This is a really terrible way to learn sightreading.
I got to music college without really being able to read at all and turned it into a real strength to the extent that by my final year I was by far the best sight reader in the college on my instrument (I was a bass player so it's a relatively low bar, but I was even a good reader compared to many folks on other instruments). How I learned (and what I would recommend) is get yourself a truly massive pile of music for your instrument and get a metronome or drum machine app on your preferred device.
Then, every day (will take a few months to get good) pick a piece up from the pile, allow yourself a few seconds to check out the key and time signature, check for repeats etc so you know the basic structure and look for anything funky (odd bars, key changes etc). Set the metronome a little below the indicated tempo on the music (you can work up to sightreading fully up to speed), then start the metronome and immediately play it through without stopping as though you were doing a performance. Then put the music on the done pile, pick up the next piece and go back to the start.
So: Use real music. Play each piece once as though it was a performance. With a metronome/drum machine to keep you honest tempo-wise. In a few months you will get good at sightreading.
Once you're good start doing transcriptions of things you like. Doesn't need to be your instrument. Obviously this helps your ear but I found it also helped my sightreading. But it's not really worth doing until your basic sightreading chops are solid.
This is cool, though the notes in your example look pretty random? Are they actually randomly or is it just too modern for me to hear it without playing it?
I'm a fairly average pianist, but sight reading is a (relative) strength. Being able to play random notes is definitely part of it, but I think for me sight-reading is more about getting a sense of the gist of the music (a lot of pattern matching of common phrases, cadences, hand positions etc) - this is kind of subconcious, then my focus is on keeping my internal version aligned with what's on the page (spotting where the written music is doing something different or interesting and making sure you hit those notes). The latter part would definitley improve by practicing random notes, but the first bit is more akin to improvisation - you've got some lossy, distilled version of the music in your head (from memory or from your first mental parse of the full manuscript) and you're trying to recreate it (or expound on it).
I think what really helped my reading was having lots of cheap/free sheet music on hand and just trying to play it (simplifying massively if needed, but trying to get the sense of it, even if only playing 20% of the notes)
>I am mostly counting the number of sharps and flats and translating that to the keyboard through a pattern I figured out early on. The sharps “activate” from left to right across the groups of black notes, starting with F♯, alternating between the two groups of black notes. This is easier to get into your fingers than any other memorisation technique. The order for flats is mechanically symmetrical – you just start from the right and move left, again from the “first” note in the group of three, which in that case is B♭. I am still not quite sure how other people are learning this, since most of the materials I’ve seen have focused on learning the actual names by rote, using mnemonics like “Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle”
Is this what self-taught looks like? I have never heard of that mnemonic and it was never hard to learn the order of sharps/flats in a key signature. You just look at the way it's written on the staff - two lines of sharps a 4th apart going up progressively, two lines of flats a 4th apart going down progressively.
I don't want to discourage the guy, but practicing every day for 4 years straight and he's only gotten to 60bpm... there are better methods to learn piano sight reading.
OP if you want to improve sight reading faster, I would recommend using non-random notes - context is very important when sight reading and if you get a professional pianist to sight read random notes they will be much, much slower.
Sight reading factory is one site I know that does this a bit better
As others have mentioned, I would not recommend learning to sight-read from randomly generated assortments of notes, simply because the runs/progressions are unlikely to be found in the "wild," so you aren't building up mental patterns for chunking groups.
Even though I could read sheet music, I mostly played piano by ear until around high school when I decided to properly learn to sight-read. At the time, my access to musical resources was limited, so I borrowed the Episcopal Church hymnal from our church.
The great thing about hymnals is that they are choral in nature, usually with four voices, but at the same time, they are rhythmically simple in nature since they are intended to be sung, allowing you to purely concentrate on the notes themselves.
I ran through it sequentially for months and found that my sight-reading capabilities measurably improved.
I have been using the same M-Audio Axiom 49 key MIDI keyboard for years
Used these can be found for cheap, and short of MPE, hammer action, and a build for touring these might have everything a MIDI controller needs.
Layers, splits, onboard programmability, plenty of controls, DIN ports, USB, and afterfouch (but like the author's keyboard, the faders are always missing the custom keycaps for the non-standard size fader stems).
They are a plastic fantastic in gorgeous oughties silver.
The best ear training is really solfege. It's been used for centuries. You basically learn to "sing" to create an internal "muscle memory" of the intervals, chords, etc much faster than the typical ear training app.
Edit:
I used singing in quotes because you only really intonate (generate an accurate pitch with your voice). You don't learn actual singing technique.
Doesn't practicing with random notes become very boring?
I imagine it would be far more engaging (but also far more complicated) to tap into an archive of songs and present those randomly, either selected by or transposed into the key that you want to practice.
I've been playing the piano for 30 years, and although I'm pretty good at sight reading I don't think I would manage well on random notes. Music is generally not random (even jazz): there is structure, there is alternating tension and resolution, lots of patterns etc... However, I can see the appeal of just getting good at translating symbols into sound, I'm pretty sure that if I practiced with random notes I would also get better with patterns.
After researching a few apps, I have found Piano Marvel to be pretty good for automating practice of both scales, arpeggios and ear training as well as having a bank of songs. I use the web version, and the interface is clunky, but it’s the closest I have found to a math academy like took for piano.
It was mentioned the person was trying to memorize all these with anki or something. There's actually no need. You only need to memorize 2 key signatures and the rest follow a pattern.
C major has 0 sharps/flats
F major has 1 flat
Every sharp key is a half step up from the last sharp shown. G major has 1 sharp F#. G is a half step up from F#. In A major the last sharp is G#, etc.
In flat keys, it's the second flat to the right. Bb has two flats in the signature. Bb and Eb. Ab has 4 where Ab is the 3rd.
All minor keys are a minor third down from their major key. Of course, you have to look at more of the music to determine if it is a in major or minor key.
If you can remember that you can tell what any key signature is pretty quickly.
I've been tracking my sight reading practice for four years using an iPad app, storing the results and plotting them. I am still seeing progress even after four years.
OT, this is the first time I've heard of Pythonista for iOS. It seems like an amazing app, though I can't find many use cases as interesting as this one and there hasn't been much discussion about in on HN over the years.
Having started with traditional piano lessons, being able to sight-read notes without knowing what they are is something I’ve picked up, but not what I want. I think of this as “player piano mode.”
I want to sight-read chords, chord progressions, and other patterns, and get better at playing those.
a. Why not get piano lessons? If you are more interested in the technical fun of messing with software, this approach makes sense, sure. But if you're interested in sight-reading, it seems a bit wild. Sight-reading involves ear training, chunking patterns, etc etc.
I was playing piano as a child, and I was ok-ish. I started again a couple of years ago as a 'workout' for my brain/reflexes/speed/etc rather than to amaze the crowds (I never play in front of other people - 2-3 people know/have seen me play).
The author wanted to 'learn how to play'. I wanted to re-learn 'playing music', and if you want to get the notes of a random song and play it half-decent, I'm sorry but you need to be able to read the bloody thing :)
In case anyone wants to try their luck, I will suggest to buy a second-hand electric piano (I got a Yamaha), and for 'guide/teacher' I use SimplyPiano (not affiliated) and it has taken me from "play with one finger" to "play with two hands" (but I take it slow and easy - I will never reach Ryuichi Sakamoto level)
Four years of sight reading practice
(sandrock.co.za)150 points by chthonicdaemon 19 May 2025 | 70 comments
Comments
I got to music college without really being able to read at all and turned it into a real strength to the extent that by my final year I was by far the best sight reader in the college on my instrument (I was a bass player so it's a relatively low bar, but I was even a good reader compared to many folks on other instruments). How I learned (and what I would recommend) is get yourself a truly massive pile of music for your instrument and get a metronome or drum machine app on your preferred device.
Then, every day (will take a few months to get good) pick a piece up from the pile, allow yourself a few seconds to check out the key and time signature, check for repeats etc so you know the basic structure and look for anything funky (odd bars, key changes etc). Set the metronome a little below the indicated tempo on the music (you can work up to sightreading fully up to speed), then start the metronome and immediately play it through without stopping as though you were doing a performance. Then put the music on the done pile, pick up the next piece and go back to the start.
So: Use real music. Play each piece once as though it was a performance. With a metronome/drum machine to keep you honest tempo-wise. In a few months you will get good at sightreading.
Once you're good start doing transcriptions of things you like. Doesn't need to be your instrument. Obviously this helps your ear but I found it also helped my sightreading. But it's not really worth doing until your basic sightreading chops are solid.
I'm a fairly average pianist, but sight reading is a (relative) strength. Being able to play random notes is definitely part of it, but I think for me sight-reading is more about getting a sense of the gist of the music (a lot of pattern matching of common phrases, cadences, hand positions etc) - this is kind of subconcious, then my focus is on keeping my internal version aligned with what's on the page (spotting where the written music is doing something different or interesting and making sure you hit those notes). The latter part would definitley improve by practicing random notes, but the first bit is more akin to improvisation - you've got some lossy, distilled version of the music in your head (from memory or from your first mental parse of the full manuscript) and you're trying to recreate it (or expound on it).
I think what really helped my reading was having lots of cheap/free sheet music on hand and just trying to play it (simplifying massively if needed, but trying to get the sense of it, even if only playing 20% of the notes)
Is this what self-taught looks like? I have never heard of that mnemonic and it was never hard to learn the order of sharps/flats in a key signature. You just look at the way it's written on the staff - two lines of sharps a 4th apart going up progressively, two lines of flats a 4th apart going down progressively.
I don't want to discourage the guy, but practicing every day for 4 years straight and he's only gotten to 60bpm... there are better methods to learn piano sight reading.
OP if you want to improve sight reading faster, I would recommend using non-random notes - context is very important when sight reading and if you get a professional pianist to sight read random notes they will be much, much slower.
Sight reading factory is one site I know that does this a bit better
Even though I could read sheet music, I mostly played piano by ear until around high school when I decided to properly learn to sight-read. At the time, my access to musical resources was limited, so I borrowed the Episcopal Church hymnal from our church.
The great thing about hymnals is that they are choral in nature, usually with four voices, but at the same time, they are rhythmically simple in nature since they are intended to be sung, allowing you to purely concentrate on the notes themselves.
I ran through it sequentially for months and found that my sight-reading capabilities measurably improved.
https://hymnary.org/hymnal/HPEC1940
Used these can be found for cheap, and short of MPE, hammer action, and a build for touring these might have everything a MIDI controller needs.
Layers, splits, onboard programmability, plenty of controls, DIN ports, USB, and afterfouch (but like the author's keyboard, the faders are always missing the custom keycaps for the non-standard size fader stems).
They are a plastic fantastic in gorgeous oughties silver.
Edit:
I used singing in quotes because you only really intonate (generate an accurate pitch with your voice). You don't learn actual singing technique.
I imagine it would be far more engaging (but also far more complicated) to tap into an archive of songs and present those randomly, either selected by or transposed into the key that you want to practice.
It was mentioned the person was trying to memorize all these with anki or something. There's actually no need. You only need to memorize 2 key signatures and the rest follow a pattern.
C major has 0 sharps/flats F major has 1 flat
Every sharp key is a half step up from the last sharp shown. G major has 1 sharp F#. G is a half step up from F#. In A major the last sharp is G#, etc.
In flat keys, it's the second flat to the right. Bb has two flats in the signature. Bb and Eb. Ab has 4 where Ab is the 3rd.
All minor keys are a minor third down from their major key. Of course, you have to look at more of the music to determine if it is a in major or minor key.
If you can remember that you can tell what any key signature is pretty quickly.
I want to sight-read chords, chord progressions, and other patterns, and get better at playing those.
b. What does GAS mean?
Thanks for writing this up, I'm definitely going to incorporate this into my practice routine
I was playing piano as a child, and I was ok-ish. I started again a couple of years ago as a 'workout' for my brain/reflexes/speed/etc rather than to amaze the crowds (I never play in front of other people - 2-3 people know/have seen me play).
The author wanted to 'learn how to play'. I wanted to re-learn 'playing music', and if you want to get the notes of a random song and play it half-decent, I'm sorry but you need to be able to read the bloody thing :)
In case anyone wants to try their luck, I will suggest to buy a second-hand electric piano (I got a Yamaha), and for 'guide/teacher' I use SimplyPiano (not affiliated) and it has taken me from "play with one finger" to "play with two hands" (but I take it slow and easy - I will never reach Ryuichi Sakamoto level)