Yes it is really important to practise sightreading. Being able to sightread well makes it much quicker to learn new pieces and eventually possible to play pieces reasonably well without having practised them at all.
Sightreading does improve simply by learning repertoire, but not that quickly. This is because you are only truly sightreading a piece the first time play through it. After that, you will have memorised at least some of the material, and are no longer sightreading in the strictest sense.
This is often a problem for pupils studying for instrumental music exams. Once they have memorised their pieces, and are “polishing” them, they are not really reading the sheet music while playing them, even if they are following the music to aid memory. For this reason I find it really important to ensure that pupils read and play a wide variety of new music alongside pieces they may be learning in detail for exams or performances.
manpreet![Tuteehub forum best answer]()
Best Answer
2 years ago
I have seen many questions & answers">answers regarding practising sight reading the right way etc. But I couldn't find the answer to my question whether it is even that important to practise sight reading. What I mean by practising sight reading is for example picking a random piece that you haven't played before which is below your level and practise sight reading everyday with random pieces like that. But is it even necessary? Don't you automatically develop your sight reading skills just by working on your pieces at your level, instead of practising sight reading SEPARATELY with random pieces?