Progressive Sight Reading Exercises: Piano Technique

I like the exercises but the print is inconsistent and tight. I find myself struggling to see it which makes me want to avoid it.

This book is very simple, but it's absolutely fantastic. It's a great place to start reading for beginners, or even for more advanced players who have seriously neglected their reading skill. And while the book may be easy, one of the biggest mistakes pianists make is dismissing an exercise or piece as too easy without actually putting their fingers to the keys to see if they can actually execute it. This ends up leaving lots of gaps in their playing ability. Too often the advice on improving sightreading starts too hard with suggestions like reading hymns, but what many poor readers really need is to start from the absolute basics and make sure their reading fundamentals in place and this book is absolutely pedagogically sound in that regard.There are over 500 exercises and they are all within a 5 finger pattern. For most of each section of the book both hands are doing the same thing. When the left hand does more, it's still not terribly complicated. The big upside of all of this is that no matter how bad you are at sightreading, you know where your fingers will be for the entire exercise and can keep your eyes glued to the page. You'll have a lot of success early on and become much more confident in your reading and be able to start reading ahead. These are key to sightreading, but since most people try to sightread to close to their absolute playing level, they don't get to practice these. They are too busy double checking where their hands are and not reading ahead.The exercise are short and non-memorable. A mistake many readers make is reading tunes they are familiar with. This leads to cheating on rhythm reading since they are just playing the rhythm they already know in their head. This often leads to students actually playing incorrect rhythms because they are playing what's in their head... not what's on the page. No problem with that here. And since they are so non-memorable, you could read through the whole book several times and still essentially be sightreading since it's all just a wash of similarish 5 finger stuff. You actually have to read what's on the page, though you may find that on repeat reading you're faster and faster as you've gotten more comfortable both technically and in terms of reading ahead. Additionally, there are just a ton of these. Improving your reading requires you to read in great volume and that can often be a problem to locate. But this book has it.Some people dislike that key signatures aren't used and this bothered me at first as well, but then I realized it's actually a pretty pedagogicaly sound approach. Many people panic when they see an accidental in music, but this book makes you very comfortable seeing them and actually thinking about what they mean rather than being worried about non-diatonic notes. Closer to the end there is more chromaticism even while sticking to 5 fingers and this will really make you think actively even more.Additionally, being forced to play somewhat awkwardly in a 5 finger pattern in keys like Db, Eb, F#, etc is actually nice way to get comfortable black keys. While the general rule might be not to use a thumb on a black key, in the real world, this happens a lot out of necessity and being comfortable with it can't hurt.I will admit the title is a bit of misnomer. The book is barley progressive at all other than in terms of gradually introduced rhythmic ideas. Even so, it's a book I don't think anyone should skip. If you've had trouble with sightreading and you think this might be below you, DON'T! Grab the book and read through it and you might be surprised how many small issues in your reading it will help clear up. Then you can easily start working on other materials like the Paul Harris books or Mikrokosmos, but don't skip this one as a starting point.

First, let me start by saying I’ve been a classically trained musician for 21 years (I’m 26).The downfall of being thrown into lessons at such a young age is that my teachers were sympathetic and let me look at my hands. By the time I got the High School and College, my professors figured I was a “lost cause,” and continued to let me play compositions by ear and memorization rather than sight-reading.On one hand (pun intended) I became a very skilled pianist “by ear,” and can play any piece with ease by simply listening...on the other hand, I was always a HORRIBLE sight-reader. I blame my maestros and my trained ear.So here I am, 26 years old, and I can read music and /hear it in my head/, but can’t play it with my fingers. It’s like my hands didn’t want to cooperate with my brain. I found myself singing sheet music and then transferring the arrangement to piano “by ear.”Let me be clear that I COULD READ MUSIC — just slowly, painfully, and I needed to read both clefts separately, look at my hands, and then memorize.This book has been incredible. I have been utilizing this book for a mere *3 DAYS!!!!!*I am only at exercise 44 and I see a tremendous improvement. I am sight-reading the exercises with ease and even reading ahead - which is a huge step in the sight-reading department! I actually stopped playing to write this review when I caught myself reading ahead.PRO TIP: don’t look at your hands. Ever. Imagine you’re blind, and feel your way around the piano based on the groups of black keys. You can find videos that explain this better on YouTube.Anyway, I am a very happy old dog who has learned some new tricks. I hope I can find a book like this one that includes chords. Don’t think twice before purchasing this!

Lots of exercises. None are complicated but it has helped a great deal w/ sight reading even if only by the sheer volume of material and exposure. Recommend!

This is an excellent book for beginners. It gets more challenging with rhythms and sharps & flats. I am three quarters of the way through it.Can anyone recommend a follow up to this? I am looking for a book that progressively goes beyond the 5 finger pattern and also starts including chords.

I'm glad to have a book that has over 500 short reading exercises, however this book has a number of shortcomings: All of the exercises are five finger patterns where the hand doesn't move. The left hand either parallels at octave the right hand or mostly just plays 1-4-5, only occasionally other degrees. There are no key signatures, all notes are written as accidentals, even notes in the key. This is unhelpful I think. When sight reading normal music, you use the key signature as a sign post. The book says "progressive" but it is barely so, only the rhythms and keys progress from chapter to chapter. Since you are only playing five finger patterns, if you know your scales then the key hardly adds any challenge. Even given all that, I found it useful for some practice. I am halfway through after playing it for only a few days. I play 20 or so at a sitting.

Great book for developing sight reading skills. All of the pieces are short and the technical difficulty is low.I try aim to get through 1 or 2 per day. My process:Observe the time signature, look for tricky sections - skips and steps, tricky rhythms, and add some of our own dynamic shaping to get the student thinking about artistry in real time.

I don't normally write long reviews but this book is truly amazing. I bought it for my 10 year old son who is on grade 5 but strugles with sight reading excercises. This book worked like magic and boosted his confidence massively. Honestly it is so much worth the money, I bought it as a last resort in a struggle to encourage him to excercise and to watch him fly through this book when only yestarday he was in crisis and wanted to sell his piano!;) he said this book deserves 5 stars!

Wish someone had given me this 5 years ago, great book for learning sight reading

Very simple. Useful

This book is great for repetitive exercises that gradually increase in difficulty. It has a great feel and it's fun, especially the way it gains momentum. It's excellent for quickly improving being able to read time values of notes while you're playing. I found myself improving very quickly while cramming in practise for an exam which included on the spot site reading. My only complaint is that it would have been better to have the key signatures at the beginning of the stave the way it is written in sheet music rather than just using accidentals as that meant that this aspect of reading wasn't being utilised. Nonetheless, I still think the book is beyond excellent for helping a beginner to intermediate get much more fluent and, unlike other books, you don't quickly run of or unwillingly memorise the exercises.

All pages in mine were in order, none missing. Only an experienced teacher could have come up with this sequentially graded exercise book. A lot of thought and work clearly went into it.