t know how to write for the instrument.
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#1 reason is lack of motivation. (slackers)
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Because they are smarter about how they should spend their valuable practice time.
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It's important to know your instrument and be able to read music at some capacity. But being a sight reader is a whole different ball game. It's difficult to acquire and it requires constant maintenance. You have to be using it to keep it up. It's a specialized skill that's not applicable to the lives of many musicians.
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I think of sightreading as kind of a split skill between deciphering the page and reproducing on your instrument.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
Elias Prinz -- young talent from Munich
Yesterday, 10:24 PM in The Players