Reel Polka

What material can be used for sight-reading?

The answer here is any and all music should be considered music that can be used for sight-reading. For best results I would suggest picking music that is a couple of grades below your optimum performance level. For instance, if you feel you are a comfortable Grade 5 then Grade 3 Repertoire should pose little challenge.

In Scotland we are blessed with a huge array of Celtic music for fiddle, penny whistle and lots of other folk instruments. These make excellent exercises for sight-reading due to the varieties of dances like the Reels, Strathspeys, Jigs and Polkas each with their own intriguing rhythms.

The violin studies of Kreutzer and Kayser are also worth a look. As are the Partitas of J.S.Bach.

Music for the Flute, Saxophone, Trumpet and Clarinet adapts quite nicely too to the guitar. Given their range of notes they are excellent reading between the Fifth and Seventh positions on the guitar.

As teachers of the guitar still requiring a method to better their own skills I would suggest giving your self a scare and try sight- reading some music written in Bass Clef, just read it an octave higher. Getting used to reading in Bass Clef will really give vitality to your keyboard explorations, if you do that.

Ted Greene in his book Chord Chemistry extols the virtues of learning to navigate your way on piano as beneficial to all musicians. A fantastic musician and jazz educator Greene suggests as a “real brain-melter” reading piano music in concert pitch on the guitar. He says it gave him a real insight in to how harmony works.

A great classical guitarist “Allan Neave” suggested once that you should maintain a pile of books that are set aside for the purpose of sight-reading and as your work through the material you should place it to the bottom of the pile and not return to it until it arrives at the top once again. This strategy helps to maintain the freshness of your sight-reading practice time.

Another great insight to incorporate into your sight-reading regime is to “Never Stop”.

We are not looking for perfection here, we are training the eyes, brain and hands to work as an efficient “Machine” as it were. In a sense speeding up our response time to musical symbol recognition.

About the Author

Samuel Munro has lived and worked in Aberdeen in Scotland since 1977. He holds an ICMA Diploma in Music Teaching. He has studied with the likes of Wayne Brassel, Tony McManus, Jamie Findlay, George Norval, Bill Alexander, Gilbert Bibarian, John Etheridge and Allan Neave. Sam lives in Portlethen on the outskirts of Aberdeen City.

Banda Dundalk – Cooley’s reel / John Ryan’s Polka

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