What is Sight Reading?

Information about Sight Reading

Sight reading is the reading and performing of a work—typically, a piece of music, but sometimes also linguistic texts like drama—without having seen it before.

In music

Sight reading of music notation is considered to be an important skill for musicians. When singers sight read, it is often called sight singing.

Studio musicians (that is, musicians employed to record pieces for commercials, etc.) often record pieces on the first take without having seen it before. Often, the music played on television is played by musicians who are sight reading. This practice has developed through intense commercial competition in these industries.

In some circumstances, such as examinations, the ability of a student to sight read is assessed by presenting the student with a short piece of music, with an allotted time to peruse the music, then testing the student on the accuracy of the performance. A harder kind of test requires the student to perform without any preparation at all.

The ability to sight read partly depends on a strong short-term musical memory. An experiment on sight reading using an eye tracker indicates that highly skilled musicians tend to look ahead further in the music, storing and processing the notes until they are played; this is referred to as the eye–hand span.

Storage of notational information in working memory can be expressed in terms of the amount of information (load) and the time for which it must be held before being played (latency). The relationship between load and latency changes according to tempo, such that t = x/y, where t is the change in tempo, x is the change in load, and y is the change in latency. Some teachers and researchers have proposed that the eye–hand span can be trained to be larger than it would otherwise be under normal conditions, leading to more robust sight reading ability.

Sight reading also depends on familiarity with the musical idiom being performed; this permits the reader to recognize and process frequently occurring patterns of notes as a single unit, rather than individual notes, thus achieving greater efficiency. This phenomenon, which also applies to the reading of language, is referred to as chunking. Errors in sight reading tend to occur in places where the music contains unexpected or unusual sequences; these defeat the strategy of "reading by expectation" that sight readers typically employ.

Highly skilled musicians can sight-read silently; that is, they can look at the printed music and hear it in their heads without playing or singing; see Audiation. (True sight-reading or sight-singing—not code-deciphering—is actually notational audiation.) Less able sight-readers generally must at least hum or whistle in order to sight-read effectively. This distinction is analogous to ordinary prose reading during the early Middle Ages, when the ability to read silently was notable enough for St. Augustine to comment on it[1].

In drama

Sight-reading is also a much-needed requirement in drama, where it is often used in conjunction with improvisations to gauge a performer's ability to perform new works. It is particularly useful during auditions. A good drama sightreader is able to communicate with fluency and clarity and to project speech rhythms and rhymes well. He or she should also be able to bring out the intent, mood and characterization of a piece through appropriate articulation and body language.

External links

See also

Reading is an active skill-based process of constructing meaning and/or gaining knowledge from oral, visual, and written text (including Braille).

It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas.
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Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance.[1] It is derived from a Greek word meaning "action" (Classical Greek δράμα), derived from "to do" (Classical Greek
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A singer is a musician who uses their voice to produce music. Often the singer is accompanied by musicians and instruments. While many people sing for pleasure, vocal skill is usually a combination of innate talent and professional training.
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musician is a person who plays or composes music. Musicians can be classified by their role in creating or performing music:
  • A musician or instrumentalist plays a musical instrument.

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Television (often abbreviated to TV, T.V., or more recently, tv; sometimes called telly, the tube, boob tube, or idiot box in British English) is a widely used telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures
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Short-term memory, sometimes referred to as "primary," "working," or "active" memory, is said to hold a small amount of information for about 20 seconds.

Estimates of short-term memory capacity vary - from about 3 or 4 elements (i.e.
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Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze ("where we are looking") or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movements.
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Chunking may mean:
  • Chunking (psychology), a short-term memory mechanism and techniques to exploit it
  • Chunking (writing), a method of splitting content into short, easily scannable elements, especially for web audiences

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Audiation is the process of mentally hearing and comprehending music, even when no physical sound is present. It is a cognitive process by which the brain gives meaning to musical sounds. In essence, audiation of music is analogous to thinking in a language.
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Improvisation is the practice of acting and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or new ways to act.
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audition is a sample performance by an actor, singer, musician, dancer or other performing artist. It is used in the casting process to demonstrate the level and range of a performer's talent, and functions as a job interview for the performing arts.
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Body language is a term for communication using body movements or gestures (such as the '''Pinocchio blue[1]) instead of, or in addition to, sounds, verbal language or other communication.
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Ear training or aural skills is a process by which musicians learn to identify intervals, chords, rhythms, and other basic elements of music. Singing plays an important part in ear training, since one must be able hear music in one's head and match pitch before it is
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Eye movement in music reading is the scanning of a musical score by a musician's eyes. This usually occurs as the music is read during performance, although musicians sometimes scan music silently to study it, and sometimes perform from memory without score.
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Shape notes are a music notation designed to facilitate congregational singing. Shape notes of various kinds have been used for over two centuries in a variety of sacred music traditions practiced primarily in the Southern region of the United States.
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