What Is Reading?

Some of the instruction of little children and the music material prepared for piano instruction is based upon the idea that sight reading is the development of a fluency in deciphering one note after another. It is assumed that if a child can be taught to read one note after another correctly, and kept it up patiently, he will gradually be able to repeat this faster and faster until he becomes a ready music reader.

Studies shows that reading is the ability, first, to recall to mind a previously learned thought by means of recognized symbols; and second, to group familiar symbols into larger and larger units, each group representing its previously learned idea. in other words, fluency in reading does not consist in seeing single notes more rapidly, but in visualizing in larger and larger units the groups of notes.

This process is greatly facilitated where the note groupings on the page correspond to tonal or music units. Where the notes of a phrase skip from staff to staff, the unity of the group is broken and the eye must follow the music from note to note. When teaching reading, look for keyboard sheet music where the music is printed phrasewise, each tonal figure printed to be grasped in one eye span. Where the chords may be seen as units, the melodic line encourages groupwise rather than note-to-note thinking. These considerations are basic to the development of good sight reading skills.

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