Exploring pedagogical strategies for piano sight-reading

Abstract

In a piano sight-reading (SR) experiment, 27 undergraduate students had their SR measured. It tested the hypothesis that transposition (control group) would be a pedagogical intervention better than rhythmic training and the use of four-handed repertoire (two experimental groups). The individual errors were collected from three tests in three difficulty levels (27 students x 3 tests x 3 levels), generating a total of 243 observations. Although students improved their performance by 30%, none of the pedagogical interventions had any significant effect (p=0.96). The results were: a) practicing reading in the bass clef, the rhythmic aspects more than the melodic ones, and the left hand more than the right one, brings more benefits to the piano SR performance; b) isolated SR strategies has little effect on students development; c) using a hybrid curriculum matrix with three or more significant predictors seems to be the most appropriate way to develop a SR competency.