I Invented a Crazy Sightreading Hack
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- Опубліковано 26 гру 2024
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In this piano lesson, I share with you a crazy sight-reading hack that I invented to help students improve! The hack is revealed at 2:35 but I recommend you watch the intro before that too so that this video will make sense to you!
This hack DOES NOT magically make your sight-reading professional level overnight. You still need to put in the work.
Keep practising with your hands covered up and watch how your sight-reading improves TREMENDOUSLY as you begin to be able to sight-read without looking at your hands!!!
Try it and let me know how it goes in the comments down below! :)
I will try your idea.
I'm surprised your comment wasn't as popular as I expected it to be.
No way
When I see my younger students looking at their hands I ask them if they look at there hands when they play a console to which they answer “no” so this helps them understand to trust themselves to play without looking down.
I love it
Me
mydeafminute very true. The point I’m trying to bring across is trust your hands learn to navigate through a song.
but its a bit discouraging when you keep hitting the wrong note. but im forced to do ot cuz i dont have 4 eyes
I'm handy at Apex Legends.
wait. increase my sight reading by 5 times?
5x0... uh oh.
lol
So funny! How about 5 X -1 ???
RIFamily -5
I was feeling discouraged with my sight reading skills and this comment made me laugh. 😂
You mean 5x1083567458265429764576526576856294237534647832946766376835203576432067487835023204763204363262620962632963209736325720753291247964
For me it’s more like getting a cloth so I can use it to wipe my tears off because of how much of a disgrace I am.
same im doing my sight reading test today and I'm so scared and you dont know how scared i am my dad isn't here to record at this moment but he's coming soon and he doesn't know how much stress I'm going through. Ive never been good at reading notes. this year is the first year I'm doing sight reading. Im so afraid that i might fail and disappoint my dad. I dont feel comfortable doing sight reading and I'm holding back tears rn.
Edit: I failed. I feel so bad for my dad after him spending a lot of time with me on it :(
@@Minghui8170 how did it go?
@@RandomPerson-hd9sb i think i failed. I feel so bad for my dad. he spend days with me trying to get better at sight-reading. but when the test really came I freaked out and I don't think I did well. I feel so disappointed in myself.
@FanciestSam
As soon as you did your best, it's okay, things will always get better if you keep practicing, and you just need more time, don't give up, not just for your dad, but yourself as well. You are capable.
Hey! Don.t say that to yourself. You are trying, you are looking up videos that can help. That's so far from being a disgrace. Keep playing. ❣️
Thanks for showing yourself genuinely sight reading and screwing up at times. Persistence in the face of frustration and failure is so, so, so important. Seeing a leader and teacher like you be vulnerable in front of thousands of students is a marvelous teaching tool. It's easier to takes chances, fall down, and get back up when we see our wise elders do it (though you look super young for a "wise elder" [I guess it's true what they say: black don't crack!].) It's also necessary. Thank you as always!
Thank you Jay Ebasic
Thank you Richard Wagon
Thank you Harrison Ebons
I’ve been playing piano for 14 years and I’ve never had the importance of not looking at your hands emphasized. Just tried this trick out on the piece I’m currently working on and holy smokes, this has changed up my piano game for eternity !! Thank you so much !!
well for me it's similar to type on the computer keyboard if you wanna type fast u cant look at the keyboard
Great comment 46lobo1, great analogy!
You still may get kinda fast though. But ofcourse not looking and using ten fingers will always be faster
@@jazerleepiano why don't you upload
Funnily enough I don't look at the keyboard to type but I have to for the piano. The keyboard looks harder than a piano so why ?...
but you don’t need to look up for a computer keyboard
great idea. and it has a second function as a bib at the piano, so now I can eat at the same time. I will use it religiously now.
😂
I'm just a beginner here and your tips help me progress quickly. Thank you ♥️. I wear glasses due to poor eye sight so I just want to tell any glass-wearing fellows out there that : Check your eyesight regularly. 😂 When I got a new pair of glasses, my sightreading improved a lot.
damn i wish i could blame my shit sight reading on my poor eye sight, but no i just suck hahaha
I don't know why dont you get more views, your videos are so reliable, UA-cam most be wrong.
Thanks for your words man! Not doing videos for fame or glory anyways. Just trying to help out fellow pianists who encounter the same problems as I do everyday. I appreciate your support heaps :)
@@jazerleepiano Don't stop man, you are doing great 👌 Also I would like to see some of your playing
Tbh, I almost didn’t click because the title and graphic seemed too click-bait-y. If the video hadn’t been short I might have missed out
@@swivellogic just dont look.lol
I think the best part about this demonstration was that the “errors” didn’t sound like mistakes to me, especially because you kept going in time. Honestly, if you hadn’t pointed them out I would have thought them an intentional part of the music. I think this proves very well that looking at the hands is disruptive to musicianship as a whole, and is best eliminated. Thanks for the lesson.
I just started piano and one of the first things I saw on sight reading was this video about 2 months ago. I took it to heart and do not look at my hands, but rather only the sheet. Trying to be disciplined so I do not spend 10 years at this and end up "just okay". I came back to this video again, thanks for the recap. Liked seeing you sightread blind.
Life hack: search variations of “I hate simply piano” so UA-cam will stop giving you simply piano ads
or just get an ad blocker
Does this work? I am worried the app advert agressiveness will get worse.👀 I am even afraid of stating their name in this comment lest the algorithm gets confused.
@@politereminder6284 idk my comment was a joke, the best way to stop getting certain ads is to just click on other things and don't show interest in anything related to it
@@perry7003 😅😅😅
I've tried lots of ad blockers with UA-cam. They mostly don't work at all for the UA-cam app but they are helpful for the UA-cam website, though not perfect.
I used to play in the dark, to totally test my memorization of a song piece and the ability to find the correct keys without being able to see them. A blind fold would accomplish the same thing, to get better proficient on your piano key knowledge. Once you can do this, it's much easier to sight read without looking down at your hands.
decades ago a typing teacher in high school made us tape paper over the keyboard to get us to quit looking at our hands. to this day, some forty years later I rarely look at my hands while typing. it's a matter of trusting yourself
I’ve been doing this for a few weeks and the change has been AMAZING.
Obviously you are an accomplished piano player with years of experience but you are not afraid of making mistakes and record it when doing the incredibly difficult job of sight reading and publish it as it is. I just wanted you to know that knowing the fact that even YOU could make mistakes while sight reading is a great help and motivation to me and people like me. I appreciate it and I thank you sincerely.
Great
👍 Thank you for not editing out mistakes! It makes us not feel so miserable when we make them. I'm looking forward to trying this.
Let me know how it goes T-Marie!
I think she’s still trying it .
It seems so..@@eaglegold3303
hahahaha
@@eaglegold3303
Just discovered your channel and I think that this channel is one of the best musical channels on UA-cam
Thanks man for the advice. It helps so much👍🎼🎹
Thanks for the support LF Productions! You are the best :)
Learn Piano with Jazer Lee thanks man👍
Been trying to not look at hands for the past year. This really helps with the "dyslexic" note misreading.
This was really encouraging to me, as I've just got back into learning the piano at 59 (last lesson probably 45 years ago), and I'm going to work on this idea. As someone else commented already, it's a bit like not looking at a computer keyboard when you're typing. One of the best things I ever did was learn to touch type, which seems impossible at first and does take the same discipline (even covering up keys bit by bit until they have no letters on them anymore). Now I can type almost as fast as I think. Of course it would be a super-human skill to be able to see a note in the top or bottom octave and reach out and hit it, but most of what we play is near the middle and/or progresses by known intervals. It might be fun to close my eyes or wear a blindfold and improvise, trying to imagine the notes under my fingers. However, this is only one half of the equation - the other is actually knowing what the dots are - and I still struggle quite a lot with that. Music notation evolved by all sorts of ad-hoc processes and if we were inventing it again in the 21st Century it would be much easier, I suspect. Notes being different on the treble and bass clefs is the most obvious issue.
Me typing instead of playing the piano..............
I feel Jazer addicted
I'm trying so hard to do this! One thing I've found has helped is to look at the intervals between notes, rather than the notes themselves. Much easier to work out where that C is if you're aware that you just played the B right below it!
This is such a great tip. I never thought to cover my hands, but I certainly concentrated on not looking down when I was developing my sight-reading. I originally thought you were going to use the cloth for the technique I developed myself for sightreading, which is to cover the music (I used a piece of paper) and lift it up for just a second, pointing at a chord or measure. I would immediately cover the music and try to play what I remember. This forced me to digest entire blocks of music rather than single notes. Don't know if that would help people, but I've taught this technique before.
I'm going to give that a go too.
You seem like a cool friend to be with, thanks for the video
Dude, your channel is fantastic. I'd love to see more.
Jazer I love and appreciate your videos. I want to relay to you how I learned to touch-type in England many years ago. I was in a Technical College and we all sat at separate desks, each with a typewriter. The keys were covered with a plastic shield with room underneath for our hands. On the wall in front of us was a replica of the keyboard and that is how we learnt to touch type. Even if we had looked down we wouldn’t have seen the keys. It was a brilliant system and I came out of that class able to type 120 words a minute. Muscle memory cannot be underestimated, it is ingrained into my brain. The same technique certainly applies to piano. Just wish I still had that discipline.
Hi Jazer. Thanks for the great videos. As a beginner, sight reading is challenging but i know eventually it will open up doors to difficult pieces
I will try this! My mom taught me to type on typewriter same way- put a cloth over keys- it got me very good- compared to others who just used one or two fingers to poke at keys
Well done! I think keeping your eyes on the music and the importance of keeping a consistent beat are the two most important things in sight-reading. When these are accomplished, then progress starts to happen!
One of my biggest problems is feeling the rhythm. If I can hear the song played by someone else first it helps loads.
We did this in my typing class in high school. It works, there’s no question in that.
*saw that piece of cloth
*proceed to check whether it's April fool's day or not
I sat down at my piano to practice today and remembered this hack from watching your video a few days prior and my mind is blown by how much my sight reading has improved. I now feel unstoppable with my progress. Thank you so much.
This is really useful, thanks. I've been bumping into this exact issue. I've only been playing for a few months, my sight-reading is pretty good but I keep looking down to find the 'landmarks' on the keyboard and then I lose my place on the score. It hadn't occurred to me to stop looking down ! Sometimes the solution is right under your nose. Thanks Jazer :) Great channel btw.
Glad it helped you Chris! Let me know if this methods works for you
Actually I started with the 7 songs you recommended and I just got myself the sheets and by playing them, I just recognized that I just stopped looking at my hands. So this just came naturally. I never been a really good sheet reader. I played the piano at school so when I was about 10 -15 years old and got back to it in my early 30ies. So I am trying to get back to it. I am really thankful for your videos! They really motivate me a lot and help me getting better and I really can improve my playing.
It’s so hard because when I don’t look at my hands, I’m actually pressing the wrong thing. :(
it is normal. it happens. In this case, i move my faulty finger on the next (correct) note without looking at the keyboard so that my brain can register the geography of the keyboard. Cheers
same
You should be able to tell with your ears
@@LoomiYT ur slow
@@LoomiYT You should be able to tell with your tears :D
Took a typing class - same principle "keep your eyes on the copy!" Also curl up the corner on the lower right page - so you can grasp and flip the page "on the beat" not necessary fast! 3 ring binder with reinforced holes are good . When you buy a sheet at a music store check where the publisher is putting the page turns - they should be at natural break and phrases in the music, not odd places.
My piano teacher was recently telling me to work on sight-reading.... guess I'll have to try this hack!
genius, Ive been playing for 50 years and i look DOWN all the time, thank you
Glad I found your channel, and super glad you're back! Love from NZ :)
Thanks so much Josh! All the best with your piano progress!
Sanaol... Im practicing my sight reading skills.. Im so frustrated but I know I have to be patient... practice practice and trust the process... :)
I will try this, but I think I will fail! I'm not a good enough pianist yet, I don't read music, I play by ear.
Keep teaching, we must never let the music die! 💕
I'm a classical guitarist. Sightreading the way you described here works great on guitar too!
Only problem is that the same note will exist on every string in different positions, so we're sort of forced to look at the hands in that regard.
But for the older pieces in the classical guitar repertoire that only maybe use the first two positions on the neck, this sightreading method has worked great for me!
Your channel is a very valuable resource, thank you!
🤦🏻♂I am afraid that is incorrect.
Me!!! I’ve been playing for the last 8 years and relying almost entirely on memorization. I never really made that transition from beginner notes that tell you the note to actual reading, and I have been suffering for it ever since
Me!
Haha, same. My teacher makes me sight-read for 20 minutes each day, and 1 year ago my sightreading was so so bad, but it got much much better with practice. Just like you, I have an awesome memory and can memorise and learn more than 20 pieces at a time, but sightreading is extremely important, because if you can sight read, you an *learn pieces faster*.
I'm here to make my piano teacher and my parents proud (or maybe just myself)
He never teach me since COVID-19 got into our country, learning piano and keyboard feels harder to me, luckily I found your channel, thank you.
Thanks for the tip!. I always try to go this way and, for me, it depends quite a lot on my confidence level that day... Some days I can play complete pieces (still at a basic level, I am just one and a half year on piano) almost without any mistake, but sometimes it is harder. But what is clear to me is that this is the way to go!
I can relate to that José! Good days and bad days are completely normal. The important thing is to push on through even the tough days :)
Deciphering is the hardest part of reading for me. I can play fine without looking at my hands. It really is a chore decoding new music or anything with a lot of ideas.
I get the whole about dont look at your hands idea when sight reading, but as a beginner with no music background etc, It is difficult to find assurance in making sure the key that I played were in fact the correct corresponding note on the sheet music, as I couldn't tell if the note was correct especially if im sight reading a sheet that I do not have prior Knowledge about, not knowing how it should sound like.
Geez, then get yourself digital piano and buy some app that provides feedback (it shows if you hit correct keys) pianomarvel or flowkey (both pay to play apps though ) and there is also sightreading.training ( free )
You can learn to feel the black keys to find the correct notes. For example B will be to the right of three black keys.
Wonderful! I7m trying it tomorrow. But I have an upright piano… I will find a way.. Thanks, that’s was fun!
Glad you are back! You are such a great teacher 😀. I look forward to more videos.
Thanks heaps thara11! Hope this helps you out :)
thats exactly how my kids and I learned to type
, worked so well! Makes sense for piano too! :)
ME!
So I guess you're saying don't be afraid to make mistakes? I don't know about other people learning piano but I'm such a perfectionist! I need to stop worrying about playing the wrong keys!
Thanks Jazer great tips
SAME!
Imagine the wrong keys as Jazz.
I have been doing something similar with my students for over 20 years. Works great and keeps the focus on the timing. I also tell them, "when you make a mistake, just keep on going!"
Jazer: * Takes out cloth * this will really improve your sight reading like 5 × times
Me: How on earth will a cloth help me?
Jazer: Step 1, Don't look at your hands
Me: Ah, I can already smell where the cloth will fit in
Wdum?
Hi Jazer-this is great! Makes me flash back to my Vocational Typewriting classes in high school in 1977, when I had to learn “touch-typing”-typing without looking at the keys. And that meant, after several weeks of ferocious and tedious drills to get our fingers used to where the keys were, taping a sheet of paper so that it draped over the keyboard. We had to reach under the paper, just as you showed, and, starting from the “home key row”, figure out where all the keys were and hit them reliably, and at speed.
This was unbelievably hard at first. But it was totally doable. Now, 40 years later, it's turned out that touch-typing was the only useful thing I got out of high school! :)
Some additional advice - try it at first with pieces that you are intimately familiar with so you know when a wrong note is played. I have been trying to not look at the hands and just use the feel around for the sets of two and three to center my puck, so to speak. It is really difficult but will be worth the effort.
Hopefully, with time, I can get the muscle memory for chord shapes and positioning like I do with the guitar. I have been playing guitar for a VERY long time. I thought it might translate to the piano.
It doesn´t. At all. Not even a little bit.
I also thought that playing different time and tempo with the hands might be easier on the piano because the hands on the guitar are also doing different things and I am really good at that.
Wrong again. I can fly a plane but if you get into a helicopter with me, you are going to die. Totally different coordination.
You’re so right! Thanks
Great idea looking at ones hands is IMO the greatest roadblock to becoming a good sight reader.
My teacher holds a piece of paper over my hands! Ha ha... same idea. Thx!
To ignore viewing hands, you need to develop a system or technique to play blindly from the beginning by feeling hand/fingers positions by feeling or relative to their space/position. This trick of putting a cloth is a forceful way when one has not developed the proper blind playing as well as good sight reading from beginning.
I was also crap at sight reading until I discovered the same trick, and I started to practice playing with my eyes shut until I could get to the point where I could find any note without looking.
Now I have the opposite problem, I find it difficult to play without having the music in front of me. I’ve come full circle: if I want to *memorize* a piece I have to NOT look at the music and look at my hands instead LOL :)
Its the same as if you were reading a book and constantly looking down but trying to read fluently. Thats a good idea!
2:17 that was liszt right there
Wonderful! And yes the piece of clothe is essential to totally forget the option of looking at the keyboard. Even the first note of C major you will find it by playing the scale. And doing that you are definitely working your ear! I have never had such pleasure of sight reading if not with this method! You do not care about reading all the notes one by one, you just follow the movement of the melody and you learn step by step of to deal with big intervals!! Thank you so much!!!🎉
"You" 😂
I was looking for that comment xD
Me! I am terrible at sight reading on the piano, and I know I shouldn’t be. I was a concert artist on the saxophone many years ago, and I played with every kind of ensemble imaginable from duo to full orchestra. I could read anything and make it sound like I’ve played it all my life. I know how that’s done and was very good at it. Then I switched to piano 4 years ago, and bought a grand. I learn great music and can play what I learn with my eyes closed, but reading still eludes me. I get maybe 80%. I’m going to try your method. It rings true to my experience.
One thing that helps me when I can remember to do it is to read ahead at least a bar. It employs the short term memory, and it gives me time to be prepared by the time I get to it. I find that I can look at the music non-linearly if I stay about one to two bars ahead with my eyes. My mind assembles what I see into the correct notes and rhythms, and the one-bar-buffer enables me to read that music more carefully so that my fingers know where they are headed.
How'd you go with this sight-reading hack?? 😂😂
This is exactly how I learnt to type at school many years ago. No looking. It works. Now I’m learning piano and I automatically adopted this from my previous learning experiences. Do it. Excellent recommendation.
Great comparison and analogy Maree, works the exact same way :)
Me, definitely me
I've just found your channel and its ace!!
I'm 37 and started learning Piano from scratch in February. It's the first instrument I've ever played and the first time I've attempted to read music. I have my grade 1 arbsm exam in 4 weeks and am in a major spin about the site reading part! I'm going to give this a whirl tomorrow!!
This guy is kind of cute. Lol. Especially when turned up the speed to 1.75x
You are SO right about looking back and forth from the music to your hands! And the "shroud" is a great idea. You are a good teacher!
First day trying this out and it's already revolutionized my reading. Thanks so much!
I wrote a program on my PC that connects to my keyboard via MIDI. It displays random notes, intervals and chords on a stave, then times me how long it takes to play it. It has an option that shows the notes I am playing overlaid on the target notes which helps in building relative memory, but I can also shut off played notes on the stave. Only when I match the pattern does the timer stop. As soon as I release all notes, it puts up a new challenge. It keeps a running average. I can do notes, intervals, or chords, or a mix up. I usually use a Flute sound because it sustains each note forever so I can hear what I am playing and what it sounds like when I get it right. I can also keep the next pattern to be within an octave because most phrasing in music usually does not go more than an octave from one to another... unless you are one of those maniacs like Beethoven [smile].
SO HELPFUL thank you jazer
lovely technique... gonna try this.
Although I play the piano and classical pipe organ well enough from memory, my sight reading has always been very very poor. Actually I can now see that I'm looking away from the music and then back, just for a fraction and then losing my place multiple times during a practice piece. I will concentrate in my spacial awareness. After all organists exclusively use that skill for pedal work. Many thanks!
I kind of do the same thing. I sight read from my phone and so instead of covering up the keyboard, I just turn all the lights in the room off. I find that the eyes will automatically be drawn to the only light source, plus I feel especially focused practicing in the dark =))) By the way, I am a complete beginner just started out learning piano by myself last month and your videos have been such huge help. Thanks a lot, Jazer!
It's certainly a leap of faith!
I used a similar hack to help me touch-type. I got a keyboard with blank keys and used that for a while. I now type really good wothoyt loosing ayu the kwybards. Won!
Similar to when I took a typing class in high school. The teacher taught us the "home keys" which made typing fast easy.
No fair, you have been playing the piano for years and years.. Great video.........Thank you......
I was doing scales today for practice before seeing this video and tried to not look at my hands. I want to be confident knowing where the keys are by feel, because our hands play the songs, not our eyes, so I was doing something I'm familiar with (Cmaj and Dmaj scales) while not looking. I was so happy to make my way around without staring at my hands! It felt so good and boosted my confidence a lot. I have a digital piano, so I'll have to find something for this. Maybe I'll clip it to the bottom of my book rest.
My piano teacher held a book over my hands so I couldn't see! He also taught me to read intervals, train my fingers to judge distance and listen, I was 13, I'm 61 now and it still works!
This is exactly how I learned to type on a keyboard back in middle school computing class. Now my students are amazed that I can type without looking down.
ok this makes sense yeah you're right I always look at my hands cuz I become unconfident and keep trying to count what note I'm on and think about every note I press but that slows me down so much so that's for this i do not need to do that I will learn better like this
I like to hear you play with errors and all. Thanks for uploading.
Me
thanks for the advice. I am still not having confident when not looking at my hands. I will try to practice more.
That was probably the best jazz I've ever heard
Me! I hate Sight reading. But your lessons help me a lot! I’m playing Russian Waltz on my piano and I am getting better at it from your ‘7 times each 2 or 1 bar’ really helped me! Love your videos!
My piano teacher put a book above my hands because I was looking down too much when I was learning Chopin Etude op. 10 no. 1 and told me to practice without looking at all. Beginning was painful but it definitely helped with accuracy in the long run.
Interesting idea for practicing the waterfall etude, I should try it too! 😝
Have you ever seen the Bach scholar video on sight reading? He has some very interesting stuff about the fact that good sight readers should be looking at the hands ….but the key is HOW to look. It’s really worth a watch. Thanks for your stuff here Jazer. It’s great.
Ooh, that gave me an idea. An LCD panel on a stand that you can adjust up and down and roll over your keyboard. You push a button and the whole thing goes dark. But to help find your starting note, you can push a button and it goes clear. Sort of like how a solid state window blind works. I can find my way to any note by feel, because of the two sharp/three sharp pattern of the keys. I am nowhere near an expert but I can do that. If I need say, A#, I just find middle C, play up to A and then up one semitone. I aways start at middle C to help with a reference to my spatial memory. My limiting factor is I can play chords with my left and right hands simultaneously, but only as an accompaniment harmoney on my left that changes relatively slowly to the melody on my right. But when a left handed harmony is faster broken chords, or doing something not quite at the same time as the melody on the right, I get all messed up and start faking the harmony or not playing it (gappy) on my left hand.
This is like being a touch typist as i am & not looking at your computer key board as i dont when im typing but with piano is up down, up down it takes a bit of time. Thats exactly what i did to learn to type cover my hands. 😀😀
Thanks for this video. Helps me out a lot right now!
Jazer, this is genious!!! Thank you so much!
I will always support your channel I improve lot of things from your channel
Sometimes when I play scales I close my eyes to feel for the keys and force my brain to acknowledge where I am on the piano, instead of looking up and down. I noticed it also helps with my focus. Thanks for the tip! I'll try this. :)
Yeah I'm really trying to incorporate this into my practice too. I keep thinking well if Stevie Wonder can do it... he wasn't a bad pianist.
I totally agree! This is a sure way to familiarize with the sound of the notes, points the direction where the finger should go, memorizing both sound and place of notes wih certainty... and play like a pro! 'will try it today 🙈
Let me know how you go AR!
Thanks! This helped me so much!
a few weeks ago, I was playing until it got dark. My husband fell asleep in the same room, so I kept going. The only light was my ipad with my music; surprise! It was actually a lot of fun to play in the dark!