Howard Snell wrote in his book, The Trumpet: Its Practice and Performance a Guide for Students that “reading music is the prelude to playing.”[1] While we always want to play our best, we may not give much thought to actually reading music. While I was in graduate school, I studied sight-reading in depth for a large research project. So many research papers with valuable information go to waste, so I have decided to transfer a portion of my paper into a less formal, more reader-friendly blog format and share it on my new blog.
The process of sight-reading is pretty complex. When a musician sight-reads, his/her eyes move back and forth in spurts, not smoothly like many people assume. A sight-reader’s eyes can make up to four stops per second in the process of reading the music for the first time. [2] This way, the eye actually takes millions of little pictures that the brain then interprets. This allows the eye to glance ahead at more difficult parts while following where the musician is actually playing. Good sight-readers are always in a state of looking ahead to anticipate future difficult passages. In fact, most good sight-readers can remember bits of music up to seven notes ahead of the note that was last played if the music were to be taken away in mid performance.[3] After the eyes see the music they then send the message to the brain to interpret.
For sight-reading to progress smoothly, the brain has be able to interpret all of the signals coming in. Information that is organized in an unfamiliar way, or not recognized, confuses the brain and the sight-reading standard drops.[4] Any conflict in the brain means that the brain has to “think” about what is going on as opposed to simply responding in the way it knows how. The more comfortable a musician is with the markings, the better chance s/he has of getting through the music without delay. This is one good reason why we have guidelines for standard musical notation. When a musician tries to read music in any other format, it takes the brain an extra few seconds to think, and this delays the music.
The ear and brain work together for yet another task. The ear takes in information and sends it to the brain to analyze. This comes in most when the musician makes a mistake in sight-reading. The performer then uses his/her auditory skills to recognize that the pattern played doesn't fit within the tonality of the piece.[5] The musician checks the music where s/he made the mistake and notes how it should be played next time. Without this mechanism, a musician could make mistakes over and over and not notice any missed notes or rhythms.
The mechanics of sight-reading are pretty complex and require a huge amount of concentration and practice to link all of the parts together cohesively to form an outstanding sight-reading performance. Luckily, most of these functions are automatic, and with the exception of purposefully scanning ahead with our eyes, we usually don't have to even think about all of the tasks that are taking place when we sight-read. Soon, I'll convert another section of my paper on how to improve sight-reading to give readers some tips on how to become better and more efficient at reading through music the first time.
[2] Snell 1997: p. 33.
[3] McPherson (Autumn, 1994): p. 217.
[5] McPherson (Autumn, 1994): p. 229.
McPherson, Gary E. “Factors and Abilities Influencing Sight-reading Skill in Music.”
Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 217-231.
Snell, Howard. The Trumpet: Its Practice and Performance A Guide for Students. Thie
Grianagh: Rakeway, 1997.
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