Sight Reading Challenge

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman,
and today it's time for another sight reading challenge.
And let's remember for a moment why we practice sight reading.
Remember, that good sight readers are able to learn new repertoire much faster,
which means faster overall progress,
and really good sight readers are able to open up a piece of music and simply sit down and play it on their first try,
and that's fun. For today's sight reading challenge, I'm going to be taking exercises from Sight Reading Trainer Book 2,
which contains 100 sight reading exercises, and also includes practice tips and instructions to maximize your progress.
The best way to become a great sight reader is to simply do a lot of it, which is why I highly recommend that you pause the video now
and get this book from our website so you can have lots of sight reading material
designed by me to be just at the right level for your daily practice.
If you already have Sight Reading Trainer Book 2, then go ahead and press pause to get it out,
because we'll be using it today in the lesson. Alright let's come to the piano to start the sight reading challenge.
In your Sight Reading Trainer Book 2, please find exercise number 3.
I'm going to walk you through the six sight reading steps that I'd like you to do for every one of these exercises in the book. By doing these six steps you're going to really master the essential skills of sight reading.
Step one is tap the rhythm while you count the beat.
So, we've got to check out our time signature, and we see that 3 on top tells us we'll count 3 beats per measure.
So let me show you what that would sound like for this exercise three.
You're going to count out loud and tap. So you'll go 1 2 3
1 2 3
1 2 3
1 2 3
For those TI-TI's I had to do two sounds in 1 beat for 2, or 2-&.
Now, will you try that on your own? Count the beat out loud while you tap. Go:
Good, now if you need more tries just press pause to try it again, otherwise let's go on to step two.
Step two will be to point and identify the steps, skips, or repeats. Like this, you'll go start, step down, skip up, step down, etc.
Now will you try that on your own?
Say start for the first note, go.
Good, now say it with me. Start, step down, skip up, step down, step down, step up, step up, step up, skip down, step down, step down, step up, step up, skip down.
Good, step three is point and identified the letter names.
So you'll figure out the letter name for the first note. I can see it's a step below the bass F line,
so I know that's E D F E D E F. Now will you do the rest? You take over from here.
You should have said G E D C D E C.
Step four is to place your hand in the correct pentascale or position.
Now we know that we're in bass clef,
and the first note is this E write here. So here's my middle C, we have to come to the E below middle C, and we know we're in the C
pentascale because of the page of exercises that we're on.
So here's the position, that's step four. Go ahead and get your hand in position
on your piano. And now I'd like you to try steps five and six on your own.
So, starting with step five, which is play and sing the letter names.
So go ahead and press pause, and you're going to play each note of the exercise while you sing the letter names.
Press pause to do step five on your own, then press play to try it with me.
Okay, here's what it should have sounded like;
E D F E D E F G E D C D E C
Now, if that's not quite what you did, go ahead and press pause and try it again.
Otherwise, let's go on to the last step, step six, which is to play and count the beat.
So go ahead and press pause, and on your own try to count the beat out loud like, 1 2 3 1 2 3
You're going to count the beat out loud while you play. Press pause to try that on your own,
and then press play and I'll show you how it's supposed to go.
Okay here's how that should have sounded:
1 2 3
1 2 3
1 2 3
1 2 3
All right, those are the six steps.
If you needed extra time or help with any of those, always feel free to pause and rewind. Otherwise let's go on to our next exercise.
Next up for our sight reading challenge let's go in your Sight Reading Trainer Book 2 to exercise six, which is down at the bottom of this page.
Find exercise six, and you'll notice for this one we have the grand staff,
which remember is the combination of the treble staff and a bass staff
for the right hand to play and the left hand to play. So that we're sight reading two-handed stuff. This is pretty awesome and intense.
So, let's go through our steps together and see how we would do this kind of grand staff exercise.
So for step one on exercise six, when we tap the rhythm we're going to have to use both hands, the right hand will tap any treble staff notes,
the left hand will tap any ...