The bad news - you can't improve your sight-reading (much)

[False_Dmitry]

"In the researchers' investigation, the best sight readers combined strong working memories with tens of thousands of hours of piano practice over several decades. Working memory appears to be a capacity that gels early in life and can't be improved much by learning, the study suggests."

http://news.discovery.com/human/music-sight-reading.html
(Discovery News)

[Szykneij]

Based on the title alone, I was ready to dispute the article. But all in all, I'm pretty much in agreement with some clarification.

I believe sight-reading can be improved greatly at any stage when dealing with a monophonic instrument. We learn to read words in a book at an early age left to right, one line at a time, and that ability is what we draw on when we read a single line of music on a violin, clarinet, trumpet, or any other single note instrument.

The article deals only with sight-reading on the piano which involves simultaneously producing multiple lines of music. This is a skill that needs to be developed at an early age, along with the working memory that the article emphasizes.

I began playing the violin when I was nine but didn't have any formal piano lessons until I was in high school. I had no problem playing the left hand and right hand lines individually, but struggled greatly at playing them at the same time. I still have that difficulty and would need to practice a great deal to perform even an elementary piece correctly (although I can easily plunk out melodies in any key with chordal accompaniment thanks to some good functional piano classes in college.) My brain was never wired to deal with multiple horizontal lines when I was young, and it's never going to happen at this point.

On the other hand, thanks to early training, I have some young students who can effortlessly play complex piano pieces, and they can do it while chewing gum and kicking the kid next to them to boot!

[False_Dmitry]

Actually I disagree with the article.  I feel sightreading is like driving - as you become more proficient, you are able to look "further ahead" and prepare yourself to deal with what's coming towards you

[Joe_Campbell]

Agreed. A good way to practice this is to start hands separate and always have someone covering the bar of music you're currently playing. That way, you're constantly trying to store the music ahead and commit it to memory before actually playing it. Once you get good at this, try it with two hands. You'll find that you can commit one hand to memory and read the other real time, and, eventually, both to memory.

[mikkeljs]

Im not sure, what I think of sight-reading. When I was young, it was a strong site of mine, but later it became my bad site. I experienced though that today I can play far more difficult prima vista than I could at age 13, and there is also the technical cathegorizing of hard materiale to play, which to a great extent developes in a conscious way. Also reading keys and spotting altered harmony grow easier.

But I have always wondered why some people are so much better at this than others, when their studied repertoire is at the same level.