The best way to improve your music sight reading is to read more new music. Period.

There is an idea out there that the skill of sight reading is somehow different from the skill of reading music, but it is not. They are one in the same.

Sight reading a Beethoven piano sonata is simply the skill of reading music in real time much the same way that sight reading a Shakespeare monologue is the skill of reading English in real time.

Having said that, there are some additional insights to scoring high sight reading points in an All-State audition. Improving your scores in this area is by far the secret to getting into All-State Band. We will explore some tips & tricks to reading in an audition in future articles.

In the context of the audition, the purpose of the sight reading portion is to measure a student’s ability to read music with little preparation. In some states, the time frame a student has to look at a music selection is as little as 30 seconds.

So, how do we improve our ability to read a brand new piece of music we have never seen before in 30 seconds?

The answer is that we need to make the reading of new music a regular part of our practice routine.

Read more new music on a regular basis, and you will improve your sight reading skills.

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