Practicing sight reading not only improves music literacy, but also helps musicians build a strong foundation for further musical development and enables them to tackle more challenging music in the future. 

MakeMusic is currently offering free subscriptions to Sight Reading Studio – a new application that quickly generates unlimited music for individuals or ensembles. Sight Reading Studio is fully customizable, offers instant feedback, and is free to use through June of 2024. 

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Tips for Band Directors

Band directors can harness the power of sight reading in various ways to aid in the development of their students, both as individual musicians and as an ensemble. Assigning sight reading as homework offers students the opportunity to hone their skills independently, ensuring continued progress beyond the confines of the classroom. Additionally, sight reading activities can be incorporated into sub plans for days when directors are not present.

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 One innovative approach is to gamify sight reading. Create a class leaderboard based on difficulty, accuracy, or time spent and have students complete sight reading activities to receive placement on the leaderboard. 

Since Sight Reading Studio can generate endless combinations of instruments and parts, all fitting within standard harmony rules, it’s the perfect tool for group learning for any combination of students! This friendly competition fosters a supportive environment, motivating students to improve their sight reading abilities while creating a sense of camaraderie within the ensemble and making learning enjoyable.

Tips for Private Lesson Teachers

Private music teachers can use sight reading as a tool to help develop students’ musicianship during lessons. Sight reading for five to ten minutes at the start of a lesson can serve as a musical ice breaker, and an expected challenge for the student to help get them into “performance mode”. 

Observing the sight reading process in real time also allows teachers to gain insights into their students’ musical comprehension and technical proficiency. Direct observation allows private teachers to provide immediate feedback and discuss necessary alterations or improvements to the students’ approach.

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Sight reading during lessons can serve as a diagnostic tool to help teachers identify weak areas in their students’ playing, and begin addressing them within their lessons and the repertoire they work on. Sight Reading Studio offers a plethora of presets and refinements that can be used to target any number of elements in a student’s playing, as well as the ability to save and share custom templates unique to each student’s needs.

Tips for Students

As a music student, sight reading can be a valuable tool in your arsenal for musical growth. Students can leverage sight reading to prepare for honor band auditions and Music Performance Assessments (MPA) contests, where sight reading is often required. It can also be used as a tool to work on other elements of your playing such as rhythm, aural skills, and musicality. 

Sight Reading Studio enhances all of these elements by offering a range of difficulties and styles, all customizable within the preset creator! By regularly engaging in sight reading practice, you can: 

• Improve your ability to confront and conquer unfamiliar pieces
• Enhance your overall musicianship
• Lay the foundation for becoming a well-rounded and confident performer

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Sight reading can introduce you to unfamiliar musical styles and challenges, broadening your musical scope, as well as an activity to focus on when you aren’t sure what to practice! Use material for other instruments as your sight reading exercises to practice in styles that are atypical for your instrument – for example a clarinet etude book is going to be a much different playing style than French horn! 

The abundant applications of sight reading emphasize its significance in music education not only as a skill, but also as a tool to further musical growth. As teachers and students alike embrace this skill, they open doors to a richer and more fulfilling musical experience, characterized by continuous growth, adaptability, and a deep appreciation for the art of making music.

 In effort to underscore its importance, the full version of Sight Reading Studio is free to use through June 2024, making it the perfect tool to try new sight reading activities with! 

To get started, simply create a free MakeMusic Cloud account (or login if you already have one):

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The post Sight Reading For All: Applications of Sight Reading for Teachers and Students appeared first on MakeMusic.

Air, Air, Air

The feedback wind players receive most often is in regards to air: more air, faster air, support with your air… but rarely do we provide our students with more information than that. To a young brass player, the idea of increasing anything with air often just turns into blowing faster and likely losing large amounts of embouchure support while doing so! Instead of asking for “faster” or “more” air, ask your students if they can create a denser air stream (more quantity of air, but blown at the same speed). To move air densely, the front of the tongue will come down and they will engage more in the corners of the embouchure. Dense air may sound similar to the idea of moving warm (or hot) air, but helps students identify that the speed and volume of the airstream are just as strong!

A dense airstream supports sound quality and is more conducive to using rounded vowel shapes (“Ah, Oh”), which add color and volume to the sound. Ask your brass players to explore how using a denser airstream impacts the oral cavity/mouth shape they use. Closed mouth shapes like “Ee” and “Uew” are not conducive to this type of air movement, and students using constricted oral shapes will find this new approach to air encourages other elements of their mouth shape to open up.

What does your sound sound like?

It’s easy for students to self-evaluate pitches, rhythms, and dynamics, but when was the last time you asked your students to evaluate their sound quality? Ask your brass players to listen to the sounds coming out of their bell: Do they like their sound? Is the sound consistent, or does it get better/worse depending on the range or volume? Do they sound like their neighbor? How can they sound more like their neighbor?

Next, bring attention to the “less important” parts of the music: Does every off-beat sound the same? Is each note in the bassline equally sonorous? Regularly check in with the brass section and ask what they hear. This will help reinforce the idea of listening to their sound instead of playing off muscle memory.

Brass players are often curious students, and with parts that aren’t terribly involved, they have a larger capacity for intellectual engagement in their music-making. Every note your students play can and should sound amazing: the off beats, counter melodies, repetitive bass lines, and all the other parts we ignore to prioritize melodies. What becomes tricky is remembering to hold all voices accountable for making beautiful sounds the whole time! By bringing attention to the quest of musical excellence on “unimportant” parts, we remind our students that they should always be paying attention to the sounds that come out of their bells.

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Balancing the Brass section

The best brass sections are always listening and adjusting to what they hear around them! With younger musicians, it’s important to encourage them to listen not only to their own instrument group but also to the other instruments within their family (i.e. the whole brass choir!)

In addition to encouraging section listening, work with your brass players to hear how their line fits into the full brass choir: Can your trumpets hear the bass line? Do your trombones and euphoniums know what the horns are playing? Practice building listening skills by isolating each part and polling students to decide where each instrument belongs in the texture. Then, pair melody and bass voices with harmony parts to ensure each instrument group understands its role in the brass ensemble and how each part interfaces with the ensemble as a whole!

Give your brass ensemble frequent opportunities to play as a section (without the winds and percussion). Ask them if they feel the group is playing as a team or a collection of individuals. Let them decide what a good brass section sounds like: repeat passages with a heavy bass line emphasis, stronger mid voices, then melodic emphasis and allow your students to choose what the ideal brass section balance should be. This can also be done through the lens of tuning and chord balancing. The more you can open their ears to what’s going on around them, the easier it will be for them to fit into not only the section sound, but the band sound as a whole!

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