Posted by Rick Denney on February 21, 2001 at 10:31:24:
In Reply to: Re: Speed Reading posted by Sean Chisham on February 21, 2001 at 00:45:17:
I totally concur with Sean's recommendation: Work on scales and arpeggios first. When we learn to read words, we start with letters, then learn how to recognize patterns of letters called syllables. We learn to combine syllables to make words. Then, as we gain experience, we learn to recognize patterns of words as phrases and sentences.
When we learn music, we learn the notes first. When someone without a lot of reading experience gets the advice "read ahead..." they interpret that as reading four or five notes ahead of where they are playing, but still reading one note at a time. This requires a buffering ability that my brain, at least, does not possess.
But my sight-reading improved dramatically when I finally went back and learned those scales. A lot of what we run into that goes by fast enough to be a problem is a portion of a scale. If we train our brains to those patterns, then we recognize the pattern right off the bat, and while our brain is playing that pattern in "auto" mode, we are looking at the next pattern.
For example, how many of us actually read the notes of the 16th note run up to the C that opens the Holst 2nd Suite? Most of us at this point see it as the first five notes of an F major scale, and play it that way instead of as the individual notes F, G, A, Bb, and C.
Like most things, you get better at something by doing it. But most complex skills are based on simple skills, and if we master those first, the learning the complex skill becomes much easier.
I'm a mid-grade sight-reader, which is a significant improvement for me. If I were really disciplined about sight-reading, I would be much more serious about adding all those scale variations to my practice. Just think of what I could read at sight if in addition to the major and minor scales, I also knew scale variants and the more common modes.
But my big reading problem now is rhythm rather than pitch. That suggests that I would be doing myself a lot of good hitting those method books that drill rhythms.
Actually, this was similar to the advice Pat Sheridan gave in his master class at TUSAB conference. Rather than drilling a hard lick to the point where it becomes a monster in our minds, he suggests breaking out the basic skills that make that lick difficult, and doing exercises to improve those basic skills, and only then putting those new skills to work in the hard lick.
This has been on my mind lately, because last night we were allowed to take home our music for the first time for the upcoming concert. So, for several rehearsals, we have been playing music without benefit of home practice. And the music is challenging, to say the least, and I'd seen very little of it before. When the parts got too technical for me, I'd skip the hard part of that phrase and come back in a bit later, but I worked very hard not to lose my place or the pulse. Consequently, though I didn't play every note, I was nearly always there for the stuff that really needed me. While an excellent sight-reader would get it all, I contributed much more than I would have ten years ago before going back to those fundamentals, when I would have been so focused on reading those notes one at a time that I'd have lost the pulse and bogged down. I heard a lot of that in these last three rehearsals, and I was trying my best (not always successfully, I admit) not to be part of that problem.
Rick "hoping it's never too late to learn the fundamentals" Denney