I have an actual piano music question (sight reading)
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Looking for suggestions for a good “practice sight reading” book for a non-beginner pianist (my son). He had lots of lessons, his music theory is excellent and he is an amazing improviser, but would like to get better at sight reading. I’m looking for a book with interesting music that doesn’t do any music theory breakdowns. They need to start pretty easy - his sight reading skills are way behind his playing skills. Something like Album for the Young, but with a lot more simple/short pieces in the beginning. Any suggestions?
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I'll look at my books when I get home and see if I have something to recommend. Does he want classical music specifically?
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I think I remember SK recommending this one a while back. Maybe it's too easy...
https://www.amazon.com/Easy-Classics-Moderns-17-Music/dp/B001BPELLW
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I have indeed recommended the Classics to Moderns series before. If he wants to do primarily classical, that’s probably a good resource. Sometimes the complaint is made that the music is not all of the sesame difficulty and not ordered by difficulty, but for Jodi jr, that’s probably not as much of an issue.
Another idea might be to get some books in the A Line A Day series, although it might be hard to figure out which one to start with.
Lastly, if he can get ahold of Super Sightreading Secrets, I would recommend that (AFAIK it’s out of print but surfaces periodically). The thing about the SSRS book is that even if you don’t finish it, it kind of helps you change how you look at the score, which might be esp. good for someone who’s being playing a long time.
Oh, and if it’s not classical he’s wanting, then I have other thoughts.
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I've enjoyed the Classics to Moderns series, too. But if he's more interested in other styles of music, I imagine that at least some published sheet music in most every style is available in easy versions. The more famous it is, the more versions you'll find. Our family enjoys playing Christmas music, so I've got a ridiculous amount of it, and we particularly enjoy the Vince Guaraldi music from A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS. For various loved ones at various times, I acquired the Big Note version, the easy version, and a sort of middle-of-the-road version of sheet music from that album. I have played for many years from a harder version that sounds very nice and that I always thought was pretty close to what Guaraldi played, but then I found a version of one that purports to be exactly what he played and it's so far beyond what I can do that I just look at it on my shelf.
My point is that if he determined where he was on the Big-Note-to-Guaraldi scale, he could find a big collection in whatever style that he enjoyed playing and read through it. I made a project during the Covid lockdown of sight-reading through the Early Advanced Classics-to-Moderns book, hoping I found a new-to-me piece that spoke to me. I've been in a long drought as far as finding something new that excited me enough to practice it, but I think I'm going to go back to that effort. Maybe pandemic depression was keeping me from falling in love with new pieces.
Also, my nephew (22) was just here visiting and he was playing some lovely jazz. I asked if he had improvised those pieces or memorized them from sheet music. He said that there were websites with a combination of written music and video recordings that he uses to learn new things. I also know that my granddaughter (13) has taught herself to play the ukulele from YouTube sites. There are probably websites that we have no idea about but that your son's friends could point him to. The internet has something for everybody, so there are probably YouTube channels devoted solely to working on sight-reading.
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Thanks for all the suggestions! I may even get a few for myself!
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Let’s us know how it goes!
