Your Sight Reading
What is the best way to improve your sight reading skills?
I am a pianist who wants to be a music teacher. I am a pretty good sight reader, but I would like to improve. What are some good techniques to improve? Also, is it better to read slow and without error, increasing the speed over time, or sight read fast and let the number of mistakes drop over time?
The best way to improve sight reading is to just do it a lot. Good techniques obviously include looking through the entire piece for things like accidentals, clef changes, time signature changes, key changes, etc etc.
But the best way to get better is to just do it all the time. Get a book of music you have never played and do 1 piece every day. That will help.
And, whenever I sight read, it is normally at the ‘prescribed’ tempo. It gives you an idea of what it is supposed to sound like and feel like. However, it, like you said, can cause mistakes. But you fix the mistakes when you practice after. Try to make as little mistakes as possible at a tempo that is the same or close to the marked tempo. That is how you will improve.
You will not improve sight reading if you always take it very slow. Good sight reading is playing it as correct as possible at written tempo. So play it how it is marked and try not to make mistakes.
Best of luck!!!
Get Piano Lesson 3 (Part One) Sight-Reading Introduction