Sight Reading (Daily Tips #6)

An email from a reader:

Dear Janet
I read your article in the May 2010 edition of The Musician. I am sixty four and an active jazz trumpet-flugel performer and a conductor. I agree with all of your preventative measures except one. You make a statement about avoiding sight-reading as you age. I disagree. I read about keeping your mind active and exercising mentally as you age. As a jazz musician, i sight-read a lot and improvise a lot. I find both of these activities to be enjoyable, refreshing, and, yes tiring at times. I personally would encourage musicians to sight-read something daily, as a part of practice. By the way, my sight-reading skills and improv skills are two of the biggest assets that i bring to a band. Thank you for the article. I will investigate the book.
best
Jim Jones trumpet-flugelhorn, retired band director, Conductor, Princeton Community Band.


Janet's Reply:

Hi and thanks very much for your comment.
You make a very astute point about keeping your mind active. We know that playing music in general does contribute to doing just that. As we age this is very important. Yes, I agree that sight reading as part of daily practice is a good idea , very good - once we are all warmed up and we are used to it being a part of our daily practice regimen. No stress there. Just you and the music.
One does gets better at sight reading if one practices it! We get better at recognizing patterns and learn fingerings and keys. In the long run when we feel that our sight reading skills are improving we can stay loose. We stop unraveling at the thought of sight reading.
In my article I was referring to those of us in the orchestral setting for whom sight reading is this very scary thing. Preparation, especially of huge long and difficult orchestral works is important. Sometimes, musicians will show up to a rehearsal at the last minute and must sight read difficult ( and sometimes unreadable) new music or very difficult older music and then in the ensuing panic to get it right, we become tense and stiff, with jerky motions, which is hard on the body.
I must admit I haven't advocated practicing sight reading per se : a very good idea. Reserve 5 minutes during a practice session and choose a section of a work unknown to you. Try to get through it without stopping and then go back and try to recognize scale passages or repeated patterns. Get more comfortable nailing time and key signatures especially the unusual ones. This will train your ears, fingers and mind. Also, learning to transpose a section on sight is a good exercise.
I appreciate the fact that you jazzers are much better at this than we are and if only we did experiment more with improvisation, I think then we too would enjoy our music making more.

Hope you like the book
Janet

Jim's Reply:

Thank you for the reply. I know what you mean about difficult and unreadable music. Manuscript (at least in big bands, concert band, and combo's) is sometimes very poorly written and then on top of that, you get an old photo copy that really adds to the stress you are talking about. Point well taken. On the topic of improvisation....I know that efforts are made, from time to time to put out an orchestral work that incorporates improv. But it seems this fundamental part of jazz is not going to make it big in the orchestral repetoire. This is too bad for orchestral players, conductors, and the audience. On the other hand we have Stefan Grapelli and Mark O'connor to listen to.
Jim Jones