Being able to use chords and patterns to improve sight reading and memorising music is extremely helpful. However, as classical pianists it’s a skill that is often not forefront in how we are taught. However, it’s definitely a skill worth acquiring and in fact it isn’t really that hard to do with a little practice. This post explains some of the advantages of doing this and then links to a set of practical posts which make a ‘mini course’ for you to work through.

Let’s first look at Reading

As young children when learning to read, we tended to spell out words when we saw them as we tried to make sense of what the letters meant. As we improved, we no longer saw distinct letters – rather we saw a single word. So, instead of the 5 separate letters in “p i a n o”, we simply saw the word piano. The more we read, the better we got to the point that we can read most things totally fluently. It’s only occasionally we come across an unfamiliar word. This might see us have that micro hesitation as we work it out – generally by splitting it down into smaller parts.

Of course, this didn’t come naturally – we had to learn it!

Musical notation is just a language

Music is no different. The first thing to remember is that musical notation is a language. Therefore, reading music isn’t really that different to reading words. If we had to read every individual note each time we looked at music it would take us forever and we’d be like that hesitant child we once were trying to make sense of the letters on the page in front of us. Therefore, we need to develop ways of grouping information together – the equivalent of turning letters into words.

One type of musical word

One of the major things then that will help us to read more quickly is being able to see music in terms of Chords. With practice, we can learn to interpret the notes C E G B-flat as the chord of C7 rather than a set of individual notes.

With further practice, we can also see the sequencing of these notes over time. This is what I mean by a ‘pattern’. Patterns can be arpeggios, alberti bass figures, scales and the like.

There will still be occasions where we need to look harder. We might well see a set of notes that don’t appear to mean anything (such as happens with unfamiliar words in language), however, on the whole we can see most things as larger blocks.

There are two types of reading

Let’s first think about the two distinct types of reading we need to do on piano:

Sight reading

General reading

Sight Reading

Let’s think about Sight Reading in the traditional sense. Here we have to play, on sight, a piece of music that we haven’t played before. Playing on sight is something of course that you’ll do in your practice room if you have sight reading as part of your daily regime (I do). You will also need to do this in an exam situation (you always need to do this in ABRSM exams for example). However, it’s not an abstract skill and there can be occasions when we need to sight read ‘in real life’ as we will see below. Therefore, it is worth taking the effort to improve sight reading.

General Reading

Now let’s think about general reading. By this we can think about when we are playing from the music rather than from memory. Not everybody memorises their music and sometimes it isn’t practical to memorise.

For example, if we are involved with other musicians such as chamber music or providing the accompaniment to instrumentalists or singers, then we will regularly need to play things that we haven’t memorised. Indeed, we might have had only one or two run throughs of the music. We might on occasions even need to totally sight read in these circumstances.

How to improve sight reading

When sight reading, one of the first things we should do is look over the score. Looking for the obvious things such as key signature, time signature, accidentals etc. However, if we want to be able to digest lots of notes, the next thing we can do to improve sight reading is to look for chords and patterns. These might be asblock chords, alberti bass, scales and many other things.

Let’s imagine you need to sight read Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 16. Let’s have a look at the few bars.

In the first bar, once we are familiar with chords, we can immediately see a C Major chord in both hands. The left hand it split out into an alberti bass pattern using the same chord. In the right hand it is just a standard 3 note chord. If we are familiar with how an Alberti Bass works, then our brain can automatically combine that knowledge with the chord. Now we’re able to play the left hand without needing to think about the individual notes.

The same pattern continues as we then move to a G7 chord and back to a C major in the second measure. Here, Mozart uses the ‘economy of movement’ principle we will look at in this post. Effectively, he has kept the hand roughly in the same place when moving to the second chord.

Then we move to an F major – again using economy of movement, back to a C. Afterwards to a G and then back to a C.

So, by combining a knowledge of chords with the alberti bass pattern, we no longer need to think about every note that is played in the left hand – simply of the chords and the pattern. This then simplifies the music substantially for our brain and frees up some processing power to focus on the melody.

The same principle applied to general reading

The same principles apply to general reading of course. We might have played this sonata for many years. Yet, if we haven’t memorised it, we need to rely on the music. If this means reading each individual note every time we play, we will likely struggle. However, when we start to think more in chords and patterns, the basic notes become almost child’s play and we can apply 80% of our brain processing power to interpreting the music.

Memorising

Let’s have a look at how chords will help us with memorisation. We can use Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat.

If we want to try memorising this piece, then we can think of the left hand in terms of chords. We equally have a pattern where the LH doesn’t play the entire chord at one go but splits it into a bass note and two partial chords. And of course, these basic chords sequences (or progressions as they are generally called) repeat themselves throughout the piece.

With a little practice, you’ll see that most of these chords are not particularly difficult to recognise.

For the moment, I’ll not say much about chord progressions. However, what you’ll also notice with practice is that chords often move naturally from one to another. This also helps with memorising as you know what’s coming next more easily. A little knowledge well worth having!

Learn the easy way

Learning chords to improve sight reading doesn’t need to be dry or difficult. Sure, you can sit and learn the Circle of 5ths, you can drill chord inversions into your head and fingers. Alternatively, we can have some fun learning them instead. In my teens, this is something I learned almost by accident – it certainly wasn’t through any formal route. I learned guitar (which of course is all about chords) and I also got involved with a local amateur dramatic group as their rehearsal pianist. I’ve taken this experience and converted it into a mini course on how to learn chords the easy way for a pianist. If you’re ready to give it a go, simply click here for the first step in this learning journey.