Improving Sight Reading: There’s More to it than “Just Do It!”A Guide to Sight Reading for Low Brass Players

Chapter I: Introduction

There are many ways in which I could introduce this book to you. I could tell you that if

you do what this book tells you to do, you will improve drastically in your sight reading. I could

tell you that sight reading really isn’t that difficult, if you take the right approach to it. I might

even state the importance of the skill of sight reading, that in order to pass for a “real”

musician, good sight reading is a key element. However, I think perhaps the best way to begin is

to give you a personal story of my journey improving my own sight reading that led towards

writing this book.

After graduating with my undergraduate degree in Music Education and Euphonium

Performance, I continued to play in my free time while I taught. As I started playing more and

more, I found that I could play more challenging music. My sound and technique improved, and

I started to feel like a “real” musician. With a little help from my former teacher, I competed in

international competitions, auditioned for jobs, and went back to graduate school, respected as

a top musician at my school. It really seemed like I was on the right path to success.

But one thing continually frustrated me throughout this time. No matter what I tried, I

could not seem to be able to sight read ANYTHING. I remember certain moments very clearly -

reading the Martin Ellerby Euphonium Concerto for the first time, and not being able to make

my eyes see the notes fast enough to decode them; sitting in a quartet, realizing that I was

struggling with reading simple duple rhythms; in lessons, trying to read duets with my teacher

and failing miserably at every turn. The last straw came when I watched a freshman sight read

in front of the studio with a better accuracy of notes and rhythms than I, a master’s student,

could even dream of doing.

It was time to get serious. My poor sight reading was preventing me from getting to the

next level of playing and was hindering my ability to audition successfully and learn music

quickly. It was embarrassing that I could compete successfully in international competitions but

still couldn’t sight read past a freshman level. In order to take the next step in my musical

journey, I needed to learn how to read music and play it right the first time, and I needed to

learn how to do it quickly. I asked teachers, fellow students and musicians, and colleagues what

I should do to become a good sight-reader. All of them, without fail, told me this wonderful

tidbit of advice:

“Just do it – there’s not a secret to it.”

Although this advice seemed about as helpful as throwing a child into a kitchen full of

ingredients and saying “Just cook something,” it was the only advice I received. So I did it.

Sometimes I was more dedicated than other times, but I spent time on it, attempting to sight

read everything that I could. But after several months of “just doing it” and only getting

marginally better, I started thinking that there had to be a better way to go about doing this. I

didn’t understand why I wasn’t getting better, until it suddenly came to me – all I was really

doing was playing music badly…once. I wasn’t improving because I was playing music that was

far beyond my reading skills, and I wasn’t achieving it at a high level. Everything that I sight read

was well within my abilities to play – in fact, after sight reading, it took perhaps 5 minutes of

concentration to play most of the etudes fairly accurately. I didn’t understand that there was a

stark distinction between reading ability and playing ability; although the music was easily

playable, it wasn’t easily readable for me.

The real difficulty of the situation that I was in was that I felt like I should be able to read

music that was close to the difficulty of the music that I could play after weeks or months of

work. After all – I could play the Ellerby and the Cosma! I should be able to read anything after

that! I just couldn’t bring myself to read what I considered incredibly easy music because I felt

like I was too good of a musician and it wouldn’t really help me. I needed to improve at reading

difficult music, not easy music! So I struggled and struggled, and played music badly…once.

The skill of reading music is one that some musicians take for granted. I always thought

it was a case of “have” or “have not;” either you can read, or you cannot. Although I studied

music and practiced, I was never forced to develop good reading skills. I was a dedicated

student, and if I couldn’t play something, I would spend hours on it to figure it out. I developed

skills to practice and work on a piece of music until I fully understood how to play it, but I could

never just sit down and play it accurately the first time. This “good student” behavior allowed

me to get by without ever really having to sight read.

The experience of learning to sight read at this point in my musical career led me to

writing this book. I never learned to sight read for several reasons – 1) it was difficult for me; 2)

I didn’t know where to start; and 3) no one really knew how to teach me. This book has been

written for those who struggle with sight reading, with the purpose of helping them find where

to start and help develop a curriculum of sight reading that focuses upon reading skills in

addition to musical skills.

The book is broken down into 4 large sections. The first section is informational,

explaining and redefining what sight reading is and what is required physically and mentally to

look at music, decode, and translate into performance. In this section, it will also discuss basic

scientific background behind what happens when we read music and words, including the

importance of pattern recognition. This information is the basis behind the method and the

process that will be used with the exercises throughout this book.

Section two is preparatory rhythmic practice, containing a collection of rhythmic

exercises that allow the student to focus on purely rhythms, one of the foundations of sight

reading. Although this is the only element of sight reading that is isolated entirely, it is

extremely important, as good rhythm is the foundation to good sight reading. The sight reading

levels in this book are based primarily upon the rhythm of the etudes, although there is also an

increase in difficulty in other aspects of the music as well, including key signature, range, form,

harmonic content, and stylistic considerations. The third section of the book is focused on the

actual act of sight reading. Chapter 7 includes 6 different levels of sight reading, from beginning

to advanced level. Each of these chapters builds upon the skills of the chapters before,

introducing new reading challenges and technical challenges.

The last section of the book closes the book by giving suggestions for keeping sight

reading in your daily practice routine and keeping it exciting and interesting. This includes ideas

for duet sight reading games and ways to get your eyes and brain moving faster while sight

reading. It reinforces and reminds about the process and lists ways to continue to find sight

reading materials beyond just low brass materials.

The goal of this book is to set up a curriculum and a set of guidelines for improving sight

reading that make the sight reading process more helpful, rather than ingraining habits of

playing things poorly once. There is not a way to create a “sight reading” book that would

include enough songs to sight read – after all, it would only be helpful once! However, what I

have attempted to do in this book is to give multiple etudes that build upon reading skills as

well as resources that will help the reader create a list of other etudes that work on similar skills

within regularly used tuba and euphonium etude books. The goal is NOT to be the definitive

book of sight reading, but rather to serve as a starting point for forming a personal curriculum

of sight reading. Sight reading is a never-ending process; as long as composers continue to write

new music, we must continue to develop our sight reading skills. I wish you the best of luck in

your sight reading endeavors, and hope that this book will help you on your way!

SECTION I: Informational

Chapter 2: Background Research

“Educationists and other members of the musical profession deplore the general state of reading ability for music, but freely admit that no formal instruction of an organized nature is available on this subject.”

- Maxwell M. Lang, University of South Wales1

Before attempting to write this book, I realized that I needed a basis for my theories on

sight reading and pattern recognition. I needed to know more about what actually occurs

scientifically in the process of sight reading before trying to create a method to improve the skill

of sight reading. The exercises and process of this book are based upon the psychological

processes and eye movement patterns that occur during the reading of music. Although it is not

absolutely necessary to understand the “why” behind this book for it to be useful, the

reasoning behind the method still warrants a section in this book.2

What follows here is an overview of important information found in several studies

involving sight reading music. Sight reading is complex process involving both physical and

psychological processes. Because of the various processes involved in sight reading, studies

have been published in both musical and scientific journals. I will do my best to make the topic

accessible to the average reader, but there are several complexities involved in the descriptions

of “what happens” when we sight read that cannot be avoided.

PART 1: Eye Movement in Sight Reading

We should begin with how the eye gathers information. You may ask, “Why is this

information important? Knowing what my eyes do doesn’t make me sight read any better!” No

one would (or should!) believe that the reading of music depends only on the processing of the

1 Maxwell M. Lang, “An Investigation of Eye Movements Involved in the Reading of Music,” The Australian Journal of Optometry. Vol 46:4 (1963): 592 Bibliographical information about all studies can be found in Appendix B

eyes. However, since the eyes are the initial step in the process, if there is an issue of eye

movement that is inhibiting information from reaching the cognitive process, sight reading will

undoubtedly be affected by it.

Eye movement operates in a different way than some may initially think. Our eyes do

not move at a steady pace from left to right when gathering visual information from text or

music; they move in a series of saccades and fixations. Fixations are just what one might

assume – they are short periods of time (200-400 milliseconds) that the eyes pause in a

particular location to gather information3. Saccades are the movements between fixations, and

in text or music reading, they move left and right. Movements to the right are called

“progressive saccades,” while movements to the left are called “regressive saccades.”4 Eye

movement determines what information is available for perceptual processing; it determines

the sequence of information as well as the amount of time that the information is available.5

The eyes regulate the flow of information into the cognitive system; there are several theories

on how this occurs that will be discussed later in this chapter.

When sight reading music, our eyes travel usually slightly ahead of the music we are

producing, meaning that our eyes are usually slightly ahead of what we are currently playing.

One question I asked myself in preparation for writing this book was “where exactly do the eyes

fixate when reading music?” It is important to know whether the eyes fixate on every note,

every beat, every measure, or perhaps in some fashion unrelated to the rhythm of the music.

Oddly, although there is a tendency for the eyes to fixate on visible features such as barlines

3 Veronica Kinsler and R. H. S. Carpenter, “Saccadic Eye Movements while Reading Music,” The Physiological Laboratory, University of Cambridge Vol. 35 No. 10 (1995): 1447.43 Thomas W. Goolsby “Eye Movements in Music Reading: Effects of Reading Ability, Notational Complexity, and Encounters” Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol 12 No. 1 (1994): 79.5 Goolsby, “Eye Movements in Music Reading,” 78.

and notes, there seems to be little consistency in the way that our eyes view the music from

person to person or even from trial to trial. This may be because of cognitive processes that we

will discuss later. Regardless of where exactly the eyes fixate, virtually every note that we play

has been fixated upon before it is performed. Interestingly, the only notes that have the

tendency to be played before fixating on them occur at the ends of phrases; although we have

not fixated upon them, these notes can been seen from the parafoveal (peripheral) vision and

can still be processed.6

Goolsby completed an in depth study on sight reading in 1994 that revealed information

about the differences in eye patterns in sight reading between poor and good sight-readers. A

large portion of his research focused on progressive and regressive saccades. As a reminder,

our eyes do not merely move from left to right in a fluid motion; a series of progressive and

regressive saccades occur between fixations as we read across the page. Our eyes move ahead

to see the notes we are approaching and then returns to the notes we are currently playing. In

this study, Goolsby found that there were significant differences between the eye patterns of

poor sight readers as opposed to skilled sight readers. Skilled sight readers have shorter

fixations than unskilled sight readers while reading music; they are able to gather information

quickly and move to the next portion of music. Skilled sight-readers also have significantly more

movement; they look ahead to where the music is going and back to the point of performance

much more frequently. Unskilled sight readers spend more time searching for information close

to the current performance point and use progressive saccades only to continue performance.

Goolsby hypothesizes that the longer fixations found in bad sight reading occur as a result of

6 Kinsler and Carpenter, “Saccadic Eye Movements,” 1454

difficulty processing the musical notation, an issue of psychological processes as opposed to

visual processes. This information will be important later as we move into the psychological

processes in sight reading.

Goolsby also found that the “spacing of notation affects eye movement regardless of

performance accuracy…the melodies in which the notes and other visual information were

spaced closer together required fewer and shorter eye movements in proportion to items of

visual information than the less-complex or less-condensed notation.”7 In other words, as we

see more notes, rather than viewing each individual note with a single fixation as we might

expect, we see groups of notes with a single fixation. In contrast, Goolsby found some evidence

that both good and poor sight-readers use longer notes to scan around in the music. Lastly, as

part of this study, subjects were observed reading the same music three times. From these

observations, it was apparent that “fewer fixations were used during the third encounter than

for the first, indication that subjects knew where to look for visual information.”8 Even in just

our visual processes, there is a clear difference in the way that we read music after practicing as

opposed to sight reading. This demonstrates that sight reading really does require different

skills than playing prepared music.

PART 2: Psychological Processes

Why is sight reading so much different from reading music we have practiced? There are

several theories for this, most having to do with the psychological processes that occur

between the input (seeing the music) and the output (performing the music). Veronica Kinsler

and R. H. S. Carpenter present one possible explanation for the process that occurs while sight

7 Goolsby, “Eye Movements in Music Reading,” 89-938 Goolsby, “Eye Movements in Music Reading,” 93.

reading. In their 1994 study, they noted that eye patterns for music previously practiced were

rather different from the eye patterns found in sight reading. For passages of music that had

been prepared in advance, or simple music that was played by more skilled subjects, the eye

movements would look far ahead of the earliest part of the music being played, and far behind

the end of the music; the eyes were not necessarily searching for information as deftly on

prepared music.9 From this information, it seems that the visual input is a less important part of

the process as the music is practiced more or as the challenge of the music in relation to skill is

lowered.

Kinsler hypothesizes that there must be a system controlling the eye movement in

which commands are made not in relation to the physical appearance of the musical notation,

but as part of a mechanism that regulates the flow of information into the processing system

before the performance of the music. 10 The idea behind this theory is that the meaning of the

symbols controls the speed at which the information can be processed, a opposed to the

complexity of the visual image. The meaning of 16th notes at 100 BPM in 4/4 is much different

than the meaning of 16th notes at 100 BPM in 4/4; although they look the same, the end

performance is different, and therefore the meaning is different. There are several different

models for the process of reading music; I will discuss a few in this chapter. The main

similarities in these are that there is always a visual input and a physical output; the differences

between the different theories are the cognitive processes between these two events.

9 Kinsler and Carpenter, “Saccadic Eye Movements,” 1454.10 Kinsler and Carpenter, “Saccadic Eye Movements,” 1454-1455.

Kinsler’s model breaks the reading process into 5 separate parts. If there is an issue with

any of these processes, sight reading may break down. Kinsler’s model for the reading process

is as follows:

1. Visual input - music from the “gaze frame,” or the area that we see at one time

2. Encoder – transforms of patterns into neural activity by the retinal and central

mechanisms that are not concerned with interpretation of the symbols11

3. Processor – interprets musical symbols

a. Relies on long term storage of information about musical notation

b. Takes a different amount of time for different notes depending on their

complexity; this varies from person to person

4. Buffer – holds information that has been seen and processed but has not yet been

performed

5. Executive – transforms information about pitch and duration into appropriate patterns

of commands to the executants muscles

a. Relies on long term storage of information about musical notation

b. Takes a different amount of time depending on the rate of motor events

required by the musical commands together with the tempo 12

11 Kinsler and Carpenter, “Saccadic Eye Movements,” 145512 These are simplified for the purposes of clarity; for an exact, more in depth explanation, see Kinsler p. 1455-1456

13

13 Kinsler and Carpenter, “Saccadic Eye Movements,” 1456.

Part 2a: The Buffer

As you can see, a lot happens between the time that we look at the musical notation

and the time that we begin playing. Let’s examine a few different steps of the process to get a

better understanding of what happens. In this particular model, the buffer is an important part

and affects all other parts of the process. The buffer allows us to look at and process

significantly ahead of what we are currently performing. The buffer controls the amount of

input; it can contain a certain amount of information, and sends messages to the processor

depending on whether it is empty or full. If it is full, we stop processing information until there

is “room” in the buffer. If it is empty, we try to process information faster in order to fill up the

buffer (which can lead to less accurate processing).

Much of reading music relates to the amount of time it takes for each step of the

process to be completed. In sight reading, we have a limited amount of time from visually

seeing the music to performance of music. The amount of time we are allowed to process

information is directly related to the speed of the music which we are playing. This means that

in faster music, sometimes our buffer can become virtually empty as the music moves faster

than we can process; the output must occur at the tempo it is listed at, and we are forced to try

to fill the buffer faster than our processer can accurately process the visual input.14 Often in

faster reading, the quality of the input is affected adversely in order to send the necessary

quantity of information into the encoder to send to the processer. In slower music, the buffer

can fill up completely because we have more time for visual input and processing. When the

buffer fills up, the visual input must be slowed down because there is no more room for

14 This is indicated by a high frequency of saccades indicating that the eye is moving on in the music as fast as possible in order to fill up the buffer

information to be stored in the buffer; in these cases, the information in the buffer is usually

more accurate because the processor has adequate time to process.15

The amount of information that our buffer can hold may be related to the Working

Memory Capacity of the individual. Working Memory Capacity (WMC) is “the ability to

maintain task-relevant information in a highly active state.”16 To relate this to the process

described by Kinsler, the better our working memory capacity, the more room we have in our

buffer to store information for later use. WMC is influenced significantly by genetics and has

been shown to be consistent across time; in other words, it is unchangeable. If you have a low

WMC, this book will not help you increase it; however, what it will do is help you to improve

and perfect the other parts of the process aside from the buffer in order to compensate for this

deficiency. In a study by Elizabeth J. Meinz and David Z. Hambrick, they found that good sight

reading was related to high WMC; the more information the memory can maintain while

performing, the better their sight reading ability. This will be examined in depth in upcoming

sections.

Part 2b: The Processor

The processor is probably the most complex part of the process or reading music, and

therefore the most difficult to accurately diagnose issues. John Sloboda has done multiple

research studies on the eye-hand span, which relate to perceptual differences among musicians

that have nothing to do with visual processes. His studies were a modified version of Levin and

associates Eye-voice span (EVS), in which the cognitive processes used in reading English text

15 Kinsler and Carpenter, “Saccadic Eye Movements,” 145716 Elizabeth J. Meinz, and David Z. Hambrick, “Deliberate Practice is Necessary but Not Sufficient to Explain Individual Differences in Piano Sight-Reading Skill: The Role of Working Memory Capacity,” Psychological Science 21 (2010): 914-919, accessed September 3rd, 2011, DOI: 10.1177/0956797610373933

are evaluated based upon how far ahead the eyes are of the text within a given paragraph. In

these experiments, text was divided up into paragraphs and was read out loud; at some point,

the text would be turned off and participants would be asked to report any words they had

seen beyond what they had read before the text disappeared. EVS basically evaluates the

amount of material that is seen and processed before it occurs; in other words, it is how far

ahead of the music we are currently playing that we read. In reading text, it was found that

reading generally was further ahead for structured material, such as sentences, as opposed to

random material, such as word lists. EVS tends to extend to phrase boundaries such as commas,

periods or other semantic characteristics. Given that some phrase markings were further away

than others in these experiments, this shows that in reading text, there is not a constant rate of

eye movement or cognitive understanding of text. Sloboda took these basic ideas and applied

them to a music study, calling the same concept in music the “Eye-Hand Span,” as most sight

reading of instrumentalists involved the use of our hands. His hypothesis is that, like in reading,

music has implicit constraints and structures that can be internalized and used to help us read

ahead in music as well. This means that being more versed in different musical styles and

musical forms affects how we are able to process music. The better that we are at recognizing

common phrase structures, harmonies, rhythms, etc, the further ahead we can look for new

information.

In Sloboda’s study, phrase markings were taken away so that only the note sequences gave

indications of the structure of the piece. He found that all subjects could recall the next notes to

the next phrase boundary if it was 4 or less notes away. Better sight readers were able to recall

as many as 10 notes, but none could recall 11 or above. Because there were no phrase

markings in the sight reading in this situation, the ability to finish these phrases is related to the

understanding of the sight reader of formal structures based upon only note sequences. It

would seem that the better musicians (and sight readers) are more tuned in to formal

structures and therefore read ahead further in order to finish phrases.

This idea of processing music in phrases, rather than note by note, leads to another strategy

discussed by Sloboda. Sloboda hypothesizes that during sight reading, the reader will make the

use of their expectancies to figure out what comes next in the music. Expectancies are things

such as formal structures, chord progressions, or other common sequences. Within each phrase

of music, good sight readers find certain patterns and sequences. In Sloboda’s study, for

example, if the music disappeared and the reader knew that they were nearing the end of a

phrase, they might make decisions of what notes to play next not based upon what they had

read ahead to, but upon what they could guess based upon the prior sequences and patterns in

the music.

It is possible that when confronted with new music, we make use of our own expectancies

to fill in the sequence of upcoming notes. Some of this can come from the music we are

reading; there are frequently patterns repeated within one piece of music. However, there is

also the possibility that the sequences and patterns that we use to “fill in the blanks” are not

based on the current piece, but rather upon our internalized musical ideas. This means that the

more music that we are familiar with and have within our experiences, the better our chances

are of being able to accurately recognize patterns and predict upcoming sequences. In one

study, when judged by a professional musician, they found that “out of 181 trials on which

subjects made errors, 90 of these made acceptable musical alternatives” that either brought

the musical line to a cadence point or brought the line to where a continuation could be easily

made.17 This demonstrates that musicians can use more than the immediate processing of each

note; they can use their prior knowledge of music to give them a close guess to what the music

will be before they read it. Goolsby states that “one can assume that skilled music readers can

successfully predict highly constrained notes or rhythms and not be required to attend to every

detail of the melody.” 18

Although fundamental understanding of phrases can be helpful in sight reading, as our eyes

will tend to gather information up to the next phrase marking regardless of the distance that it

is from what we are reading, this can also have a negative impact on our sight reading in some

situations. In another related study, Sloboda found that physical phrase markings could

sometimes hinder the sight reader from reading beyond the end of the phrase. The phrase

marking served as a destination and stopping point for the musician, and therefore their eyes

and brain would take a short pause, negatively impacting their sight reading of the next phrase.

This pause in processing is amplified by the “information overload” at the beginning of a new

phrase, in which new music and patterns appear immediately after a phrase boundary. Issues

such as this hinder the constant input of information, which forces us to work more diligently

on processing information quickly.

A research study by Goolsby focused on trying to understand the cognitive processing of

musical notation based upon eye movement during performance. He, along with Sloboda,

argue that music is a cognitive process, rather than just a psychomotor process (where our

17 John A. Sloboda, “The Eye-Hand Span- An Approach to the Study of Sight Reading,” Psychology of Music 2:4 (1974): 9.18 Goolsby, “Eye Movements in Music Reading,” 119.

body just responds to visual stimulus without any processing required) - “The performing

musician decides which aspects of the notation will be realized, the sequence and the

combination that the notation will be performed, and ll other aspects contained within…all

according to the performer’s skill at processing the information and his knowledge of style,

structure, and expression.”19 I would like to point out that in this discussion of sight reading, we

are working towards finding ways to make the processing of visual information more efficient;

we are not trying to make music sight reading a process in which there is no cognitive process

whatsoever. One way in which we can process music faster is by “chunking” music.

Chunking is a method of input of information that allows us to read groups of notes rather

than individual notes and markings on music; this will be discussed in depth soon. In inspecting

eye movement, Goolsby found that skilled sight readers read groups of notes with a single

fixation, whereas poor sight readers tried to fixate on each note individually.20 Because of the

amount of time that it takes to process information once is seen and the amount of time that it

takes to fixate on each note, during fast passages of music we do not have the time to fixate,

process, and perform. Grouping notes together in chunks helps to reduce the amount of small

pieces of information that we need to process, allowing us to process more music overall within

the time constraints of each phrase.

In addition to notes, we must also be able to interpret other symbols on the page. Goolsby

also found that better sight readers fixated in the blank spaces between the notes. Our

peripheral vision allows us to take in more information if we are looking at blank spaces

between the notes rather than directly on the notes, giving us an overview of the musical 19 Thomas W. Goolsby, “Profiles of Processing: Eye Movements during Sightreading,” Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 12 No. 1 (1994): 98.20 Goolsby, “Profiles of Processing,” 109.

phrase rather than just the information received from focusing on one note or marking on the

page. Goolsby added a variety of different markings such as dynamics, breath marks, ties, slurs,

tempo changes, and accidentals in his examination of sight readers. Several of the structural

markings like breath and phrase marks were deliberately put in awkward places that did not

match the phrase length the music in order to investigate the effects of physical boundaries on

sight reading. In his research, he found that skilled sight readers looked ahead further and back

to the point of performance frequently. They also had more eye movement in general, quickly

focusing on all aspects of the music, rather than just the note currently performed. In contrast,

poor sight readers did not look very far ahead. Poor sight readers had a tended to make

mistakes when looking ahead of the music that was currently being played. This follows

Sloboda’s idea that less skilled sight readers have shorter perceptual spans that keep the

distance that they can travel with their eyes very small so their eyes are close to what they are

currently playing. Goolsby also found that the more skilled sight readers would look beyond

phrase markings when looking ahead and not allow the “fake” phrase marking to interfere with

their processing of information within the “real” phrase.

From the studies described above, we can see that processing information is a

complicated business. What we can take from this is that although we cannot improve our

Working Memory Capacity or how much information we can hold in our buffer, we can improve

the processing of information in several ways. Increasing knowledge of phrase structures,

harmonic structures, and musical styles is clearly essential in improving your sight reading.

Additionally, chunking music is a very important skill in improving our sight reading. If we have

a limited amount of space for separate pieces of new information to process within our buffer,

we need to process these smaller pieces of information (individual notes) as larger chunks of

information (measures) so that we can process more information overall.

Part 3: Improving at Sight Reading

Knowing the results of these research studies affects how we train ourselves to sight read.

The rate at which we can perform music well while sight reading is dependent on the different

parts of cognitive processing described above. Difficulties in different processes require

different prescriptions; just as we would not take cold medicine to heal a broken leg, we would

not practice making our eyes move faster across the music when we are having an issue of

processing. Too often, the prescription for the symptom is not accurate and we waste time

working on the wrong problem.

You may be thinking, “If our working memory (and buffer) have a constant limit of

information that can be held and accessed while sight reading, is there anything that can help

my sight-reading?” The answer is yes; let’s discuss the buffer again. In a study done by S.

Furneaux and M.F. Land, they explored the issue of the Eye-Hand span in relation to skill of

sight reading. As in other studies on this topic, they found that the eyes were consistently

ahead of the hands, indicating a buffer of some sort that maintains information that we are not

currently looking at. Based upon the eye patterns and time of performance, they found that

better sight-readers appeared to have developed a larger buffer for information. Since this

finding goes against information in several other studies about the Working Memory Capacity

and the unchanging buffer, their alternative explanation appears more plausible. They suggest

that “musical chunking” occurs, allowing the buffer to contain the same number of pieces of

information; however, each of the pieces of information is larger. This means that rather than

reading one note at a time as a unit of information to be stored in the buffer, they are reading

groups of notes; therefore, they can fit more notes into the buffer at a time than people who

read note by note.21 Interestingly, Goolsby also had similar findings on a smaller scale. He found

that sight readers would focus on the barlines or between the notes, strategically placing their

eyes so that they could see the interval between 2 notes rather than the individual note.22 Even

more support for “chunking” is found in studies by Rayner and Pollatsek, who found that “the

horizontal perceptual span is, at most, a bit over a single measure.”23 This information has led

me to believe that chunking music is essential in improving in sight reading. Because it seems

that our perceptual span is at most slightly bigger than a measure, chunking in measures seems

to be the most effective way to improve sight reading.

Chunking music will be a key part of the process in this book for improving sight reading.

In addition to chunking music as one method for improving sight reading, there are several

other strategies of sight reading that you should be aware of. A study was done in 1976 by

Thomas Wolf in which he points out many of the same things we have already discussed,

including pattern recognition, “sophisticated guessing” based upon prior knowledge of musical

form and structure, and the importance of familiarity with musical style and harmony.

Something important he discusses is the affect of hearing the music as you play it. He believes

that hearing what you play serves as a way of verifying that you are playing the music

accurately, which I’m sure most people would agree with. The issue that sight readers have

with listening to the music for accuracy is that if we hear a mistake, we likely think about it,

21 S. Furneaux, and M.F. Land, “The Effects of Skill on the Eye-Hand Span during Musical Sight-Reading,” Proceedings: Biological Sciences Vol. 266 No. 1436 (1999), 2435.22 Goolsby, “Profiles of Processing,” 120.23Keith Rayner and Alexander Pollatsek, “Eye Movements, The Eye-Hand Span, and the Perceptual Span during Sight-Reading of Music,” Current Directions in Psychological Science Vol. 6 No. 2 (1997): 52.

allowing for less room in our processor to process new information. In practicing, we would

want to use this hearing verification to know where we made mistakes in order to return to

practice it. In sight reading, however, we need to train our ears and our brain to either hear the

mistakes and quickly move on, or to ignore the mistakes completely. This is important to be

aware of and address if listening for mistakes is slowing down your reading ability.

Another important study that Wolf discusses was done by Simon and Barenfeld on chess

players. They found that the number of chunks of information that a human can deal with at

any time is 7 chunks, plus or minus 2 chunks, at a time. This study further supports the strategy

of condensing or chunking larger amounts of music into one unit. Wolf states that “the

unskilled sight reader…is able to make condensations less effectively. The units of information

with which he must deal are small; there are many more of them. It is no wonder that he makes

errors, for short-term memory has become overloaded with inputs.“24 Part of the purpose of

this book is to help train you to condense information and increase your ability to read patterns

within the constraints of measures. The theory is that being able to quickly recognize patterns

will increase the speed of processing. The speed at which we process is very important, for Wolf

also found that even good sight readers struggled with certain sight reading that either was too

fast, in which the short-term memory became overloaded too quickly, or was in unfamiliar

patterns typical of contemporary atonal music. He states that “Clearly, it is the ability to chunk

familiar configurations of notes into large units of information which facilitates skilled sight

reading.”25

24 Thomas Wolf, “A Cognitive Model of Musical Sight Reading,” Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Vol. 5 No. 2 (1976): 156.25 Wolf, “A Cognitive Model of Musical Sight Reading,” 157.

Wolf developed his own cognitive model of sight reading, which combines elements of

the psychological view of information processing with musician notions of sight reading. Within

his system, he came to several conclusions. First, skilled readers that chunk music can play

more musically because they have more room in their 7 short term memory slots for musical

and creative information in comparison to sight readers that don’t chunk music. Secondly, he

notes the importance of the speed of visual recognition to the physical acts of playing. Third, he

points out that sight reading is a completely different process than the normal process of

learning music for the following reasons:

1. In sight reading, you are not allowed to stop and correct mistakes.

2. Being critical during sight reading is disastrous in sight reading.

3. In learning music, we are more aware of each note and desire to make each note

perfect; in sight reading, this awareness slows us down.

4. Music learners depend on putting information into long term memory, practicing

the same music over and over until it is close to memorized and no longer

requires visual stimulus.

5. Sight readers depend on the short term memory, not the long term memory.

As good musicians, we always are striving to push our musicianship to the next level. In

the first few weeks of learning new music, it is typical to read through it until something

becomes too difficult and the music breaks down; at this point, we stop, play it slowly, break it

down into smaller chunks, and work on it until it is at the level we want it to be. Unfortunately,

this process that is used by virtually all musicians occurs because of a total breakdown in sight

reading. Musicians that practice this way train themselves to accept poor sight reading skills, to

skip the process of learning to sight read well. The awareness and focus on each note in the

process of learning new music that propels us to better performances is the same thing that

hinders us in sight reading. Good sight readers realize that they need to focus on larger chunks

and go into sight reading with a different mindset than their normal “learning mode” mindset.

In sight reading, we cycle lots of information through our short term memory. This

means that at the end of the piece, we likely will not be able to remember every mistake we

made or even what every phrase sounded like. This is uncomfortable for those of us that

practice for extended periods of time to perform difficult works. With repetition, we transfer

short term memory information into our long term memory. We depend on our long term

memory for performances of music that we have practiced for extended periods of time; this is

where we are the most comfortable. Why? It’s because we simply don’t practice using purely

our short term memory as much as we practice using our long term memory. I believe this is

incredibly important to point out – when working on sight reading, we need to accept that we

are using purely short term memory. In order to improve, we need to accept that we might

miss a note here or there, but that the goal of sight reading is not necessarily to play perfectly,

but rather to play musically and create a generally good performance.

In the same way that it took us a lot of practice to get to the point of performance that

we are at now, it may take a long time to get to a high level in sight reading if sight reading has

never been a practiced skill. Based upon the research above, it appears that the process of sight

reading music is almost a completely different process than that of learning music. As you

continue in this book, remember that and don’t be disheartened by slow progress. When I first

began practicing sight reading, I remember thinking “…but I’m a good musician, why can’t I do

this?” As Wolf states in his study, “There is only a slight correlation between proficiency on an

instrument and better than average sight reading.” It is important to know and accept that your

sight reading ability is not a measure of your musicality or your natural talent; it is merely a

different skill and process that requires practice.

Chapter 3 – A Method to the Madness

Based upon the research that you have just read about, I created a process to study

sight reading. My conclusions were that there is more to getting better at sight reading than

“just do it,” which I have been told countless times. Although “just do it” can help with sight

reading, it can also lead to a very slow, frustrating process. My goal is to speed up that process

by learning to sight read in a methodical way.

My issue with sight reading was that I expected to be able to sight read music that was

the same level of difficulty as the music that I could play after long periods of preparation. This

caused me to get really frustrated in sight reading, because I could never do it well. Sight

reading requires a different skill set and process than learning music with ample practice time.

The most effective way to approach sight reading (for me) was to approach it as if I was a

complete beginner. It is similar to the process we take when we start doubling on a new

instrument; although we have a good understanding of music, we initially lack the technical

skills and we need to start with basics in order to progress.

When you choose music to sight read, it must be within your level of sight reading

ability. Good sight readers are able to recognize patterns, process patterns quickly, and produce

them. This means that either they have the mental capacity to process unfamiliar music quickly

or that they simply have more patterns in their repertoire. For the purposes of sight reading, I

consider patterns to be things such as rhythmic patterns, melodic patterns, patterns in form, or

patterns in phrasing. The more music we are familiar with, the bigger our repertoire of patterns.

If sight reading is about recognizing patterns, we need to build upon the patterns that we know.

It does you no good to play music made up of almost entirely unrecognizable patterns. I will

reiterate - THERE IS NO POINT TO PLAYING MUSIC ONCE, BADLY. Instead, pick music that is

right for you based upon your personal sight reading abilities.

Although there are several differences between this method and the “just do it”

method, there is one big similarity - you have to do it every day that you pick up your horn,

without exception. Sight reading can be anything; etudes, duets, ensemble music, excerpts,

technical studies, solos, or anything you can easily get your hands on. I also recommend reading

technical studies such as the Arban26 and Clarke27 book – these books, along with helping with

technical skills, contain most common patterns that you will see. It is important that you look at

scale patterns as well as memorizing them. Although you may know your scales and arpeggios

from memory, you also need to make a connection between the scales you play and the

physical appearance of those scales on the page. Without that connection of the physical

feeling of the patterns with the visual look of the patterns, knowledge of the scale or arpeggio

will not have the positive affect you desire on your overall sight reading skills. To be clear,

memorizing scales, arpeggios, and other patterns is great; it helps with your ear, your brain,

your improvisational skills, and many other things. It is important to memorize your scales. But

as stated before, it takes a different skill set to sight read music – in addition to memorizing

your patterns, you also need to train your brain to recognize the patterns visually.

An important part of the process in this book is the use of recording devices. If you don’t

have one, you need to buy one or borrow one. Recording devices with good microphones are

wonderful, but not necessary for the purposes of this book. If a high quality recording device is

not at your disposal, I recommend a simple voice recorder that you can pick up at any

electronics store. Each time you sight read, record yourself and listen back. One of the big

26 J-B Arban, Joseph Alessi, and Brian Bowman, Complete method for trombone & euphonium. (Troy, Michigan: Encore Music Publishers, 2002).27 Herbert L. Clarke and David Hickman, Clarke studies: including all four instruction books for the cornet or trumpet : Elementary studies ; Technical studies ; Characteristic studies ; Setting up drills. (Chandler, Arizona: Hickman Music Editions, 2005).

problems with practicing sight reading is identifying what you are struggling with in the music

without stopping or slowing down. When I initially began working on sight reading, I found that

I would always try to remember where I made mistakes so that I could go back and work on

those sections. While this habit is useful in practicing music, in sight reading, it takes your focus

from what you are about to play and keeps it on past mistakes. If we think back to the research,

it is important to keep the music going forward. You really don’t want your mistakes to be

taking up one of your short term memory slots while you are trying to process new information.

In working on sight reading, it is important to know where you are making mistakes so that you

can evaluate your progress and work on sight reading things with which you have difficulty. The

way to allow yourself to correctly evaluate your performance while continuously training

yourself to stay in the moment and focus on upcoming music is to record yourself. After you

sight read and record it, listen back and find where you are struggling so you can start to

address the issues you are having in reading; charts on the back of each etude will help you

track what you are having difficulty with so that you can add the right kinds of music into your

curriculum of sight reading study.

Something else that is different about my approach is what we consider “sight reading.”

For the purposes of this book, sight reading is playing any music that is not in your short term

memory and has not been processed from your short term memory to your long term memory.

This means that if you play and work on a piece for 5 minutes, and then play it again 2 months

later, it is still considered sight reading. With very few exceptions, you are not likely to

remember enough of this piece for it to have an effect on a second reading of it at a much later

time. The premise of this book is that you can read etudes more than once to evaluate how you

sight read the same material and still consider it “sight reading.” With that in mind, in this

method you will sight read and record a piece. After listening and evaluating your sight reading

on the given chart on the back of each etude, you will work for up to 1 minute on each of the

areas that you had the most difficulty. This should take no more than 5 minutes – if you had

more than 5 mistakes in your sight reading, you are reading something that is too difficult for

you! After a month or two, come back to the same etude and read it again following the same

process and fill in the chart on the back of the etude; this will help your track your progress in

sight reading.

Sight reading is like any other musical skill; in order to improve, we need to have a

method to approach the skill and a way to evaluate our progress. This book will provide both of

these for you through the use of materials to read and a method provided to help you evaluate

your progress and find your strengths and weaknesses. This knowledge should help you to

develop your own sight reading curriculum in which you sight read materials that are

appropriate to your sight reading skill level.

SECTION II – RHYTHMIC TRAINING

“A player who sight reads with great groove and rhythmic confidencewill make everyone around them feel more confident.

Never sacrifice the groove of a piece for note accuracy even when sight reading”Andrew Hitz, Tuba player of the Boston Brass

Chapter 4 – Rhythm Reading Workout!

I would argue that rhythm reading is the most important skill in sight reading music. To

sight read well, we need to be able to recognize and execute rhythmic patterns accurately in

order to create a sense of pulse and time that is the foundation for the melody, harmony, and

other musical attributes. We also need to be able to do this quickly, so that our eyes can

continue beyond what we are playing to the next measure. When rhythms are unrecognized,

our eyes spend longer focusing on the unrecognized rhythms to figure them out. This stops our

eyes from reading ahead and gives us less time to perceive the information coming in the next

measures. Therefore, when we reach an unrecognized rhythm, not only does this cause

mistakes in the measure with unrecognized rhythms, but it also causes mistakes in the

measures directly following. For this reason, I have decided to include a “rhythm reading

workout” in this book. 28

To become good sight readers, we need to read music in chunks, rather than note by

note. The studies discussed in chapter 2 found that good sight readers read ahead of the music

and not note by note – this indicates that good sight readers are able to recognize larger

patterns, which allows them to look ahead. These studies also showed that ALL sight readers

(good and bad) in their research study focused frequently on the barline separating each

measure. Because of musician’s general awareness of the barline, and because measures are a

good demarcation of time, I have set up the “chunks” of rhythm in measures.

28 Similar reading issues occur with accidentals and unrecognized pitches; however, missed pitches are in general far less distracting from the music than missed rhythms. Ironically, there are likely fewer combinations of rhythms than of pitches in most sight reading, but this is the area in which most people struggle the most.

Read through some of the following exercises for a rhythm workout before attempting

the sight reading further in the book. These exercises are meant for daily practice - this should

improve your visual recognition of each of these rhythms. The exercises are designed to

introduce each possible rhythm within a measure, and then combine these measures in

random order. Each new rhythm is shown as a repeated measure, to allow for practice of each

rhythm multiple times. After the repeats end, these measures are randomly combined to

provide practice of recognizing and playing each rhythm in various contexts. They are

deliberately not set up with phrases or phrase markings, but merely as rhythmic exercises. The

goal of playing these should be quick recognition and understanding of the rhythm in units of

one measure, so that you can look beyond the measure you are working on to the next

measure.

Each exercise builds upon the exercises before and adds new specific rhythms. The

workout is split into the following categories:

1. Whole, Dotted Half, Half, and Quarter Notes

2. Whole, Dotted Half, Half, and Quarter Notes with Corresponding Rests

3. Quarter and Eighth notes

4. Quarter and Eighth notes with Corresponding Rests

5. Syncopated Quarter and Eighth notes

6. More Syncopated Quarter and Eighth notes

In parts 1-4, all possible note and rest combinations are given. As we move to syncopated

rhythms, for the sake of getting to the sight reading, I have only included some of the rhythmic

patterns possible within a measure. For example, part 6 includes all rhythms possible if there is

only 1 syncopated beat in each bar (meaning 1 eighth rest taking place on a beat). To include all

syncopated 8th and quarter note rhythms would take up more pages than conducive to this

book. To keep this at a reasonable length, I have excluded some of the syncopated rhythms. If

you find this chapter helpful and want more practice of a similar nature, consider purchasing

rhythm reading books such as those by Bellson.29

29 Louis Bellson and Gil Breines, Modern reading text in 4/4 for all instruments. (New York: Henry Adler, 1991).