Sight Reading - From Nemesis to Adversary

What you most want to find will be found where you least want to look

Hey friend,

I hope you've been well!

Last week I talked about playing a lot of piano lately and this week I ran into a roadblock that I want to talk about.

Sight reading is a skill that is pretty crucial for piano players to learn, but it drives me a bit crazy because it is hard and hurts my brain. It is when you have sheet music in front of you and you are reading the notes and playing at the same time.

My ear is pretty strong and I am finding it a lot easier these days to hear a song and start playing along within a few seconds. Melodies and bass lines I can pick out almost instantly, and from there the chords are usually pretty easy to figure out. One of my favorite games to play is putting on an album or playlist and just trying to figure out the key, melody and chords to each song as it plays.

Sight reading on the other hand feels like a chore. The more I do it, the more it hurts my brain and part of me just wants to say “screw it, I don’t need to learn sight reading anyway”.

I had this moment yesterday, and I started reading some posts from people on Reddit going through this same struggle. One person laid out what happens to someone who discards sight reading, and basically they reach a limit to how fast they progress and it takes them a long time to learn one song. They spend hours going over each note, which finger to use, etc. Keeping all of this in your head for multiple songs is really hard and not likely to be very efficient for your brain. Someone who can sight read well can just sit down and play a piece of music the first time, all the way through, without even needing to hear it. This is the difference. Learn the hard thing now, and every song will be easier in the end. Avoid the hard thing now, and every song becomes a challenge forever.

Over the years I have been lucky enough to get good at quite a few things, from skateboarding, to all kinds of sports, jiu-jitsu, playing guitar, DJing, producing music, etc. The one thing that all of these disciplines have in common is that they have a learning curve. In fact, every new skill has a learning curve, and understanding that helps me work through the painful moments.

Skateboarding

As a skateboarder, I would throw myself down staircases and handrails over and over again, injuring myself often. Eventually I got pretty good at it, and all of those times I tumbled, I got back up and tried again. With skateboarding there are physical consequences. I still have issues with my ankles to this day from all of the sprains and breaks I had over the years, but what the falls taught me was that nothing can stop me from getting back up.

Music Production

As a music producer, I have written hundreds of songs, and many of them were trash, especially in the beginning. Over time my ear got better and I could tell how bad my music was, and how good other peoples music was. I could tell that there was a gap there, and if I just kept learning and improving, maybe that gap would shrink. Eventually I started writing music that I was proud of and releasing on some great labels from all over the world. This process took YEARS. I took many online courses, I studied different styles of music, learned sound design, mixing and mastering, songwriting, and that’s just the making music part. All of the other skills like photo editing, video editing, marketing, networking, DJing, and social media all needed to be developed too. The path of a music producer is like that of the Heads of the Hydra, you learn one skill and find 5 more skills behind it that you need to learn just to stay relevant.

Jiu-Jitsu

When I first joined jiu-jitsu as a white belt I was getting crushed by upper belts for a long time. I remember watching YouTube videos on how to escape certain shitty positions and how to survive under pressure. When you get used to a 250 pound dude putting all of his pressure down on your diaphragm, almost completely taking away your ability to breathe, you learn to adapt to what you once thought was hard. After 5 years and a purple belt later, I still get crushed by the same guys, except now they are brown and black belts. The difference is that now I am calm, breathing through my nose, and getting out from bad spots becomes second nature. Jiu-jitsu has taught me patience, perseverance, and remaining calm under an uncomfortable amount of pressure.

The Lesson

All of this brings me back to piano, and knowing all of this I can see the parallels. When you are new at something, there will be a point where things start to get hard and you WILL get frustrated. It’s at this exact moment where most people will either quit or adapt. I know that if I suck at sight reading, the only way through is to practice it and focus more energy on sight reading. I know that my end goal will benefit from me putting in the hard work now, so I ordered a sight reading exercises book and put it on my piano stand this morning. What I have learned in life is that what you most want to find, will often be found where you least want to look.

“The only way out is through.” - Robert Frost

 Take care my friend,

- Niko

PS - If you are learning piano and are interested in which book I got, it’s this one!

Progressive Sight Reading Exercises for Piano - Hannah Smith