An excellent book, one flaw
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Learning to read music late in life is not easy. This book describes a very powerful set of exercises designed to maximise your progress. I have found it to be very effective indeed. There's one glaring gaff, however, which is easy to circumvent. Part way through the exercises you are supposed to switch to the Bach Chorales in order to accommodate four-part reading. A ludicrous step-change in technical ability is required to do this, complete with massive hand stretches. The answer is to ignore his advice, and instead use a simpler (and playable !) four-part collection, such as the English Hymnal or Hymns Ancient and Modern. I'm not an Xtian myself, but these are nice tunes anyway, and much more practical.
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Great for beginners
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This is great for beginners, gives short tips and that work to help youlearn how to read notes. I have played the piano for many yeas but wasalways to lazy to learn to read notes properly as I was never shown a goodmethod of doing so and this book does it.
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These techniques do improve reading
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I learnt to play instruments primarily 'by ear'. When I went on to the piano and actually got formal tuition I found that I was weak on sight reading. My teacher used to say you can't really teach sight reading - it is just a matter of practice. I think there is a lot of truth in that, but I have found this book useful. I am still at the early stages of the exercises (or drills as he calls them). In my own case it seems the process of reading the notes off the page organising them in my head and remembering them long enough to play them was lacking. This surprised me as I could read the notes easily, I could play them easily, but it was some transitional process that was weak. I found that some of the exercises in the book - even done without being at a keyboard have brought a noticeable improvement. My only criticism is that I find the layout of the book a little confusing - I find I have to switch to and fro between chapters to check out drills. But I definitely recommend it
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