“When I got back home, I began to sight-read, and 'Lo!' all was transformed. I have zero apprehensions, allow myself the luxury of enjoying myself, and all is well. The methods you used fascinated me. And my general playing feels better, having a sense of being 'grounded'. It feels a bit miraculous!” (Christine Ahmed, Piano teacher)
Many musicians experience problems with sight-reading. Efforts to improve usually prove fruitless. Practising seems to make little or no difference, and well-meaning suggestions such as "reading ahead" only makes matters worse, causing confusion between brain and fingers.
It is a fact that good sight-readers have never acquired their skills through "practising". When asked, they will invariably reply, often slightly bewildered by the question, that it is something they have always been able to do.
My research and observations have led me to the conclusion that good sight-reading is neither a "talent" one is born with, nor a hard-won skill, but actually the result of an effective and efficient strategy, developed naturally and intuitively, at an early stage of learning to play an instrument, through a combination of circumstances, situations and events, suggestions and associations.
All of us can remember subjects at school we learned quickly and easily, and others we struggled with. Likewise with leisure activities such as riding and bicycle (something I could never do) or turning somersaults! The difference in your "talent" has to do with the strategy used.
The branch of psychology known as Neuro-Linguistic-Programming (NLP) gives us the tools and processes to understand and "break down" how we do things - to discover what are the elements of a successful strategy in any given situation. We can also, equally importantly, understand how an unsuccessful strategy operates.
If we know the differences we can replace an unsuccessful strategy with a more successful and effective one.
In NLP the word strategy is used to describe how we sequence our sensory representations, our external and internal images, sounds and feelings. This determines how successful we are in doing something assuming that, where necessary, we have the appropriate skills. (for sight-reading we obviously need to be able to play the piano).
For example, trying to "hear" the music when sight-reading is one of the features of an unsuccessful strategy, causing one to hesitate, even stop, and often distort. There is not time in reading a piece of music for the first time to process hearing in "in time". On the other hand, hearing, internal and external, is a vital component of a successful strategy for learning and studying music.
Self-belief and identity issues also play a part in creating a good strategy that works well. NLP gives us the tools to address these, quickly and dramatically transform a musician's ability to sight-read with ease and enjoyment.
If you would like to know more,
please call me on: +44 (0)20 8279 3347