Tech for Sight-Reading Practice

                Many music teachers are still looking for that silver bullet that allows them to practice sight-reading quickly, effectively, and above all…DAILY! The challenge of passing out music and collecting it just for a five-minute exercise is inefficient. I have successfully used classroom book sets, like Rhythm Sessions for Strings by Gearhart & Gearhart and Bach and Before for Strings by Newell, but again, there is a small time loss in distributing and collecting these materials. Enter www.SightReadingFactory.com.

                www.SightReadingFactory.com is a random generator sight-reading website designed for every instrumental or vocal education instrument. The user can select an exercise to be generated for an individual instrument like solo oboe, or a heterogeneous group of instruments, like a string orchestra or mixed vocal ensemble. Next, the user chooses settings. There are six ability levels ranging from simple stepwise quarter and half note rhythms, all the way to triplet eighth notes leaping an octave and involving accidentals. Any major or minor key signature is available, as well as all basic compound and simple time signatures and tempo markings. The user can also choose how long of a study period s/he wants before a metronome begins to click off.

A screenshot sample of a Level 3 exercise for String Orchestra

                Beyond these basics, I maximize the tool with the “disappearing measure” feature. Accompanied by a metronome, students can hear the beat, and once a measure is finished it disappears. To take this further, when the exercise counts off in the beginning, I hold off the students’ performance two or four more beats so that the music disappears before they arrive at playing it. The skill our students learn is much like driving. We don’t look at the lines passing us on the highway (the measure we are playing). Instead, we look down the road at what’s coming (the measures ahead of us). Above all, 100% of our students are totally engaged in this activity.

                Other tricks that I use with Sight Reading Factory (SRF) include having students perform the excerpt in a different octave or completely transposed to another key. Interval reading comes into play, knowing how far to skip or leap in a foreign register. To emphasize learning of intervals, we utilize the companion website to Progressive Sight Singing, performing “flashcards” with our voices and solfege hand symbols that strengthen interval recognition up to a fifth (so far). There is more to come about this resource, but I find it couples well with SRF.

                SRF is affordable and worth every dime. A one-year teacher subscription is $34.99 with student account add-ons for $2.00 each, and they accept school purchase orders. The site offers great tech support and updates often. In a classroom, teachers need a large scale projected image hooked to the internet, and they are ready to go. I use a large overhead image, as well as a smaller SMART board image for our wide-ranging ensembles. If you are looking for that daily dose of sight-reading medicine, I encourage any music educator to give Sight Reading Factory a try.