Piano Geography - The Secret to Successful Sight Reading

Piano Geography - The Secret to Successful Sight Reading 

 Through over 35 years of teaching experience on the piano, I have understood that one of the main hindrances to effective sight reading is poor “Piano Geography”. This is the ability to feel your way around the piano without looking at your hands. Be honest - when you sight read, are you continually looking at your hands? It’s something I call, "watching vertical tennis", where your eyes travel up and down between hand and book for virtually every note or chord. No wonder your sight reading is hesitant and lacking fluency.

 

Most students focus primarily on getting the notes the correct pitch at the expense of keeping the beat going. However, if you look at the ABRSM marking criteria for a sight reading test, the FIRST thing that is mentioned for a distinction is,

 

“Fluent, rhythmically accurate” 

(followed by “accurate notes / pitch / key”).

 

With this in mind this book available on Amazon has been specifically designed to improve your skills at feeling your way around the piano by touch. It is imperative that the exercises be played without looking down. Although this method is designed to improve sight reading, these Piano Geography Tests can be practised as many times as you like. The purpose is to train your ability to feel your way around the keys, not train your ability to read notes.

 

You should also try to play with good rhythm. It doesn’t matter how slow, but the beat should always be steady. With this in mind, I recommend playing with a metronome, initially set to something as slow as 60 crotchet beats per minute. Then feel free to gradually increase this speed only as and when you develop pitch and rhythmic accuracy (without looking at your hands).

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NEW Digital certificates for ABRSM. "Charity" that charges for paper certificates!!!

 ABRSM have announced that during 2024 they are introducing secure digital certificates worldwide with the option to order a paper certificate for a fee of £3 or the equivalent in the currency for your country.

The rationale behind this change is:

• Tto ensure that results and certificates are valid and secure. Digital certificates will help to further safeguard certificates against fraud.

• Digital certificates will be available more quickly than paper certificates. They will be easy to download, print, store and share, and the unique QR code on each certificate will provide online verification of the candidate and exam details.  

• By reducing transport and paper use, the introduction of digital certificates will help to achieve  sustainability goals. 

There are some however who put a different point of view. The gold embossed paper certificates have an air of quality about them, something you can frame and hang on a wall. It feels like ABRSM are just again trying to save money as they did with the dumbing down of the theory exams a few years ago and more recently the online video exams. By the way the cost of a video performance exam is only marginally cheaper (£116 instead of £130 for grade 8) despite the fact that there is no venue and support staff to pay for.

The claim to reduce the impact on the environment falls flat when one considers that UK examiners are sent all over the world rather than use local examiners.

The exams themselves are very expensive and even prohibitive when one adds on the cost of lesson and books, so to start charging for paper certificates is frankly insulting. Although a registered "charity" because it donates some funds to music education such as  scholarships to the four Royal Schools of Music, in reality it is run more like a profit making business. There is more information on exactly how this "charity" is run on the government website HERE

Some have felt so strongly about this that a petition has been started which you can support HERE

Vals Poetico - Grade 6 ABRSM Piano B2 - Teaching Notes

Vals Poetico: No.6 from Valses Poeticos

Enrique Granados

Teaching  Notes

Timing should not be too strict with this piece as the instruction at the beginning indicates "Quasi ad libitum". There are numerous places where an easing of the tempo is indicated and these opportunities should be explored fully (e.g. bars 7, 14, 23, 39, 45).

Pedalling also requires careful attention. In some cases it is just once per bar such as in the first 3 bars, but at other times the harmony changes every crotchet and so pedalling must reflect this (e.g. bar 4). Also be careful that the pedal does not linger over into LH rests, so for example, the last beat of bar 7 into bar 8, only the RH should be heard. Similar passages include bars 23, 24, 29 and the RH rests in bars 16 and 32. Also be careful that RH and LH finish at different times in bar 40.

Another aspect that the examiner will be looking out for is the voicing of the melody. Often this is simply a case of bringing out the top lines, but sometimes the melody is in a lower part such as bars 11 to 13. 

There are even occasions where the RH is split into parts that need to be voiced differently. For example in bars 5, 6, 21 and 22 the melody is the higher dotted minim, but there is a moving lower RH part on the second beat of each of these bars. These "second beats" should be at a lesser dynamic so as not to distract from the top melody note.

Finally notice the rather strange pause on the final rest which seems to be AFTER the music is finished. Why would you pause on a silence after the final note. I would argue that the composer is trying to suggest here that the music does NOT finish with the last note, but rather that the final two beats of rest are PART of the music. As such, you should stay involved with the performance during this silence, not taking your hands off the keys immediately but rather holding the silence without moving away from the piano, thus creating a "you could hear a pin drop" atmosphere that captures your audience's attention until the end of the bar which can be as long as you feel appropriate bearing in mind that these two beats rest are not only with a pause but also part of a "molto rit".