As apiano student I sometimes resented the amount of time I had to spend in ear training, theory and harmony classes – time I could be spending practising the piano, building up my repertoire and technique. Now I see that a solid background in musical literacy is integral to becoming a rounded musician. In this article, I present some steps you can take if you feel there are holes in your knowledge, with a particular focus on note reading and harmony.
Sight-reading
The ability to read music fluently is one of the most essential skills the pianist can have, whether we are sight-reading an accompaniment for a singer or instrumentalist or learning repertoire for ourselves. Expert sight-readers are usually expert musicians, who process the information on the page in the shortterm memory and reproducea soulfully lyrical work that is readable by the intermediate pianist yet can be finessed and polished to create a performance of great beauty.
