You cannot practice your reading enough! There, I said it. It’s also true that only by practicing your reading will you ever get any better at it. Just like you practice making the right timbre and holding the notes the right length of time, and getting all the notes in the right order, you can also practice your reading. Doing so will help you immeasurably to read more music, more easily.

But saying you need to practice and actually doing it may seem like a big leap. After all, how do you practice reading? Well, here are some ways you might go about it.

1. Set aside time in your practice to do reading. I love my kitchen timer – set the timer for 5 – 10 minutes (depending on your overall practice time). Then spend that time focused on reading. If you’re a beginning reader, you might identify the names of each note. When that becomes easier, you might name the note while finding it on the harp. Or you might name each note value (find all the eighth notes, then find all the quarter notes, etc.).  You might start with naming all the rests. You’ll know best what you should work on by what gives you the most difficulty when you’re trying to read.
2. Choose wisely. If you are a beginning reader, you might want to start reading a beginning book (it is helpful to think about how you learned to read as a child – remember those books – loads of pictures and very large type? Find the music equivalent!).  As you become more experienced at reading, you can more on to more complex music, or looking at ensemble  scores! You might be willing to read music for other instruments (although I would suggest you stick with the treble and bass clefs!).
3. L-O-O-K at the music! Analyze it. Look for the patterns that repeat, find the motif that is moved around (a pattern that starts on different notes in different places). Pay attention to all the ink – it’s all there to tell you something – spend the time to figure out what it is! Look at the beginning. Check out the end to get an idea of what’s going to happen (this is analogous to reading the last chapter of a book!). I really like finding the patterns and using those to convince myself that it won’t be as much work as I think it will be (especially true with the dot density is high and there is a lot of ink on the page!). Work on building the habit of doing this analysis each time you open a piece of music (and avoid the trap of opening the music and just trying to play it).
4. Think of the whole. When you’re beginning to read, you may need to look at each note individually and each line or space of the staff (do you remember when you were young and you had to sound out each letter – like that). It is overwhelming! However, I promise, with practice you will become better, faster, stronger at seeing the whole (the staffs, the notes, the inflections, etc.) and processing the meaning more quickly! This will make reading easier and more fun, and definitely less work!
5. Pay attention. Once your reading becomes more effortless, you will be tempted to read more quickly and bang through the music as fast as possible. But remember a couple of important things – faster is not necessarily better and you are reading to take something in – but what are you going to do with it after you take it in? Keep that end in mind and pay attention the whole way through!
6. Find the “sight words”. In word reading there are “sight words” – words you have practiced so many times you can read them without reading them! Words like – word, so, many, times, you, can, read – well you get the idea! In the same way, the more you read music, the more these musical “sight words” (patterns) will become clearer. With practice, you’ll see an octave and won’t even thinking about it, you’ll know it’s an octave. A triad (1-3-5 chord)? Bang on. Know an F from an A?  Piece of cake.

I know, if you’re just starting out, this seems like magic or malarkey, but it’s not – it’s just practice!  Reading music can be challenging. I used to hate sitting next to a “paper trained” person at a workshop – they’d rattle through the music at a clip and I’d still be placing the first chord. It can be disheartening. This may be more so if you’re coming from another instrument – either a one liner (like fiddle or flute) or a flatliner (like piano).

Be patient and actually practice and you’ll see improvement very quickly. Or you can go back to wishing – it is a strategy, but it doesn’t work very well!

Today, I’m sitting below a poster with a quote from Marcel Proust,

”The voyage of discovery is not in seeking

new landscapes but in having new eyes.” 

It dovetails nicely with some of your comments to last week’s post – thanks so much for those!

DB brought up the concept of the “beginner’s mind”.  This is the concept that a beginner may acknowledge that they don’t know much.  Beginners are open to learning and new experiences and don’t cloud their vision with preconceptions.  They don’t think they’re experts.  You might remember this phase from your early harp life?

DB went on to say, “it seems that what separates the “masters” from the dilettantes is a maintenance and mastery of the basics, through a strong curiosity of what “new” thing they might or might not discover in that practice.”

KB suggested that, “Paying close attention to what causes something to go wrong is essential to avoiding the same problems repeatedly. Issues with hand position, fingering, placement, focus, etc. lead to mistakes. Find the underlying issue, then fix it through targeted practice. It works for both my playing and my knitting!”

This too is something we often do that appears to move us forward but actually holds us back – we are often satisfied with a “fix” but don’t do the additional work to find the underlying cause.  Without doing the technique work, you might never find that little nuance you need to get the fingering down or to drop your shoulder or read just a little ahead of where your playing or any of the other little things that are holding you back.

DB pointed out that, “in many ways the lesson seems to be rooted in always finding time, and maintaining a strong curiosity in practicing the basics, no matter how far away from the basics, we think we’ve progressed.”  How can you do that in your everyday practice?  Here are six ideas to move you forward:

1. You can acknowledge that you will learn things at different rates, that some things will be harder than others to you, that you can only calmly evaluate and learn.  You can only take it one step at a time.
2. You can stop with the comparisons! You should not be playing like everyone around you. And remember that, like high school, facebook, and reality tv, nothing is what it seems when you look around you – just because the person next to you is sailing through something with which you are struggling doesn’t mean that they didn’t aslo struggle (just earlier) – it only means that you didn’t see it!
3. Actually LISTEN to the feedback you get – the best teachers use the praise and guide approach – they will provide actual praise (from which you can learn what you are doing well in terms of performance and practice) and guidance (from which you can learn what you need to do more of, learn how to do, or learn what to stop doing).
4. Remain a beginner – ask questions.  Do not assume that you know something just because you have been doing it. There is always something to learn that may (or may not) be good for you to incorporate.
5. Ignore what doesn’t fit. Some of the best advice I received early in my harp life was from my teacher at the time who told me that I should play what I liked and leave the rest on the floor.  Her point was sound – if you don’t like classical music, don’t play it!  (NB this is not the same as, “it’s hard and I don’t want to do the work!”.  But you are more likely to work hard if you’re mostly playing music you like. Don’t cut yourself off from a genre just because it’s challenging – learn what it can teach you and port that to what you do love).
6. Don’t worry! We (especially adults) worry that we’re not getting better, that we’ll never be good enough, that everyone else is making more progress. Let-It-Go!  Focus on you, what you need to learn, what you want to learn.  There is no need to train to go to Conservatory if your goal is to have a nice set of music to play for your friends and family. And if your goal is to go to Conservatory, then focus on the necessary development – but either way, channel your energy into learning, asking questions, and enjoying. Don’t waste it worrying.

Keep working on being a beginner – question, wonder, enjoy! Discover the landscape with new, beginners eyes.