But, what’s so bad about feeling like a failure? Where did you learn that being a failure was a bad thing?
What would performing be like if you didn’t care about how well you performed? What would you care about instead?
I know, you’re going to tell me that you don’t like feeling bad about yourself. That’s perfectly understandable. But, my point here is not to say that you shouldn’t care about that.
My point is to ask you: why is it that your self-esteem is based on how well you perform?
Where does that come from?
What does it do to the way you perform, and the way you practice?
I want you to imagine for a minute that as a young child, you were never criticized for failing at anything. Would you now be saying “I feel badly about myself because I didn’t perform well”?
Let me be crystal clear about what I’m asking you to consider: Your self-esteem has nothing to do with your performance. That’s just a crazy story you’re telling yourself. It could easily have gone another way.
Of course, you can’t change the past. But, you can change the present.
Do you find that you simply can’t be satisfied with your performance, no matter how hard you work? Are you constantly obsessing over your deficiencies? Do you get overwhelmed easily while practicing? Is “overthinking” inhibiting your ability to be efficient and productive?
The temple knows…
If so, you are probably wondering how to stop overthinking, once and for all.
In this article, I will give several tips for musicians on how to deal with overthinking.
Let me begin this by saying that many who know me would question my qualifications for writing an article on how to stop overthinking. After all, I am known as a prolific overthinker. However, I claim that this does qualify me to express an opinion on this topic. So, the very fact that this article managed to come into existence should be proof that I know something. And if I can do it, you can too.
Problems caused by overthinking
That said, you probably have a sense that overthinking is causing some problems for you. If you pay close attention to what is happening, you may notice the following dangers of overthinking:
It uses up your time. You only have 24 hours in each day. Do you want to spend that time doing what you want to do, or listening to your mind? Maybe some of both are useful, but it would be great to decide for yourself.
It distracts you from your goals and values. The mind lies to you. For example, you start an activity for one reason, and then suddenly you find yourself pursuing something else entirely.
It can throw you into loops. Often, the result of overthinking is that you might cause further problems for yourself. For example, if you are overly cautious, you might avoid getting something done, and thus fail at a task. Consequently, you might become even more cautious in the future, thereby leading to more failure.
The temple is older than your fear…
And now, the tips:
1. Give self-compassion a try
Many people will tell you it is bad to be an overthinker. Indeed, you may have been harshly criticized for it in the past. However, I invite you to consider the idea that perhaps your overthinking is simply inevitable. We all think too much.
Remember that it was learned for a reason. Your mind thinks that it is useful for you (and perhaps it is). Instead of blaming yourself for doing something bad, consider that overthinking is an attempt at doing something good.
What is overthinking, anyway? It is important to remember that rather than being simply a “mental barrier”, thinking is a behavior that is meant to serve you. For example, you may have learned it to:
Protect yourself from danger.
Ensure that you consider every possibility in a situation.
Remind yourself not to make a mistake you made last time.
Prevent yourself from getting too far into a situation without adequate preparation.
People who identify as overthinkers have something in common: they are suffering. Try to see this. When you suspect the mind is hiding your suffering from you, try to actively look for it. When you find it, rather than stuffing it back down, try to hold it with self-compassion. This is nothing more than the wish for the suffering to go away. You don’t have to do anything about it. This will give you a more balanced perspective on why you do what you do.
Enter the ritual hall, if you dare…
Tips for self-compassion:
If you can, notice how the thinking is your mind’s attempt at distracting you from the suffering, or promising that the suffering will disappear if you only do that one thing it’s telling you to do.
For example:
If you are thinking so much that it is preventing you from sight-reading music fluently: notice how you might be feeling a sense of urgency to play the music correctly RIGHT NOW. What does this urgency feel like? It’s probably not very pleasant. However, instead of letting you feel this urgency, the mind is distracting you with “Sight-reading is too difficult”.
If you are obsessing over a mistake you just made, and are worried that it is about to lead to a memory slip: notice how you might be feeling a sense of embarrassment or shame over having made the mistake. Again, instead of letting you feel these difficult emotions, the mind is trying to distract you with “Don’t mess up again!”
2. Notice when you are thinking
Your thoughts are passing in and out of your head like clouds in the sky. Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourself. For example, perhaps you are thinking “I think too much.” To you, this isn’t a “thought”, it’s reality.
However, it’s not reality. It’s a thought. You can see this. Notice how you have the thought. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s false. But, it’s still a thought. And, you are observing that thought. So, the thought isn’t “you”.
The act of thinking itself can be noticed. You can notice what it feels like to think (overthink?), independently of the content of your thoughts. Perhaps you feel it somewhere in your body, or somewhere in space. When you practice noticing thinking, you will become more aware of your thoughts, and your responses to them.
This content isn’t for free…
Tips for noticing when you are thinking:
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), seeing thoughts as thoughts is known as defusion. There are a variety of defusion techniques, and it is worthwhile to play around with a bunch to see what works for you. For example, you might try:
Writing down your thoughts.
Speaking them out loud.
Imagine them as a television or radio playing in the background.
3. Allow your thoughts to exist
Your thinking is a result of your past. That is, you think the way you do because of what happened to you. In other words, your prior experiences have shaped who you are. Despite your best efforts, there’s not much you can do about it at this point. Your thoughts are the result of conditioning. They are not merely something that you choose.
Remember that your thoughts are there to serve you. In general, this is what the mind does. Its goal is to protect you by formulating and solving problems, in response to suffering.
Our culture will teach you that you should actively try to change your thinking. However, attempting to block out negative thoughts is probably futile. Surprisingly, ironic process theory states that actively trying to suppress a thought will make it stronger.
That said, it is worth practicing looking at situations from multiple perspectives. Just be aware that you cannot simply “choose” which perspective you will see a problem from, especially when it is an emotionally-charged situation.
Enough scrolling. You’re late to the ritual…
Tips for allowing your thoughts to exist:
Give yourself permission to think. Schedule it on your calendar, if you need to.
Also, permit yourself to be frustrated with your thinking.
4. Observe physical sensations
Thinking is just one part of your experience. Remember that you still have a body in physical space. So, try paying attention to what your body is feeling. Thinking has a weird way of pulling us out of the present moment and into an imaginary reality inside your head. Observing physical sensations can help to put your thoughts into context.
Tips for observing physical sensations:
Remind yourself that you have a physical body. Go for a walk, do yoga, or simply focus on the sensations of your breathing. Don’t try to make the thinking stop, but instead try to pull some of your physical experience into the mix.
5. Get to know your thoughts
Your thoughts are not as original as you think they are. You have likely thought them many times before (that is why you learned to think the way you do…it worked at some point in the past).
Since these thoughts are playing on repeat, it might be worthwhile to get to know them.
The temple knows you better than you know yourself…
Tips for getting to know your thoughts:
Try writing down some of your thoughts. Give them names and personalities. For example:
Fred is the guy who keeps saying “don’t screw up!”.
Bob is the guy who keeps saying “keep practicing, you’re almost good enough!”
Notice how each personality has an agenda:
Fred’s agenda is to help prevent me from screwing up.
Bob’s agenda is to encourage me.
How old are these thoughts?
6. Notice your behavior
Observe how you move away from things you don’t like. Notice how you move toward things you do like.
You learned to think as you do to help you do this. Paying attention to your physical behavior will shed light on your thinking, and it will help you to understand to what extent it is aiding you or hindering you.
The temple sees all…
Tips for noticing your behavior:
When you find yourself overthinking, pay attention to what you do next. Perhaps you try to reassure yourself. Or, maybe you try to push the thoughts out of your mind by distracting yourself with food, for example.
Do those behaviors help you, or hurt you? Are they successful in accomplishing what they are trying to accomplish?
Take a look at your own experience and see what it tells you.
7. Choose your values
In ACT, values are fuel for motivation. They are ways of labeling what is really important to you.
We are often motivated by things that, upon further inspection, aren’t super-important to us. For example, you may find that your desire to do well in a recital is more a result of your fear of displeasing your teacher than it is due to an intrinsic desire to perform.
There is no judgment from me either way. Your desires are based on your unique history and make-up. What is important is that you choose the values that are important to you.
Tips for choosing values:
If you notice that you are overthinking, ask yourself “what is important to me right now?” Alternatively, you might ask “what would the person I want to be act in this situation?” This may clarify some of your options in the situation, and give your mind a chance to quiet down a bit.
Do you have to stop overthinking?
We are also taught to believe that if we have a negative thought process, we must change it,, to lead happier lives. This just isn’t true.
You can watch your thoughts without buying into them (defusion). It’s about what you do, not what you think.
Don’t believe everything you think.
Your turn
Enter the temple or be left in the courtyard.
Have you found any other strategies to be helpful when dealing with overthinking? If so, I’d like to hear about them. Leave a comment below and let me know.
Solving your hand independence problem takes willingness to get a little bit uncomfortable. You’ve got to allow things to get mentally awkward. To give up your rigid need for control.
Some pianists (“snowflake pianists”), simply can’t deal with the fact that their hands don’t feel independent of each other. They generally quit piano soon enough, but some of them go on to become advanced.
Even the advanced ones still struggle with basic stuff like:
One hand always seems to want to do whatever the other one is doing.
The two hands aren’t “lining up”.
One hand is more flexible and secure than the other one is.
You can play one hand at a time with no problem, but when you put them together, everything slows way down.
Sight-reading with both hands overwhelms you.
Yeah, I get it. Figuring out how to play the piano with two hands doing different things is not always obvious. Most people are born with two hands, and we are not supposed to get overwhelmed using both of them. Sit down in front of a piano, and it stops feeling natural.
In this article, I’ll give you some tips that will help you conquer this problem. It will take practice, of course, but if you know where to direct your efforts, you’ll quickly start untying knots.
(At least I’ll be able to tell the “snowflake pianists” I tried…)
Tip 1: Deliberately decide to work on hand independence
With the right kind of practice, you can solve these problems. So, before you expect any results, you must make a decision to practice hand independence.
If you don’t make this decision, then your practicing will be aimless.
However, if you make a decision to work on hand independence, then you’ll be able to evaluate your practicing, and determine whether or not it’s working. That’s a good spot to be in, because then you can do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
How to begin practicing hand independence:
Before you sit down to practice, remind yourself why you’re doing it. Write it down. Say it out loud:
“I am practicing today because I want to learn how to develop hand independence.”
Most pianists overlook this important step. Big mistake.
Tip 2: Stop trying “shortcuts” that don’t work
When we don’t get the results want, we try all sorts of things out of desperation. This wastes valuable time and energy, and makes us confused.
Many pianists will try shortcuts such as:
Strengthening their fingers.
Stretching their fingers.
Trying harder.
If your left hand feels weaker than your right hand, you don’t need to strengthen your left hand. It’s about coordination, not strength, even if it “feels” weak (think about how weak your arms feel trying to lift a heavy box when you don’t first have a solid footing).
When the hands don’t seem equal or independent, it can even seem like there’s a physical problem. But, unless you have an injury or unusual anatomy, I doubt it’s a physical problem.
Instead, realize that it’s a mental problem. Trying really hard is not necessary. Watch some great pianists on YouTube. They are not struggling, not trying hard. That’s because their coordination is good, not because they spent time strengthening their finger muscles.
How to be more patient with yourself as you learn hand independence at the piano
When you feel impatient, try to notice what you do to rush the process along. Remind yourself that there are no shortcuts and stop doing those things. You’re wasting your time and barking up the wrong tree.
In the meantime, try to pay attention to aspects of your practicing that you are enjoying. When we fixate on what results we’re not getting, practicing stops being fun, and we stop doing it.
Tip 3: Slow down and pay attention
Go at the pace your body requires.
Why is it so hard to play the piano with both hands? Like I said earlier, because you’re impatient. When you don’t let your mind and body dictate the pace, you get a traffic jam in your brain.
This means you need to slow down and pay attention. Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes for sorting this out. That’s just not how it works. You must figure it out on your own.
You might not know right away exactly why your right hand feels better than your left. But, if you persist with patience and awareness, you will eventually learn. It just takes time.
This means that practicing piano is meditation. There’s no way around it. And, I’m talking about hardcore meditation, not the hippie version with crystals and incense.
How to slow down and pay attention:
When we are frustrated that our body isn’t doing what we want it to be doing, we tend to do two things: (1) speed up, and (2) stop paying attention. To gain better hand independence at the piano, we have to do the opposite of those.
The key is in noticing when they start to happen. Pay attention to the feeling of the frustration. You want to view the frustration as a good thing. If you can do this, you won’t see any need to speed up or stop paying attention. (This is weird, but you can learn it through meditation).
The frustration is good. It means that you care about getting good results at the piano. But, frustration makes learning harder.
So, stop fighting the frustration. It will make learning easier.
Tip 4: Unify the body
Feel the beat in the whole body. Play both hands as one.
When you start paying attention with mindfulness, you realize something surprising: you don’t need to have complete hand independence to play the piano.
Both hands actually always do the same thing. In piano playing, your hands cannot move totally independently. After all, the body connects them together.
Imagine you’re walking. Both feet move “independently”, and yet the whole body moves in one direction. It would be a big mistake to have your left foot moving in one direction and the right moving in another.
Piano works the same way. The whole body plays the whole piece of music. Both hands move to the same beat. As in walking, it’s a mistake to try to keep everything independent. Instead, aim for unity.
Another example: Imagine yourself walking and texting on your phone at the same time. Notice how the movements of your feet will influence the movements that you use for texting. Also notice how texting while walking will feel subtly different than texting while sitting. Let those differences happen, and don’t try to fight them.
How to unify the body
Here is an exercise you can try. Play a piece with both hands, but only play the notes that land on the beats. This will encourage you to focus on the beat, and the beat will be the same in both hands.
Play only the notes in red. Each one is a full-body action, both hands together. Use a metronome to force you to focus on the movement that happens on the beat.
Tip 5: Prioritize what’s important
Make a decision about what is important to you when you play, and don’t let the notes distract you from that.
Suppose you are walking with a friend and you have an itch on your face. You will not stop walking to scratch the itch. You will keep walking, because you don’t want to get behind your friend, or make your friend wait for you. The walking is more important than the scratching. Because you have set your priorities, there is no problem doing both at the same time.
When you play the piano, don’t let a difficult spot in one hand throw off the entire rhythm of the music. (That’s why it feels difficult to play the piano with both hands.)
Set a priority for yourself which is as easy as walking, and let the little details will take care of themselves.
Getting started with priority-setting
To try this out, pick something that is really easy. For example, you can say “my priority is to make it to the end of the piece.” Then, try playing the piece. You are free to make any mistakes you want, but at least get to the end.
While you’re playing, you might find that your hands get tangled up. That’s fine. The rules do not say that you need to play all the notes correctly, only that you need to get to the end.
Here are some other examples of priorities:
Play softly
Bring out the melody in the right hand
Keep a steady beat
These priorities will take your focus off of hand independence while you play the piano, and put it on something you have more control over.
Tip 6: Explore the body
Instead of focusing only on the fact that your hands are getting tangled up, dig deeper into the body.
In a passage where one hand seems to be written slower than the other, remember that neither is ever actuallyslower. The tempo is still the same in both hands. Feel this energy balanced throughout the body. There must be an constant, internal pulse that governs both hands.
When you can feel how your whole body responds to this pulse, it will be much easier to notice what causes problems. Remember that the body is a physical thing. It has mass, and is governed by the laws of motion. You must learn to respect this.
How to get started exploring the body
Start by exploring your instincts around the relationship between your hands. Notice what it feels like to move your torso around, and how that affects what your hands are doing. Do things feel independent, or do they feel tightly wound up?
Play hands in parallel motion and contrary motion, and notice what happens. What does it feel like? Does one feel easier than the other? Does one hand feel better going in a certain direction?
Play passages where one hand moves and the other doesn’t. Notice where you feel stuck or where you feel one hand trying to “pull” on the other.
Tip 7: Feel the beat
Instead of looking for “hand independence exercises,” take the opportunity to make any piano piece into an exercise to coordinate the left and right hand.
A piece of music should have a steady beat. When the beat is not steady, you feel it, and the audience will hear it. So, this should always be your top priority.
How to feel the beat:
Always, start by making sure both hands are “doing the same thing.” That is, ensure that both hands are playing at the same time. Use a metronome, if necessary. You should feel the beat throughout your entire body. This is the essential first step in training your hands for piano.
Once you’ve got the beat established, work on differentiating the hands. This means add the smaller details.
You may find yourself getting stuck again, like your hands are not cooperating. Or, perhaps it’s just one hand that’s not cooperating. In either case, go back to making sure that the beat is consistent between both hands.
Tip 8: Read hands together
Instead of thinking of music as having a right hand plus a left hand, think of both hands together. Even when you’re reading a piece for the first time!
Sight-reading always screws up the coordination between the hands for some pianists. Maybe you can read each hand independently with no problem, but putting them together causes everything to slow down. Or, one hand is fine, but the other isn’t.
Remember that both hands must always move at the same time. It’s paradoxical, but this is how you actually achieve hand independence in piano playing. You cannot let one hand get ahead of the other. If treble clef is easier for you than bass clef, your right hand might get impatient waiting for your left. You, however, must wait patiently for both hands to be ready. If you can’t do this you should ask yourself why. Where are you in a hurry to go?
When you are reading, your brain must process each beat before playing it. You can’t think of each hand separately, and move each hand separately. The entire beat (left hand plus right hand) is one action. It should all be comfortable, and it should all make sense to you.
How to sight-read both hands:
When you sight-read a new piece, make a resolution to play both hands. Try to zoom out a little bit and see both hands at once. Even if you make a mistake, keep going.
Set your priorities. Decide which musical elements are the most important ones. Let your whole body play those elements. Don’t get trapped into thinking that you need to play everything on the page. Remember that it must all fit into the structure of your body.
This takes practice to do perfectly. But if you persist, you will make progress.
Tip 9: Play Bach
Try practicing Bach preludes, inventions, and fugues.
Bach’s music will challenge your finger independence as well as your hand independence. Contrary to popular opinion, it does not need flexible or strong fingers. The challenge is all in your mind.
Finger independence is basically the same issue as hand independence. Here, the whole hand must be unified. Even if the five fingers are playing different things, the hand as a whole is moving in one direction.
How to approach Bach for hand independence:
First, you should understand that Bach’s music generally consists of multiple simultaneous voices. Do you see that in the music? Can you hear it when you listen to a recording?
As a pianist, it’s your job to express all of these voices at the same time. This is a really hard thing to do! However, with a lot of patience, you can master this skill. Don’t expect perfection at first.
Play through a Bach piece, and try to mentally follow one voice at a time, from beginning to end. You can try singing along. Then, do it with another voice.
The whole aim here is to untangle yourself mentally. The physical stuff will follow from that.
Tip 10: Mix up the dynamics
Many pianists have a hard time playing different dynamics between the two hands. This is an essential skill, and if you struggle with it, you should make this a priority.
As always, the beat needs to be the same in both hands. This is usually the problem (and fixing it is usually the solution…). If you have no unified sense of beat, it’s like you’re trying to micromanage each hand separately. This just overloads the brain.
If you can play each hand at a different dynamic level, you will have significantly more control.
Playing different dynamics in each hand
First ensure that both hands can play together with no problem.
Next, experiment with “LH soft + RH loud”. You should think of this as a single action. If you find that doing this messes up your beat, you are not thinking of it as a single action.
Likewise, experiment with “LH loud + RH soft”.
Tip 11: Mix up the articulation
Practice playing legato in one hand and staccato in the other.
As with dynamics, this will help you attain significantly greater control. It will make it much easier to play music like Bach, where this level of control is required.
The Solution:
See the previous tip about dynamics. The concept is the same. You want to think of both hands as playing together. It’s just that one of them is legato, and the other is staccato.
Tip 12: Let the notes fall where they need to
If you are playing a piece with polyrhythms, such as 3 against 2, or 11 against 7, or 25 against 8, or whatever, do not attempt to calculate mathematically how the notes should line up. Instead, decide where the beats are, and make sure that both hands are playing the beats at the same time. Let the other notes fall where they need to.
The composer probably did not intend for you to count things precisely, anyway.
If one hand has 25 notes, and the other has 3, they are both playing at the same tempo. Sure, one has more notes, but the metronome clicks the same regardless. Feel the metronome in your body, not the notes.
How to let the notes fall where they need to
When you see a difficult rhythmic figure, try to get a sense of the overall shape of the thing. Then, when you play, make sure that you can:
play the first note correctly, and
keep a steady beat.
For now, don’t worry about the other notes. Take your best guess, but don’t interrupt the flow. This is harder than it sounds, but it’s worth the practice.
Be patient
As with everything at the piano, hand independence is easy to fix if you practice the right way. Be patient with yourself, and with your body. When you let things happen as they must happen, you’ll see how to get out of your own way.
It’s worth it, by the way. If you learn to play comfortably with both hands, you can expect the following benefits:
It just feels good when everything is working in a smooth and integrated way.
You’ll prevent injuries when your body moves with itself, rather than against itself.
Playing stops being stressful.
Fewer distractions.
Technical problems will fix themselves, since your body will be moving more efficiently.
Audiences can hear when your playing is comfortable, and when you’re struggling. No one wants to hear you struggle.
Remember, this isn’t a physical problem. It’s is a problem you can solve with the right kind of mindful practice.
Out of all of the skills related to piano, sight reading can be one of the most frustrating. Wouldn’t it be great if you could sight-read anything? Imagine that you could:
Play all the right notes and rhythms.
Sight-read at any tempo, fast or slow.
Feel calm and relaxed as you sight-read.
Sight-read in a way that sounds and flows like real music.
In this article, I will list several habits that pianists frequently have, which actually make it harder to learn to sight-read anything. I hope you find this collection of piano sight-reading tips useful in your own practice.
Get my e-book
I wrote this ebook because I want to share what I’ve learned about what’s wrong with the way the piano community treats “amateur” pianists. I don’t like it, and I want to change it.
It is rare to see something written for serious adult amateurs, and by someone who went that route. I had it on as an audiobook while doing chores – the first chapter on various aspects regarding teachers, I was saying “right” and “certainly” out loud a few times. 😀 A lot of the things, I wished I’d heard this when I first started my first ever lessons some time ago; it took me years to at least partly find my way out of holes due to some of those things.
When you practice sight-reading on the piano, you fix your eyes on the music and struggle to get through.
Many pianists have trouble understanding how to get better at sight-reading with ease. This is because they don’t make ease a priority. While sight-reading, you might find that:
Just looking at a complex score makes you feel confused and stressed.
Sight-reading at an uncomfortable tempo (either too fast or too slow!) makes you feel nervous.
This is often a sign that you aren’t making ease a priority.
What to do instead:
Remind yourself that music is supposed to be fun and that you can’t do better than your best. Pay attention to how things feel, not just whether you’re playing the right notes. When you look at a complicated score, view it like you would a map of a city. You don’t have to understand everything all at once.
Bad Habit 2:
You’re not coordinated when you sight-read at the piano
Your eyes move frantically up and down between the music and the keyboard. Your hands jerk around randomly as you struggle to find the right notes.
Our education system teaches us to view things in black and white terms. In order to get a passing grade, we learn to do what is right and avoid what is wrong. When we take music lessons, we carry this attitude into our practicing. Through no fault of our own, we can end up viewing music reading in the same light as math or physics. This can have the effect of causing us to detach emotionally from the task, making things feel difficult and tiresome. Thus, for completely understandable reasons, many students totally ignore their musicality when reading.
Furthermore, sight-reading is hard! As with all things piano, sight-reading asks us to bring our complete selves to the table. Our minds and our bodies must work in harmony to allow us to function as a unified whole. Specifically, you must coordinate:
Your eyes
The parts of your body that are directly involved in playing the instrument
The rest of your body
The instrument itself
The page turns
What’s more, all of these must be coordinated with the beat, the musical intention, the conductor, the singer, etc.
Once you come to terms with all of this, you will know how to get better at sight-reading.
What to do instead:
Let your body do what it needs to do. If your eyes want to move up and down, let them, but also encourage them to stay in one place long enough to feel the stress that comes from not knowing if you’re going to play the next note correctly.
When you turn a page, do it in tempo. Page turns are part of the music as well.
Bad Habit 3:
You’re not reading the score the right way
When you read music, you try to play everything exactly as it is written, no matter what. If you hit a wrong note, you stop and make sure you hit the right one before going on.
If you wish to improve your piano sight-reading, your task is to understand how to read a score, so that you can extract all of the relevant details. That is, you are learning how to connect to the composer’s intention by absorbing this picture. You want to be able to extract as many of them as you possibly can, in real-time. In the end, you want to be able to do this quickly, allowing the music to simply flow off of the page and through your body.
What is a musical score?
A visual representation of how the composer wants the music to sound. It’s more of a picture, or an outline, than a step-by-step recipe.
A description of the beats of music. (What pitches occur on each beat? How are the beats grouped into meter? What happens between the beats?)
An outline which marks the basic events occurring in the piece (repeats, phrases, accents, crescendos, fermatas, etc.)
The score is not the music. It’s a picture of the music. Additionally, It is not, strictly speaking, a set of instructions for how to play (even though it may have some instructions in it).
What to do instead:
Remind yourself that you are making music, not following instructions. Do not stop to correct wrong notes. This is not correct, even if it’s what it says in the score, because “corrections” are not part of actual music!
Bad Habit 4:
You aren’t deciding what’s important
You treat every detail in the score equally. Notes are just as important to you as rhythms, and articulations are just as important as dynamics.
You can’t treat every detail equally, for several reasons:
You often do not have time to absorb all of the details on the page. What you do absorb should be more important than what you don’t absorb.
Your entire physical state must give preference to the important elements. For example, if your body is not generally “moving to the beat”, you will find it difficult to articulate the fingers properly.
Thinking hierarchically makes it easier to understand what you are reading. For example, when you read a novel, it is useful to understand how the text is broken into paragraphs, words, sentences, chapters, etc., as this improves comprehension.
With improved comprehension comes greater room for creativity. When you understand the basic building blocks in front of you, you can then assemble them in the order that makes the most sense to you.
With creativity comes a more engaged performance. As a result, you will enjoy yourself more, and the audience will enjoy the performance more as well.
This frees you to express music how you feel it. Like a painter bringing objects to the foreground or relegating them to the background, you create the sound world you envision. Your body is coordinated with the important elements of the music, so they come out in your playing. You are absorbed in the task, enjoying the process, and the audience will be moved by your performance.
What to do instead:
There must be a hierarchy to what appears in the score. What this means is that the elements higher up the hierarchy are more important than the ones further down. For this reason, a big part of your artistry is determining what you wish this hierarchy to be. However, it may vary from piece to piece.
As an example, in order of most to least important:
Beat and meter
Phrases and cadences
Rhythm
Pitch
Counterpoint
I often think of music in this way, but there is space for individual variation and creativity. By focusing on the aspects of music that you find important, you will be able to read a piece in a way that is meaningful to you.
Bad Habit 5:
You aren’t practicing well
For example:
When there is a trouble spot, you stop and figure it out before moving on. When things are easier, increase the tempo.
You deliberately read 1 or 2 measures ahead of where you’re playing
You let yourself “stutter” and “hunt around” for the notes as you play.
When I learned to sight-read, I did not follow any formal strategies or use any “tricks”. Nonetheless, it took me less than a year after I began studying piano before I was what I would call “reasonably fluent” at reading both hands together. I am not saying this to brag, but to make the point that if you want to improve your sight-reading skills quickly, you can. I attribute my progress to the fact that I simply read a ton of music, without fear of making mistakes.
What to do instead:
Let me offer this basic method to get better at sight-reading:
Decide what note gets the beat, and what basic physical action you will use to perform these beats.
Choose a tempo and stick to it. Use a metronome.
Decide on what is important, and what isn’t. When you play, prioritize what is important.
Keeping your eyes on the music, play from the beginning to the end, without stopping. Try not to look at your hands (but it’s no big deal if you do).
This is the basic formula, and you can vary it as needed. For example:
Change what you are prioritizing. For example, you may prioritize the bass line or one of the inner voices.
Change which durations you are playing. You may decide only to play the notes that fall on the quarter note beat, for example. Alternatively, you might play just the downbeat of each measure.
Play easier music, or harder music.
Play faster, or slower.
Other suggestions:
Let yourself feel the beat as you read.
Try to make music.
Play the piece as you feel it should sound, even if it doesn’t come out exactly right.
Even if you don’t know the piece very well, you have the right to your interpretation. Trust your inner self to know what to do.
Try playing both hands, or at a tempo that feels a little too fast for you. Try to ease into this difficulty, noticing how your body wants to react.
Do not write in the pitches.
Understanding music theory can be somewhat helpful, but it is not the most important thing. You will recognize chords mostly by their shapes, not as much by their harmonic functions. However, you should be comfortable playing scales in the key signature that the piece is in. If you are trying to read accidentals while sight-reading at the piano, this will generally throw a wrench in the works.
Bad Habit 6:
You don’t play confidently and securely
If the music is too hard for you, you slow it down. When it gets easy, you speed back up. After each note, you check to make sure it’s right before moving on.
When you practice playing timidly and hesitantly, you will ingrain that way of playing into your system. This will not lead to confident music-making any time soon. Music that has constant stops and starts, or constant tempo fluctuations, does not sound like music. You don’t want to get into the habit of playing that way.
What to do instead:
If you don’t feel comfortable playing fast, then play slower. But, always play confidently and securely. Every beat that you play must be decisive and sure. Then, you go to the next beat and play that one as confidently as the previous one. Over time, you can then work on lining up your beats in tempo. Whatever you do, do not “stutter“.
Bad Habit 7:
You aren’t keeping a steady beat
You get stressed out by complicated-looking rhythms and let them interfere with the pulse of the music.
The rhythms will come eventually, once you learn to recognize the patterns. However, you will never be perfect at recognizing rhythms at sight. Music notation can, at times, be too confusing for this to work.
So, do not let the rhythms interfere with the beat. The beat is the most important thing. Listeners will generally never mind an incorrect rhythm, but a missed beat is immediately noticeable.
What to do instead:
Keep a steady beat. This is the most important thing, always.
Focus on getting the correct notes that fall on the beats. Do not worry about the notes that fall in between beats.
Bad Habit 8:
You don’t like the way you practice sight-reading
Practicing sight-reading feels like a drag, and you have to force yourself to do it.
As far as practice goes, the more you practice, the easier piano sight-reading will become. However, if your experience practicing sight-reading is less than exciting and engaging, you will not be motivated to do it. Pay attention to what encourages you to practice, and also to what discourages you.
What might be stopping you from reading a lot:
Perfectionistic attitudes about correctness.
An approach to reading that causes physical discomfort.
A sense that you are “bad at this”, and have a huge deficiency to overcome.
Judgment from others about how good your reading is.
Reading music you dislike.
A busy schedule that limits practice time.
Tension and fatigue in your body.
A history of having difficulties in sight-reading and either being hard on yourself or being judged by others.
If any of this applies to you, you should find ways of practicing that are more fun for you.
What to do instead:
You might try the following strategies:
Reading music you enjoy listening to.
Setting a goal such as “read through all the Mozart sonatas this weekend”, and just plowing through it.
Ignoring all of your mistakes (if you hate fixing mistakes).
Spending time diligently correcting all your mistakes (if you love fixing mistakes).
Focusing on physical sensation rather than correctness. Paying more attention to the feeling of the music, and the feeling of your body playing the instrument, rather than whether or not you are playing correctly.
Playing duets, chamber music, vocal music, etc.
Reading the easier parts and ignoring the harder parts.
Play with freedom like you did as a child. Ignore the hard parts!
Bad Habit 9:
You don’t sight-read enough music
You sight-read one line of music a day, or you only sight-read when you first play a new piece you’re planning on memorizing.
Surprisingly, sight-reading is closely related to memory. Pieces that are similar to pieces you already know are easier to read. This is because reading is basically pattern recognition. If you are not good at sight-reading, your priority must be reading lots and lots of music, so that your brain can collect a large number of patterns.
Therefore, the more pieces you read, the better you will get at reading new pieces (especially those in the style of the music you are already familiar with). When I was learning to play the piano, I read a ton of music. Everything I could get my hands on. This paid off, big time.
What to do instead:
Your sight-reading will only improve if you treat it like anything else in piano. Sight-reading takes practice: a lot of it. You must spend many, many hours sight-reading, and make tons of mistakes. That’s how you learn. So, play lots of music:
You can try sight-reading exercises if you find them useful.
Play music that is too easy, and also music that is too hard.
Play music that is contrapuntal. Bach is always great for sight-reading. Play music that has 4-part harmony, such as in a hymnal. Train yourself to focus on the parts individually while you play. Start with just one part at a time.
Play music that is in the style in which you want to improve your sight-reading.
You should play music that is of interest to you. Then, you will be more motivated to read it.
How to Improve Sight-Reading at the Piano
Generally, anything that gets you to read a lot is a good way to practice, and anything that prevents you from reading a lot is not.
Increase the conditions that lead to more sight-reading. Work on eradicating whatever’s getting in your way. With practice, your sight-reading will improve.
Practice everyday. Set a timer, if you need to. If you skip a day or two, do not beat yourself up about it.
If you find yourself getting discouraged, pay attention to what is causing the discouragement. Focus more on what you find motivating. Remember that practicing is about you.
Anyone can learn how to improve their piano sight-reading. There is no magic bullet here. Basically, you just need to read a lot. The suggestions I’ve given here aimed at making it more fun and engaging for you to read so that you will be more likely to do it, and so that you will pay more attention while you are doing it.
Your turn
Are there any other habits you have noticed that you have while sight-reading? Any other sight-reading tips for pianists, which you have found useful?
I’m curious to know what has worked for you, and what has gotten in the way. Leave a comment below and let me know!
