A structured 30-day plan to dramatically improve your sight-reading fluency — daily exercises, progressive difficulty, and the scanning-ahead technique.
The #1 skill that separates good sight-readers from struggling ones: your eyes must stay ahead of your hands. While playing beat 1, your eyes should already be scanning beats 3-4. This is trainable.
Week 1: 5 min/day, only stepwise melodies in C major. Quarter notes only. Focus on keeping your eyes moving ahead.
Week 2: Add skips of a 3rd. Half notes. Still C major. 7 min/day.
Week 3: Add F and G major. Dotted rhythms. 10 min/day.
Week 4: Key changes, accidentals, syncopation. 10-15 min/day. By this point, you should feel noticeably more fluent.
Download these free printable PDFs to practice what you learned
6 short exercises using only stepwise motion in C major. Quarter notes only. The perfect starting po...
View & Download 📥 3,193+ downloads6 exercises introducing skips of a 3rd and 4th alongside stepwise motion. Quarter and half notes in ...
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View & Download 📥 3,195+ downloadsA dedicated sight-reading log with spaces to record the piece, tempo, errors and a self-rating — sys...
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