To boldly go.....

where many have probably gone before, just not us

Dear readers - as I mentioned briefly in our last Featured Practice Tool (in what turned out to be a futile attempt at staving off counting out loud—well, maybe it worked for a moment or two) that reader C.D. got in touch recently on the subject of sight-reading. Thank you again, C.D., for your thoughts! It is always great to hear from our readers, and I know everyone can benefit from hearing others’ experience with their own practicing.

We can file this one under our ongoing occasional series on WHAT to practice. In past posts in this series, we’ve discussed the value of working on material both “easy” and “hard,” as each of those (quite mutable) categories calls for different ways of practicing and bears different kinds of fruit. We’ve explored the different benefits to be had from consuming a wide-ranging, well-balanced practice diet versus joyfully bingeing on one large piece that we love…. As we consider WHAT to play, there is much more for us to explore, swimming as we are in a vast ocean of music waiting to be played. And today’s angle on it: let’s sight-read!

But wait—did I just type that? Dear readers, because I am committed in this newsletter to reflecting with rigorous honesty what is real and true for me about practicing: I have a confession to make. I hate sight-reading. I am sorry to say it. Don’t get me wrong: I believe in the tremendous value of it, and I urge us all to sight-read! I am only sharing with you what I consider a rather gaping relative weakness in my own skills—because we all have those. Even Yuja Wang? I suspect she would say yes, though we may or may not believe her. It is all relative! I think I hate sight-reading because I am not good at it. There, I said it: I have now confessed to you both my poor sight-reading abilities and my at times perfectionist thinking. Sight-reading is an arena of incredible growth for the perfectionists among us, asking us (as it does) to throw The Right Notes to the wind, to be willing to “hack,” to risk some things sounding really, really terrible (they will), that other things may live.

Mercifully, people are different! We are all dealt our different cards, to hold in our different piano-playing hands. Some people are dealt all the sight-reading cards in spades! Maybe in another lifetime I will be dealt eyeballs that can translate every detail on the page to my hands instantly, along with perhaps a thicker skin. As a student long ago, I heard the observation that most pianists tend either to be strong sight-readers who are uncomfortable playing by memory, or strong memorizers who are uncomfortable sight-reading. I am very, very much of the latter description. When I was a child, the Marvelous Mrs. Mueller would assign me stacks of sight-reading; I would bounce in to my next lesson and announce to her that I had memorized all of it. I never actually saw her beat her head against the wall, but I might not have been paying attention.

Anyway—I am a good memorizer! There is that. And I have certainly witnessed, in friends and colleagues and students, the wide array of reading abilities we each possess, and the ways our own perception of these skills either helps us or gets in our way. And, of course, our skills of sight-reading can be DEVELOPED, and a future Practice Tool for subscribers will take that up.

When we are either a) good sight-readers or b) bad sight-readers who are willing to do it anyway, then so many doors are open to us! One of which, as C.D. references, is IMSLP! Do you know IMSLP? In case you don’t: the International Music Score Library Project makes available online an incredible breadth of musical scores that are in the public domain. What this means for YOU, dear excellent or at least willing sight-readers, is that you can explore pretty much anything that was published at least 96 years ago and print the score for free—or sight-read right from the IMSLP app on your tablet, and enjoy the incomparable miracle of those digital page turns, after decades of wetting your fingertip, shaking loose that additional page you didn’t mean to pick up, running your palm frantically down the center binding, slapping at the pages as they float ominously back to where they were before you turned them—sometimes even hastily restoring your score to the music rack after its ignominious leap onto the floor—all while trying to not miss a beat.

But I digress. Reader C.D. uses IMSLP to find new music to work on. He points out that sight-reading is a fantastic way to identify new repertoire, and I wholeheartedly agree! And I must now clarify my earlier confession: I don’t really mind sight-reading as long as I am doing it for my own purposes; am interested and engaged with the music I am reading; and am alone in my studio (it’s okay if Daisy is there. She doesn’t say anything, just thumps her tail encouragingly). So you see, I am, under the right circumstances, a willing sight-reader if not a brilliant one, and since I am not a rehearsal pianist or professional accompanist (for there are musical roles, different than mine, especially suited to those who live in the sight-reading wheelhouse), that is enough. I can set my perfectionism aside, and I hope you can too! We take our sight-reading skills, wherever they are, and we use them to explore. We set out on a marvelous expedition, perhaps with the IMSLP index as our map (or travel brochure?).

What kind of exploration is it? Some days (I myself do not have these days often, but perhaps you do, and my hat is off to you!), we might not be in the market for a new piece; we might just want to sight-read! No pressure to go deeply into anything, no commitment—just enjoying all these different sounds and structures that come our way for today, and then moving on. Other days, we might in fact be looking for a piece that will become a new long-term companion. When that’s the case, we might be evaluating what we sight-read with a host of different criteria in the back of our minds…. And it may sometimes happen that we set out just to casually sight-read, but end up meeting the love of our piano-playing life. At least willing sight-readers that we are, we remain open to all these possibilities…

And where do we start?

-If there is a composer we are interested in (and if that composer lived long enough ago for their music to be in the public domain) chances are we can find all their published works on IMSLP. (How astonishing, really! The dark side of it is that music publishers, who have historically depended on their sales of volumes of Chopin to subsidize their risk-taking with more obscure composers, are struggling as never before, and those struggles trickle down to composers…. At the same time, SO MUCH is at our fingertips! The IMSLP phenomenon is not uncomplicated, but so wonderful in its way…)

-It’s possible to search IMSLP by composer’s nationality, by time period, by genre, and by difficulty. Of course “difficulty level” is only a very general guideline, since I hope all readers of Pride & Practicing are aware by now that we may have great strengths in some areas and gaping holes in others (my own sight-reading, for example). We might play fabulous octave passages and yet not be able to count (yet!). We might have gorgeous phrasing but not be able to play sixteenths evenly (yet!!). Across-the-board “difficulty level”? Take it with a grain of salt.

-Do you have a favorite alphabet letter? There is always the IMSLP index….

We might be frustrated with IMSLP in certain ways, limited as it is to published music in the public domain. In searching for more diverse repertoire, we might seek out anthologies of material that may be less available in other formats. We will have much more to say later on about exploring wider varieties of repertoire, but for today, a quick plug for William Chapman Nyaho’s incredible Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora. Here are 5 volumes of wonderful repertoire you will not find on IMSLP! There are various anthologies of music by women composers as well: https://www.alfred.com/at-the-piano-with-women-composers/p/00-428/ and https://www.halleonard.com/product/49007043/piano-music-by-female-composers

I urge us to sight-read a) things we already know we’ll probably love (let’s face it: that is what you were going to do anyway); and also b) things we don’t think we’ll like, or things we just have no idea about. Let it be a wonderful mystery grab-bag, & keep an open mind! Who knows what we will discover?

Once again: we’ll take up how to sight-read, how to develop our skills, in more detail in a subsequent subscribers’ post. For today: let’s set our insecurities aside and boldly go somewhere we’ve never been before. Perhaps I will stand at my overflowing music shelves and shut my eyes and play from whatever book my hand touches first—unless it’s something I already know from cover to cover, in which case I’ll try again. I think I can give that 5 minutes today! If 5 minutes feels like plenty, I’ll stop…. If 5 minutes turns effortlessly into an hour, then I’ll find I’ve had some happy practicing—and that is what I wish for you!

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AND ONE MORE THING, dear readers… have you noticed that the holidays are approaching? (Or, as Clifton would have it, Christmas is at our throats?) Perhaps you know people who would love nothing more than a subscription to Pride & Practicing…..

Thank you for reading, and if you enjoy Pride & Practicing, please share it with your friends!