Sight-Reading 101

Sight-Reading 101

Ed Dumas

Sight-reading is somewhat becoming a lost skill these days. If you are not sure what Sight-Reading is, just consider it to be the reading of new music At First Sight. There always has to be a first-time reading of every piece of music that students play, and it is the skill of Sight-Reading that makes later readings of band music so much more enjoyable. There are some definite strategies for tackling sight-reading, and I strongly encourage all music teachers to develop a sight-reading plan for every group every year.

When I was in secondary school, way back when dirt was a new thing, my band director, Robert O. Brown Jr., used to say to us “You should be sight-reading a grade point level below what you are rehearsing.” For the new band teachers out there, let's talk about the grade levels that Bob was referring to.

All band music is graded between level 1 and level 6. Level 1 is the easiest of easy, and grade 6 is the hardest of hard. First-year players will play grade 1, and a typical grade 8 band (second to third-year players) will play about grade 2. A mid-level band, like a grade 9-10 band, will typically play grade 3, and a senior band will typically play grade 4. Grade 5 will be played by college and university-level groups, and grade 6 will need to be excellent university bands and professional bands. These grade levels are just an illustration, and the levels will change for you depending on your circumstances.

What Bob meant was that if we were rehearsing grade 4 music in our band, then we should be able to successfully read through a piece of grade 3 music while sight-reading. At some point, we would still have to sight-read the grade 4 music we were about to rehearse, but maybe it would not meet the objectives the same way.

For example, when we were sight-reading that grade 4 music so that we could start rehearsing it, we might have to stop to figure stuff out before we could go on. This, then, would not meet the requirement of being able to successfully sight-read that piece of music even though we still rehearsed it and performed it. Still, sight-reading that grade 4 work would become so much easier if we had been developing sight-reading skills at the grade 3 level before commencing with the grade 4 music.

My band director in secondary school used to enroll us in competitive band festivals, and many of these also contained a sight-reading component for all bands. The idea was that a band would be considered less successful if it was so extremely rehearsed that the music was flawless while the individual musicians’ skills were not as well developed. Conversely, a band would be considered more successful if the music was still well rehearsed & flawless, but the musicians were more capable and adaptable to new music, hence more skilled.

Keep in mind that this was in a competitive festival that is mostly non-existent today. While I am not encouraging or discouraging competitive festivals, the strategy of sight-reading seems logical.

Now consider the use of sight-reading for most secondary band musicians today from their very first year to their senior years. In the very first year, most beginning students get plenty of sight-reading. During this time, they are very often playing in a “method book” which is just another name for a beginning-level songbook, such as Standard of Excellence or Yamaha Band Method.

The music that these beginning students come across in virtually every class will be new to them as they progress through that first-year book. During this time, their skill climb is usually very rapid, kind of like how babies just after birth have such tremendous physical growth in terms of percentage even though they are physically small compared to adults.

After the first year, though, most band classes make a transition into formal concert band music, albeit at the grade 1 level or so. Most of our students at this time get very little sight-reading as part of a regular program of skill development. Now the focus usually turns to learn to perform that chosen band repertoire that is placed in front of them. Each day that they come to class, they may get a few minutes of a warmup followed by a dive into the band music due to a need to “get it ready for the concert.”

Typically, this period of learning the repertoire for the concert will be something like 2-3 months of rehearsals culminating in one performance of that music. This performance-driven plan is usually much the same, regardless of what level of band music the group is performing. Note that during this phase of development, the student’s diminished amount of sight-reading also seems to coincide with a lessened increase in playing skills. I think the two are quite related and show a need for plenty of sight-reading practice.

Now, consider what the world of rehearsal looks like for professional musicians, say for example the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Typically, these musicians do not get 3 months to rehearse one piece of music or music for one performance. That is a luxury in time that is simply WAY too financially costly for any large organization to sustain. Usually, these musicians get one rehearsal in the morning followed by one performance in the evening or maybe the following evening.

Now I know that school music programs are not working with professionals, and I know that we are not trying to turn them all into professionals either. Still, it is worth looking at what the pros do to illustrate how we should shape our programs, at least a bit. I remember hearing once that “If your rehearsal period on an equivalent piece of music is not shorter than the last similar piece of music, then you are not doing your job.”

That might be a bit of a heavy statement, but it does illustrate that we should be aiming to improve the students’ rehearsal skills, and this is dependent on both their playing skills on their instrument and their sight-reading skills in the band music. Both of those are teachable, learnable, and doable, and I encourage you all to make sure to add some of each to every daily routine.

Now when Bob Brown took us into competitive sight-reading music festivals, there were some very specific rules that the band teacher and students needed to follow for the sight-reading adjudication. These rules help illustrate how you can go about teaching sight-reading skills for your students to follow.

The first objective of sight-reading is to get from the beginning to end without the band falling apart. It is NOT the first objective to get all of the notes and rhythms correct, though if you did so in a festival you would score higher. But the FIRST objective is to not get lost! Bob Brown used to tell us that if you can read from the beginning to the end of the piece without “crashing and burning” as a band, then you have sight read at that level.

Note how this is substantially different than the objectives when in rehearsal where you want to correct all of the misreads. Here students must know that they are just to stay together, as this takes away a significant amount of stress and pressure while sight-reading!

As an aside, once my students came to understand that I was SERIOUS about not expecting them to have a new piece of music mastered on the first read and that I would NOT chastise them for it, they could better enjoy sight-reading new music. By the time they were in their senior years, they loved it as much or more than I do, and that really made me feel like I had accomplished something!

Now the second rule of sight-reading in a festival is that the students and conductor cannot make any musical sounds before beginning the piece of music. The music will be chosen by the panel of adjudicators and handed to you and your students immediately before your adjudication, and students must not practice any parts nor can the conductor even sing them to the students ahead of time. You are allowed to talk the music over, but you cannot make musical sounds.

The teacher, then, can describe in words what should happen at various transition points such as key changes, tempo changes and so on. You can also “lay out the roadmap” which means explaining any repeated sections and how those are done. The conductor just cannot make any musical sounds, nor can they “air conduct” ahead of time. Usually, the band is given a specified time to talk it through, such as fifteen minutes, and then is asked to perform it from beginning to end.

If the band should collapse in the sight-reading adjudication, you are allowed to specify a measure or section where you should start again, and this should be a spot before where the band fell apart. You are still not allowed to rehearse the crash spot, but you might be given a bit of leeway in explaining in words (not sounds) what should have happened there.

Now those are some of the basic rules of a sight-reading festival. There are likely more, but the point that I want to make here is that you can use these rules as a basic outline of how to teach sight-reading skills to your band students. How closely you follow those rules is up to you of course, but, as usual, I have a few suggestions here.

When doing some sight-reading with your band students, talk them through the road map so that everyone understands the sections and repeats. Talk them through the meter, the key signature, any transitions, and anything else that might be new to them or cause them some trouble. This is your chance to get them to learn to look ahead over the piece of music before they play to be best prepared. Also, remind them that the objective is NOT to get it perfect but to stay together to the end. You can skip notes, but don’t get lost! Allowing them to practice some bits ahead of time is completely up to you since this is not a performance and the objectives here are different.

Finally, I like to sight-read new music at tempo, or as close to it as possible. In some examples of extreme tempo, either slow or fast, you might have to adjust up or down a bit toward the middle to keep the band together, which is “The Prime Directive.” But in that initial reading, I prefer to not slow the tempo down to “make it playable” for the students. A substantially slower tempo will create in the minds of the students a picture of the piece of music that is not what the composer had in mind. Later once the piece is “mastered,” returning then to the correct faster tempo becomes extremely difficult because the students have learned that this piece of music is to be played very slowly.

Instead, I prefer students to understand that in sight-reading, they will be missing some notes and rhythms. This is not a reflection on them or their skills, but just a simple fact of being a musician. I have conducted musicians as young as grade 6 to as old as about 80, and the biggest commonality is that ALL musicians miss some notes and rhythms on the first reading, whether it is slow or fast. That is just a reality we all face regardless of tempo.

Therefore, my preference is to set the tempo as close as possible to the desired tempo during the initial sight-reading, and even for most of the rehearsal process. Then use the dramatically slower tempos only when figuring out small passages that are particularly problematic. This is commonly known as “Tempo Di Learno,” and should not be overused for an entire piece of music. Once a passage is mastered in “Tempo Di Learno,” return to the original tempo to continue rehearsing the rest of the work.

In sight-reading “At Tempo” this way, students have come to learn that we will not stop even if it means that I am at times “Air Conducting” to only the sound of my voice counting out the beats and measures. Usually, this happens for only a measure or two, and then students find their place and join back in.

The lessons for the students in this method of sight-reading are very important and worth not glossing over. These are messages of the students being responsible for their playing more than the teacher, though I am happy to help them. Also, this plan significantly reinforces to the students the notion that they must not get lost, no matter what happens to the sound. Once students become used to this plan of reading new music and that there are no “performance expectations” or consequences in this plan, they begin to relax and learn to love reading new arrangements.

Logistical Issues

Now there are certainly some logistical issues involved in teaching and practicing a strategy of sight-reading to your band students. To the question of how much sight-reading to do, I would always respond with “As much as possible.” If you can do some sight-reading every band class, that would be the optimum, and I am sure that you would find your student's skills in making music would rise dramatically. But you would also be paying a price in terms of rehearsal time for the upcoming concert.

In balancing off the needs of the short term vs the long term, I like to favour the long-term results over the short term. I am okay with a near-term concert being less than desirable to develop the skills required to create better events down the road. But I also know that I cannot keep doing that indefinitely without some questions being asked, particularly about MY performance.

As a result, a plan that I have often followed is doing at least one piece of new music for sight-reading each week in the first part of the year and then reducing that amount a bit to every second or third week by the second half of the year. That way the fall concert might not be as strong as you hoped, but the year-end event will be better than the audience expected, and this just makes you look all the more brilliant as your students progress!

If you are sight-reading one new piece of music each week for each group that you are leading, you are likely going to create some significant logistical issues that will require some careful planning and maybe some program changes. Just taking each piece of music out of the library, handing it out, collecting it back in, sorting it, and refiling it is a huge undertaking. I strongly encourage you to get help with this, and the closest place to look is with your students.

I always looked for some extremely talented and bright musician to work as a band librarian who could help with these tasks. Any student who accepted a role like this could be offered course credit in “Independent Studies” if they are the librarian for the entire music program. Usually, that would be a senior student. Or, if they are the librarian for just their class, they could be offered some bonus marks for that class. I never really had a problem finding students wanting to help out, as very often music students see the band program as their “home” and just want to make it better for everyone.

You could even have each student in the class choose one piece of music, with your approval, of course, to hand out as a sight-reading assignment. They would be required to pull the chart from the library, hand it out, collect it back, resort it, and refile it back once again. They would each be given a specific date throughout the year when this should happen. A student could even be working on that one assignment for a few minutes while you continue to rehearse the band on the regular rehearsal music. Any section leaders that you have can also be asked to hand out the parts to the members of their section as part of the section leader duties, to which you would also give some bonus marks for helping out.

Finally, at year-end, I would have all band students help with sorting the band music. This is an excellent task that requires students to think outside their little world of playing their instrument, and this goes a long way to helping them to appreciate the huge amount of work that goes into sustaining a band program. By the end of a school year with multiple levels of band classes, it was quite common for me to have approximately two hundred band charts needing to be resorted and made ready to refile!

In the last class or two, instead of playing, students would be given one or two charts and shown how to put them back into score order as listed on the liner or the conductor’s score. They would need to make sure that they are all “heads up, face up” and that there are no dog-eared corners or crumpled pages. Once the score was in order, the students could bring it to me for approval. Some students always whined and complained just because that was the thing to do. But secretly I could see that they were happy to do it because it also brought memories back from the year just finished. Once this project was done, you could even turn it into a bit of a year-end wrap party with some food treats, but just wait until the sheet music is gone!

One Final Thought

Now I mentioned at the outset that a common saying was that your band should be sight-reading at one grade level below where you are rehearsing. That means that they should be able to get through a piece of music one grade level below without crashing from the beginning to the end.

I would turn that statement on its head. I would say that if you want to be able to play at the grade 4 level, you will need to be able to sight-read at the grade 3 level beforehand. That now makes sight-reading not an end unto itself, but rather a requirement to play at a higher level. The real objective here is to be able to play some of the more inspiring and higher-skill-demanding pieces of music but to be able to do that, your students will need to sight-read better first.

If your students cannot read at a higher level, the rehearsal time on those more demanding pieces will simply go too long for the length of the school year. Practical limits suggest that if you want to experience better music in the senior grades, the students will need to rehearse better to reach them, and that will require better reading skills. Practice this as often as possible. You will never regret spending more time here.

Ed Dumas is a retired band director who taught his entire career in the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows School District. Ed is now retired and living with his lifelong partner Laurie, and their little dog Sprocket in Parksville, BC. Ed & Laurie also work as Mid-Island reps for Tapestry Music while enjoying music in retirement.

You can find Ed’s other writings for the MusicED Blog at: https://www.tapestrymusic.com/news.aspx

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