I'm taking grade 5 this year.
My sight reading is horrible, I usually play by ear and remember by heart of which keys my teacher plays.
Does anyone have any tips on how I can improve my sightreading?
Sorry for the bad english, I'm asian.(Hong Kong)

Hi Jonathan!
I sympathise with you! I am about to take Grade 4 (piano) + Grade 5 (theory) and find my sight-reading abilities are far behind the others. I have been browsing throught the Internet and found a number of very good books for very gradual sight-reading practice. I've just bought a few books belonging to two series to tackle this very frustrating problem.
One is "Improve your sight reading" by Paul Harris (Faber music) gradual and quite enlightening about how to go about sight-reading both what they call "prepared" pieces and "unprepared" ones.
The other series is "Sight-reading for Today" (Joan Last - Bosworth), which provides a wealth of quite accessible daily sight-reading exercises (about 3 lines each). You can find both at http://www.musicroom.com/ and even order on-line. They're both worth it in my opinion. If you're working at Grade 5 level, you'd better start with sight-reading exercises from a lower grade (say, Grade 3 or even 2). Both series are available for different Grades.
The key to good sight-reading is just doing it every day, even if only 5-10 minutes (or more, depending on how much time you have) and very, very slowly, but constantly. I even tried with basic books (grades 1 and 2 as introductory work to boost my morale!) and am currently doing one piece a day (in no more than 5-7 minutes ... that is the very essence of sight-reading: immediacy).
Hope this helps and don't dismay ... it'll come in due course.
John

Yes, I would second Juan Carlos' advice.

The books he mentions are good: also there is

the Sight-Reading Source book by Alan Bullard - which is a favourite of mine but seems to go only up to grade 3 at present, you would probably find books 2 and 3 useful in building up to where you want to be, and
Right at Sight by A T Johnson which covers all grades.

One thing I find is important - that is to establish a steady pulse and sort out some of the rhythm first before you attempt to find any notes.

Thanks a lot to both of you, I'll try sight reading a bit everyday.
I'll also check out those books!

With sight-reading...the crucial thing is to just keep going and keep the pulse steady.

that's what loses you marks in exams etc, when you just stop completely and try to ensure the notes are right.

comparatively, it's better to just keep going rather than stop to try and place your fingers over the right notes.

and don't play it too fast if you can't handle it, even if the markings say so.

I've bought "Right at Sight" by A T Johnson (grade 4) (as suggested by Maggiemay) a couple of weeks ago, and like it. It gives you tips on what to look for when preparing to play the piece. I find sight reading very hard, and also tend to play by ear - I listen to the CDs to get the rhythm of pieces, and have problems with reading the bass clef. I don't find the pieces in "Right at Sight" too bad, though.

I've bought "Right at Sight" by A T Johnson (grade 4) (as suggested by Maggiemay) a couple of weeks ago, and like it. It gives you tips on what to look for when preparing to play the piece. I find sight reading very hard, and also tend to play by ear - I listen to the CDs to get the rhythm of pieces, and have problems with reading the bass clef. I don't find the pieces in "Right at Sight" too bad, though.

Hymn books Get a full music hymn book and play through all of the hymns - it really does work!

Not if you're no good at reading music it doesn't. You sit there and stumble through a piece with so many wrong notes and stops/pauses, not to mention no dynamics, and it takesso long, and you know you were so rubbish and get so demotivated, it really isn't the best way to improve.

First target - improve music reading skills. Not quite the same as sight reading skills. These have little to do with the standard you can actually play to, so forget being grade 5 standard for this part of your practice. Get some REALLY REALLY easy piano music - the sort you give to absolute beginners, and work your way through it making sure you look at every note and work it out before you move on. Don't worry about sounding bad - in this part of your practice you're not trying to sound good, just learning to read. Never take your eyes off the music to look at your fingers for more than a moment. Do this for, say, 10 minutes of your practice every day. Not just one day, and never "Oh I haven't got time for that today": Time spent learning to read music properly saves so much time later on it is beyond price. This might take a couple of weeks or a couple of months or more, but stick to the task. When you can honestly look at a splodge of ink on a stave and know what key to press without having to think about it then you can think about sight reading. Even then, the hymn book thing is not really appropriate at grade 5.

Sight reading means more than just seeing a note and knowing which key to press. It's about patterns of notes. Good sight readers recognise the patterns. Not only that, they usually know how to formulate a plan of attack for approaching whatever piece they may be given. That's why you are given 30 seconds to look at a piece before playing it (5 minutes for the quick study in post grade 8). I'm not going to attempt to give you a plan - that will depend on you and, frankly, it's what your piano teacher should be doing for you.

The idea that "just keep practicing and it will get better" is simply wrong, as much for sight reading as for playing in general. Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent. Good technique makes perfect. Good teaching makes good technique. Good teaching is a two way process.

Just in case anyone still needs to look at the keys (I did for several decades) sight reading is when this is the biggest impediment. If you need to cure yourself of the habit, sight reading hymns very slowly is a good start, though they do occasionally have the complication of chords that are best played with three notes in the right hand, because the tenor is high and the bass low.

Eventually, to be a really competent pianist (which I don't claim to be) you need to get the kinaesthetic judgment to be able to find any note on the keyboard without looking. Bernard d'Ascoli, who is blind, can do that once he is sitting in the right place. I occasionally try to improve my kinaesthetic judgment by practising octave leaps in the left hand without looking; even more challenging is an exciting passage in the Brahms Horn Trio (which I shall never perform on piano) with many octave leaps for the left hand and a two-octave leap in the middle of them.

My pupils are always shocked by the prospect of only having 30 seconds to look at something, but I reassure them that if they have a proper "plan of action", 30 seconds will end up seeming like far too long

Once you know what you're looking for, it's possible to take in a great amount of detail in that time.

It's a bit like scanning a newspaper article. You don't read it properly, but you pick out the important parts and get the gist of it.

A really important one (sorry if these are obvious already) is knowing your key signatures - but knowing them properly. Merely knowing that you have to remember 4 sharps isn't good enough. You need to know exactly what key you are in. If you happen to come across an awkward chord/phrase in the piece and can't read all the notes in time, at least you'll be able to make an educated guess rather than stabbing randomly at any note.

If you already play a lot by ear you can really use this well when it's more important to keep a good flow towards the end. Rather than hesitate over the final chord making sure every note is perfect, keep your pulse and play the chord that fits the key signature. It may not be technically what's written, but it won't sound strictly "wrong" either, and it's better than a big gap in the music

Before you start, scan for repeated phrases, scales, broken chord patterns, intervals etc... to give you a rough "map"

Try looking at a piece of music for 10 seconds then writing down everything you can possibly remember about it... It's great brain training and you get better and better every time!

You need someone else for this one.. Look at the first bar of music, then get them to cover it up with a piece of card. Begin playing the music, but as soon as you start playing, get the other person to constantly cover up the next bar as you being playing the one before You don't need to look at notes while you're playing them. When you read out loud, your eye is scanning the next phrase as you are speaking the previous one.

Practise spotting intervals as quickly as you can on the music. Also, practise finding those intervals on the piano without looking down.

Those are a few humble thoughts. Hope there is something useful there for you xxxx

Yes - and recognising basic fingering patterns is also essential, and knowing where your hands are on the keys, throughout the piece, without looking down.

I agree with other posts about building up from easy pieces.