Sight Reading Exercises
When students are preparing for music exams it can be difficult to practice and improve sight reading without a teacher present. In bands and singing groups alike, it can also prove challenging for those who are not confident sight readers to learn their parts without aural assistance. This is where the PlayScore interactive playback features come in. PlayScore can help you to check and improve your sight reading skills whether you’re preparing for an exam, studying Music Theory, or are learning a new piece.
Music Exams such as ABRSM Grade I – VIII require all candidates to perform a short sight reading task. Practicing sight reading exercises with PlayScore means you can take a photo of your music and instantly hear it and follow the score in real time. The interactive features of the built in playback mean you can set the tempo exactly, change the instrument sound, and even loop sections if you want to play along a few times and make sure you’ve got it. You can easily hear your sight reading exercise played back perfectly in the PlayScore app.
When you scan music into PlayScore it will automatically start playing within seconds, and will be on the piano sound. If you are a violinist practicing your sight reading for example, it would be useful to photograph your sheet of music with PlayScore, then change the instrument sound to violin, and slide the tempo bar to the appropriate speed.
You could then practice playing the exercise yourself, and immediately playback your scanned music on the PlayScore app. This means you are able to hear the piece perfectly as well as visually follow the score so that you can compare how you did, and figure out any parts that need extra attention.
You can loop any tricky passages you want to go over, simply by holding your finger down on the bar you would like to start repeating, then move to the right to select which bars you want to include in the loop section. This will bring up green brackets on your score to highlight the looped section, and this will playback continuously in the app when you tap ‘play’.
Using PlayScore to interactively practice is an excellent way to gain confidence and experience sight reading music. The playback features accurately demonstrate what the score is doing, assisting you to make sense of music notation in a practical and independent way. PlayScore 2 is an excellent tool to develop your sight reading skills every time you use the app.
