Sight-Reading – Pianodao

Who really needs mnemonics?

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

Long established as a memory tool for note reading, well-worn mnemonics such as All Cows Eat Grass and Every Good Boy Deserves Football seem to have fallen out of favour in piano teaching circles these days.

Some suggest mnemonics should be avoided altogether, claiming that they are detrimental because:

they add an extra step for the learner decoding notation
they mitigate against the development of intervallic reading, harmonic understanding, and pattern recognition
they don’t scale for reading ledger lines, different clefs, etc
they can create a level of dependency that makes the transition to fluent reading harder

These are certainly important points to consider.

But when we explore the research into the use of mnemonics, a very different picture emerges. And teachers may notice that they are often recommended for learners who are dyslexic or with neurodiversity such as ADHD.

So what is the truth of the matter: are mnemonics useful, and if so for whom? Perhaps a balanced reassessment of the topic, grounded in academic and scientific research, is overdue. So let’s begin with the science bit…

Paul Harris • How to Sight Read

The Pianodao Bookshelf

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Leading music educator Paul Harris’ Improve Your Teaching! series of slim, affordable handbooks has grown into a formidable and essential resource for instrumental teachers, notable previous titles including Teaching Beginners, Simultaneous Learning, The Virtuoso Teacher and Unconditional Teaching.

For the latest title in the series, Harris revisits the topic of sight-reading, with which his name has been rather indelibly linked over the years thanks to his bestselling series of Improve Your Sight-Reading! student books. Subtitled, “The art and science behind developing sight-reading technique”, the book offers itself as:

“A companion to the Improve your sight-reading! series revealing sight-reading as a technique that can be both taught and learnt by all who wish to develop it.”

To find out more, read on…

Paul Harris Webinar: A Piece a Week

Educational Resources

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Paul Harris’s Piece a Week series has been among the triumphs of recent years. In my own teaching these books have become a staple with students of all ages, and the number one top sight reading resource that I recommend and use. I have reviewed the books for Grade 1-6 here and for Initial Grade here.

Now Faber Music bring us a combined book covering Grades 7 and 8, which completes the series. The book maintains the educational approach and musical engagement of its predecessors, so for more information please be sure to read those previous reviews.

The final book well and truly lives up to the sky-high standards of the rest in the series, and is in my view truly superb.

To give you a taste, Faber Music have generously provided this FREE piece from the book as an exclusive Pianodao download:

DOWNLOAD FREE PIECE HERE

And now for Paul Harris in person…

Faber Music kindly organised a special webinar for Pianodao Music Club members, celebrating the new release and giving him the opportunity to outline the series in person, introduce the final book, play some of the pieces, and answer questions. For those who missed it, I am pleased to share the full webinar recording below.

To catch future events in the Music Club, why not come and join us?

Here is the recording…

To use the special promotional code announced by Rachel Topham in the webinar, here is the Faber Music online purchase link.

The Piece a Week series is available now from music retailers everywhere.

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Piano Sight Reading: A Progressive Method

Educational Resources

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Few professional musicians would question the value and usefulness of sight reading, meaning that skill which allows us to play music that we’ve never heard, just from the notation, and without preparation.

As a teacher who allows my students considerable freedom to choose the music they want to learn and bring along to the lesson, I find myself relying on this skill very regularly. And yet some teachers and students treat the development of sight reading as an afterthought, and a rather dull one at that. Compounding the problem, while sight reading has traditionally been an element of public grade exams, it is decreasingly so.

Trinity College London include sight reading as an optional test in their piano grade exams, but some teachers choose only to introduce it with “serious students” after intermediate level, and on the basis that players will at that point miraculously “get it”.

Perhaps this lack of enthusiasm will change with the launch of Trinity’s excellent new series, Sight Reading: A Progressive Method, a suite of three books offering a clear route for teaching sight reading skills from the get-go.

In common with most sight reading resources the series is linked to the grade exams, but happily it goes far beyond specimen tests and basic exam cramming, and can be used as a powerful resource to actually teach and develop sight reading ability.

As Trinity explain,

“The study of sight reading is valuable because it enables musicians to enjoy music that is new to them, either on their own or in a group. As with any other skill, confidence in sight reading comes with training and regular practice.”

So let’s take a look and see how the series can support teachers and students in those aims…

A Piece a Week: “Initial Grade”

Educational Resources

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Regular readers will know that I am quite a fan of Paul Harris’s Piece a Week series from Faber Music, having found that using these books within my own teaching practice has helped many of my students significantly improve in their music literacy and ability to learn independently using notation.

My main review of the series is here.

Harris has just added a new book to the series, A Piece A Week: Initial Grade, which merits a separate review to the rest of the series for a variety of reasons which I will come to presently.

My first reaction to hearing about this book was admittedly mixed, on the one hand delighted that this wonderful resource has been extended to accommodate the needs of early elementary players, but the other hand stifling a weary sigh that in a year which has seen exam boards straining to dominate the music education agenda, yet more grade material has appeared for review.

But, extraordinary fellow that he is, Harris has an unnerving and seemingly inexhaustible knack for pleasantly surprising me, indeed, hugely exceeding my expectations. And I’m happy to report that he’s done it again…

Paul Harris: A Piece A Week

Educational Resources

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Paul Harris’s series of A Piece a Week books have been appearing at regular intervals over the last few years. Faber Music have just released the Grade 6 book, so let’s consider the series as a whole…

I’ll start with a quick reminder that while the books appear in the best-selling Improve Your Sight Reading series, they are not sight reading practice books per se. Rather they aim to support the broader development of music literacy.

In this review I will first explain the concept behind A Piece a Week, give an overview of the actual material included in the books, and explain how they develop to offer superb material across the range of playing levels from UK Grade 1 to the new Grade 6 book.

More Piano Sight-Reading from ABRSM

Educational Resources

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Back in 2008, ABRSM published a series of books called Piano Specimen Sight-Reading Tests. Although deserving an award for having the most utilitarian and uninspiring titles in my whole music collection, they have nonetheless rarely been out of action in the intervening years.

In short, they were an essential purchase for any piano teacher preparing students for ABRSM’s world-leading piano grade examinations, and have seen very active service over many years.

Since 2008, many others have brought out alternative products to help teachers and students prepare for the sight-reading element of ABRSM exams. Paul Harris’s ubiquitous and respected Improve Your Sight-Reading series has been updated more than once, and now includes audio tracks. Useful and innovative alternatives have also appeared from Alan Bullard, Samantha Coates, e-music maestro and several others.

Now ABRSM return with a new series bearing the slightly-less scary title More Piano Sight-Reading, a suite of eight new books, one to tie in with each of their grades.

A superficial look at the eight books suggests that these aren’t radically different from their predecessors (which, I should add, are still valid, as the syllabus itself remains unchanged). However, a more detailed look reveals several tweaks and changes to the format which, between them, make the new books a step-improvement on the older ones.

For this review, I will focus on five specific improvements which I think make this new series a superior alternative to the previous books.

Improve your sight-reading!

Educational Resources

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

“When pupils can sight-read, not only do they do well in exams but (rather more importantly) it allows them to learn pieces more quickly, which frees up much of our teaching time, allowing us to concentrate on developing the musician. Ultimately, it gives them independence: they are able to learn music on their own – the greatest gift we can give.”

So says best-selling author Paul Harris in the introduction to Improve your sight-reading: Teacher’s Book – latest addition to his ever growing Improve Your Sight-Reading series, just published by Faber Music.

Written to work alongside the well-known, long-published Improve your sight-reading ‘pupil’ books, the Teacher’s Book mirrors the introduction of keys and concepts in those, as well as offering useful tips for teachers.

Most important of all, the Teacher’s Book includes dozens of new progressive practice tests for each of Grades 1-5, which can be used in lessons to complement the use of the pupil books for home practice.

As such, the book offers the potential to elevate what was already a great resource into a more complete sight-reading system which bridges both lesson and home use.

Let’s find out how well it succeeds in this aim…