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How to practice sight-reading
Sight-reading is a skill you build with regular, short practice on music that is slightly too easy. Here is what to do in the thirty seconds before you play, what to do while you play, and a plan for the first four weeks.
Practice little and often
Ten minutes a day improves sight-reading more than an hour once a week. Each session should include plenty of new music, because reading something you have already played is memory, not reading. That is why this site creates a new exercise every time.
Choose music that is a little easier than the pieces you are learning. If you have to stop more than once or twice in an exercise, drop a level. Fluency comes from many successful reads, not from struggling through hard ones.
Before you play: a 30-second scan
- Clef and key signature. Say the sharps or flats out loud.
- Time signature. Decide how you will count, and set a slow, steady tempo.
- Highest and lowest notes. Know the range so nothing surprises you, and on an instrument, choose a hand position or fingering that covers it.
- Rhythms. Find the trickiest rhythm and tap it once.
- Accidentals and patterns. Spot sharps or flats in the music, and any repeated patterns or scales you can read as a group.
While you play
- Keep going. Never stop to fix a wrong note. In real sight-reading the beat doesn’t wait, and learning to recover is part of the skill.
- Choose a slow tempo. A steady slow tempo beats a fast one with pauses. Use the count-in and metronome.
- Look ahead. Keep your eyes a note or two ahead of where you are playing, and later a whole beat or measure ahead.
- Read intervals. Notice whether the next note steps, skips or leaps, and in which direction, instead of naming every note from scratch.
- Don’t look down. Pianists especially: keep your eyes on the music and find the keys by feel.
After you play: check
Play the passage back and compare. Here, press Play to hear the exercise, or use Check me to play along and see exactly which notes were right. Look at the red ones: are they all the same note? Are they all on ledger lines? That tells you what to drill next.
A four-week plan
| Week | Daily routine (about 10 minutes) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 3 minutes of Name the note on the staff, then 5 exercises at Level 1 with Check me. |
| 2 | One 60-second sprint, then Level 2 exercises. Add the metronome once you get most notes right. |
| 3 | Name the note with one ledger line, then Level 3 exercises in a key with one sharp or one flat. |
| 4 | A sprint in your weaker clef, then Level 4 exercises. Try 3/4 and 6/8 as well as 4/4. |
Once you can read most Level 4 exercises without stopping, move on to real music: hymn books, easy method books and folk song collections are all good sources of plenty of short, simple pieces.
Practice with your own music
If you are learning a piece, enter the passage you find hardest in My music. Hear it slowly, check yourself against it, and save it to come back to. Teachers can send a passage to a student with a share link.
Start today’s ten minutes: one exercise at your level, checked note by note.
Start practicing