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Performance Development 1 - Reflective journal

Table of content:

1. Statement of objectives and introduction

2. Weekly journal

Statement of objective and introduction

The aim of this moduleʼs shall be to improve my sight-reading skills, where by “Sight-

reading” is the ability to perform a piece of music from the written score on first reading, a

prima vista, to a reasonable standard.

Sight reading is a very valuable asset: whether one is to pursue a career as an

accompanist, music teacher, performer, cruise ship entertainer, band member, conductor,

recording artist, studio musician, etc. the ability to perform from the written score at a

momentʼs notice is part of any audition and the working day of all of the above professions.

As far as my experience goes, I am quite proficient in reading from a lead sheet where the

melody is written and the harmonies are expressed by chord symbols which imply a bass

note; the player then fills in the rest by interpreting such chord symbols and rhythmically

abiding by the specified style (Swing, bossa, rock, etc.). Having spent years playing and

improvising on lead sheets, I lack the ability to fluently sight-read the grand staff even at
grade level 4 or 5; hence, I made it my objective to work towards improving this skill, not

just for the benefits within the professional aspect, but first and foremost because good

sight-reading means being able to learn more music, faster.

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preliminary work:

in anticipation for this module, and also quite simply for self-improvement purposes, I

carried out a solid routine of sight-reading throughout the past summer which included a

selection of Domenico Scarlatti sonatas, Haydn sonatas and a variety of sheet music of

different kinds (Argentinian tangos, swing, one short choral piece, etc.) that belonged to a

student of mine and would have been otherwise thrown away.

In addition to this, much emphasis has been put by my teacher on sight-reading by having

me explore the complete violin sonatas of Mozart and Beethoven.

Over the Summer I estimate that I averaged about 60 minutes of sight-reading daily. Still,

the overall improvement has not been a dramatic one, hence a more systematic approach

must be taken, including a way of measuring progress and some background research into

the subject.

strategy:

The module requires weekly reports on progress; it does not need to be stated that sight-

reading is a skill that requires daily practice, therefore I will allocate a minimum of 30

minutes of daily sight-reading, having one day off per week, using material from various

sources and styles. Progress will be measured by playing at first sight various pieces on a

weekly basis. I will record all these pieces while at the same time researching the topic by

consulting academic publications, online articles, etc.

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WEEK 1

Material used for daily sight-reading practice: one Haydn keyboard sonata per day, at a

comfortable speed (not performance speed)

Pieces on video: Les Animaux Magiques,14 Pieces Faciles Pour Le Piano (from n.1 to 7); I

played these pieces once along with my teacher, so we might say I played them at second

sight in the recording.

Comments: The first piece "The Tortoise that Walked on his Back" uses five-finger

positions and two treble clefs almost all the way, simple rhythms, recurring melody: for

those reasons it feels comfortable. As the pieces become more difficult, requiring frequent

changes of hand position, I begin slowing down since I am forced to look at my hands: a

clear sign of lack of spacial awareness of the keyboard. For example "Tarzan, the Squirrel"

presents a problem in the staccato thirds with alternating hands: if we could see my face in

the video I am sure I am looking down at my hands frequently, something that, when sight-

reading, itʼs supposed to be kept to a minimum in order not to disrupt the reading flow.

Some rhythmic challenges also at the end which are overcome if the smallest subdivision

(quavers in this case) is constantly clicking in the internal ear.

"The Millepied" felt easier than the "Squirrel" due to the relative lack of surprises and the

reliable ostinato in the left hand: the mind and eyes could relax in the familiar repeating

pattern. Also the "Cat's Lullaby" felt easy because of the slow speed, nevertheless some

mistakes occurred in the left hand especially.

Considerations:

A five-finger position feels secure: once the hands are in place, one has only to think about

identifying pitches and playing the notes at the right value and tempo. However, when a

change of position is called for, the expert sight-reader should be able to find the next
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place on the keyboard without looking down at the hands, since that would disrupt the

reading flow.

This week I bring home this concept: must not look down.

How do I achieve it? I must devise or find out about exercises that improve spacial

awareness of the keyboardʼs geography (besides the obvious: learning sight-reading just

by doing). One that comes to mind right away is to play something from memory in the

dark or blindfolded, or simply calling few notes out loud and trying to find them on the

keyboard without looking. Then intervals, chords, etc.

WEEK 2

Material used for daily sight-reading practice: two keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti

per day, at a slower and manageable speed

Pieces on video: Les Animaux Magiques,14 Pieces Faciles Pour Le Piano (from n. to 14).

Comments: Throughout the recording there is an overall impression of lack of flow: I am

being too careful not to make mistakes and as a result there is an obvious feeling of

restraint in the music. In "The Sentimental Whale" at 9:33 I slow down dramatically due to

the presence of the accidentals.

We cannot see my face in the video but I am quite sure that I am not looking down half as

much as the previous session; rather, also because of the positioning of the music stand

on an upright piano, I am able to use peripheral vision when it comes to checking the

hands' positioning.
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"The Charm of the Snake" presents a mistake at 4:28 that I will use to illustrate a point; I

play a high C (C6) in bars 22 instead of G5. The reason for the wrong note is to be found

in what precedes it: an ascending pattern in the previous bar that suggests the upper half

of an ascending C harmonic minor scale. At that point I must assumed that the pattern was

going to end on C6 and so, without looking further, I played what my brain expected. More

on pattern recognition in the next section.

Something similar happens in the "Bear Walking on his Hands" at 5:54; in bar 17 the notes

in the right hand are E and A, however, probably anticipating the sound of the parallel fifths

in bar 21, I play parallel fourths. That is likely due to the fact that I played the piece

previously with my teacher and I was somewhat aware of the sound.

Considerations: Two core features of sight-reading can be discussed this week: looking

ahead and pattern recognition.

Looking ahead is a core concept in sight-reading: it implies scanning the music ahead of

the point that's being played in order to anticipate what is coming. Since sight-reading is

an “online” activity (the translation in real time of visual stimuli - the printed notes - into

body movements to play an instrument) looking ahead of the music gives the player a

valuable window of opportunity to process the information, allowing the performance to

sound smooth and reasonably secure (for example, my slowing down at 9:33 would have

been avoided if I knew in advance I was going to play an E sharp doubled at the octave,

had I spotted the accidentals just that little earlier).

This is how the information is processed: the music printed on the score is perceived by

the eyes, transferred to short term memory (working memory) and translated into body

movements. The latency between where the eyes are looking and what the hands are
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playing varies with the skill of the player. Such latency might be also susceptible to

changes according to the required speed and the density of the music: given a slow piece,

it might be not advisable to look too much ahead since we risk losing our place and

forgetting what we are playing, whereas plenty of notes might be too much to remember.

A balance must be reached between the speed of the music and how much ahead our skill

allows us to look. It is characteristic of the bad sight-reader to not look ahead and to try

and play every note: reading vertically rather than across the musical phrases.

I can assert with certainty that the entirety of mistakes in this session happened because I

was not looking ahead of the music.

Pattern recognition is the ability of the expert reader to draw from a vast repertoire of

musical figurations stored in long term memory and accumulated through thousands of

hours of practice. Scales and arpeggios are typical examples, where one recognises a

pattern and completes it without having to look at all the individual notes. Likewise, if a

player is adept at a particular style (baroque, classical period, the music of Prokofiev, etc.)

he or she will be more proficient in sight-reading a piece in that style than another, since

he or she will have stocked in their memories thousands of stylistic figurations and the

psychomotor coordinations to turn them into movements for playing an instrument. Such

skill enables the player to skip few notes and look ahead of the music in anticipation of

what is coming next, a fundamental trait of the good sight-reader as discussed earlier; it

does, however, present a drawback. Let's go back to my mistake at 4:28: I recognised an

ascending pattern as the upper half of a C harmonic minor scale and I ended it in C

without thinking too much; to my surprise, the phrase dropped to a G in its final note. I had

made a so-called proofreader error, whereby a sight-reader plays notes that are not there
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becuase he recognises a familiar pattern and does not check each and every note (did

you spot the misspelling in that sentence? If you didn't , that's a proofreader's error).

This week I bring home this concept: must look ahead.

How do I achieve it? I must devise or find out about exercises that develop the ability to

look ahead of the music. Since it is basically about being able to play from the short term

memory, I might try closing my eyes at random while sight-reading and test how much I

can remember and play, trying to enhance that capacity with practice.

WEEK 3

material used for daily sight-reading practice: J.S. Bach partita n. 1, two-part inventions

Pieces on video: Alyssa's Enchanted Nights 1-6 (grade 3)

Comments: there is a noticeable improvement in the feeling of security, at least in the first

half of this session, that must have come from my conscious effort to look ahead. As one

gathers the courage to let go of the moment and looks ahead of the music, something

happens and the playing apparatus eyes-mind-body works in synchrony. Clearly this has

to be tested with music that's well within one's technical abilities. On the other hand, I

appear to be looking down at my hands quite frequently. In “Dance de la Poupee” between

4:33 / 4:50 I consistently play low C instead of the C in the higher octave, probably another

“Proofreaderʼs error” where I relied on the similar pattern played few bars before which

ended in the lower note of the group; in final few bars, few chromatic surprises make me

slow down dramatically and commit mistakes. As mistakes happen, I seem to lose

confidence and go back to not looking ahead and trying to play all the notes. So far it

seems that the appearance in the music of any deviation from established patterns
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(accidentals, changes in an ostinato, etc.) cause me either to make mistakes or slow down

to avoid them. Looking ahead of the music consistently might help avoid that, since in that

case I can anticipate what is coming.

I must also say that sight-reading is currently a much exhausting activity for me and I need

to build up stamina, or maybe it will feel more effortless as I slowly get better at it.

Considerations: This week I worked through a booklet called "Sight-reading at the Piano"

by Alec Rowley, the first volume of a series of three; this one focuses on the fundamental

sight-reading sub-skill of looking ahead. The essence of the booklet is the motto look

ahead, think ahead and hear ahead, and few exercises are given to develop these

capacities.

The first set of exercises consists in playing a succession of separate notes as a chord as

in the following example:

by doing so the eyes are forced to look ahead.

A second set of exercises requires the player to only play certain marked notes and leave

out others. The marked notes are harmony notes, as in the following example:
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by doing so the player must think ahead as to which notes are essential and which could

be left out, a situation that arises frequently in sight-reading where stopping for mistakes is

not allowed and a constant pace must be maintained.

A third set of exercises substitutes numbers for notes and the player is then asked to play

those finger numbers while hearing the sounds before playing, as in the following

example:

by doing so the player must hear ahead what he is about to play. All these exercises can

be expanded into more complex ones including more notes, wider intervals, bigger

spacing in between notes, etc.

Looking, hearing and thinking ahead require a certain willingness on the part of the player

to “let go” of the present moment and trust oneʼs abilities, to ignore anything thatʼs

perceived as a “wrong” note and prioritise the flow of the music; these concepts are also

central to a satisfactory execution of a rehearsed memorised performance - quite the

opposite to sight-reading. It is to be hoped that some transfer occurs between skills and,

as one improves, the other also benefits; if that is true, it could be argued that when a

certain skill reaches a plateau and it does not seem to improve much regardless of how

much practice we do, it is by working on other musical skills that we can make a

breakthrough.
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This week I bring home this concept: must think and hear ahead also.

How do I achieve it? Avoid reducing sight-reading to a merely mechanical activity: we are

making music, after all. The brain must be engaged at all times, in sync with the rest of the

playing apparatus, in order to anticipate the notes and maintain sufficient latency and

fluency. Sight-singing may be the activity to look at in order to enhance the ability to hear

ahead. My teacher Brian MacNamara strongly encourages sight-singing any score thatʼs

to be played and studying it for the most part away from the piano, solfeggiando and

singing every line, note and chord.

WEEK 4

Material used for daily sight-reading practice: W.A. Mozart piano sonatas from n.2 to n.7

Pieces on video: Alyssa's Enchanted Nights 7-11 (grade 3)

Comments: the enhanced sense of flow and security in the first and third piece arises

from the fact that I am comfortable with the styles: “Saxo Blues” is basically a swing with

stride left hand accompaniment, while the other one is a waltz, and I play and improvise

plenty of both. The same cannot be said of the second piece “Danse Slave” or even the

fourth, “Les Fleurs Merveilleuses” where my brain gives up altogether! From the video it

shows that I take up to a minute or more to quickly scan the score in order to assimilate as

much information as possible prior to playing. While playing I make a conscious effort to

look ahead of music and not to look down. Counting out loud seems to fix the problems

with “Les Fleurs Merveilleuses”. Although the last piece of the session has a stride

acompaniment too, I fail to do a decent job at it, probably because of tiredness.

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Considerations: this week I worked on the second booklet of the series “Sight-reading at

the piano” by Alec Rowley, which offers advice on how to read in groups, i.e. how to

reduce several bits of information (the individual notes in a melodic line) into one single

chunk (a chordal entity). Exercises are provided to start developing that capacity: first a

triad is to be played as a sequence of notes in all possible melodic directions.

Then pairs of triads, in different inversions must be played and sung in such fashion.

After, the player must reduce simple melodic lines to the triads theyʼre derived from, the

layer of rhythm now being added to the exercises quite casually whereas one might argue

that rhythmic reading should require a chapter or an entire booklet of its own.

Sequences are then introduced as another kind of group-reading to be practiced, where a

simple steplike pattern is repeated at a different pitch:

The focus of the whole booklet is to encourage the player to read ahead in groups, thus

further optimising the note-processing activity in the limited time available during latency.

This week I bring home this concept: read ahead in groups.

How do I achieve it? I assume itʼs one of those things that get better with practice, along

with all else. However, a further observation must be made at this point: it seems to me all

advice on sight-reading which imply a certain awareness of the harmonies (reading in

groups, leaving certain notes out if required, etc.) can only apply to styles of music where

common practice harmony actually is at work, such as the Baroque, Classical and

Romantic period. While it clear what harmony groups I can reduce a fast Beethoven
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passage to, I cannot say the same of a Messiaen prelude, for example. In other words:

different harmonic framework means a different way of grouping. It refers back to the

concept stated earlier: know the style that youʼre sight-reading.

WEEK 5 - Classical style

Material used for daily sight-reading practice: more Haydn sonatas, one per day

Piece on video: Kuhlauʼs sonatina n.1 Op. 88 in C major

Comments and considerations: this week I chose to test a simple piece in Classical

style such as a Kuhlauʼs sonatina n.1 Op. 88 in C major. Fluency improves slightly,

although still far from a satisfactory sight-reading execution, most likely because Iʼve been

practicing Classical style frequently in the past three years, both for chamber music class

and for my rehearsed performance examinations. Typical cliches like Alberti bass and

cadential formulas are quite ingrained in my repertoire, therefore the whole playing

apparatus (eyes / mind / body) responds quickly to the information on the page. Also the

accessible key of C major makes the piece even easier to tackle. Every time I forget to

look ahead and get caught up in the details of the present moment, some mishaps

happen: typical examples are the semiquavers in the reprise of the first movement at 2:35

which differ from the exposition. The Andantino is easy to manage thanks to the

arpeggiated triplets in the left hand accompaniment, trademark of the Classical style also,

and I just seem to be getting into the swing of things by the end of the Rondo. In general,

we can still feel that I am trying to play all the notes rather than playing across the phrases:

too much attention to detail, to the detriment of the general flow of the piece.

This week I bring home this concept: let go of the present moment and look forward to

the music coming to you.

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How do I achieve it? By trusting oneʼs own abilities.

WEEK 6 - chords

Material for daily practice: Bach chorales harmonizations

Pieces on video: “All who would valiant be” and other hymns from “Catholic Hymns Old

and New”, collected and edited by Kevin Mayhew. Also, not recorded, I played some

Handelʼs keyboard preludes which include slow introductions made exclusively of

arpeggiated chords.

Comments: for this weekʼs video I chose pieces at random from the aforementioned book,

making sure they had a chordal texture throughout. Overall the pieces flow quite well, just

a couple of spots where I seem to slow down and lose the beat, but I seem to negotiate

the whole lot a little better: at no point things get too much out of control forcing me to stop

like in session 4. In Handelʼs keyboard preludes (not recorded) the texture is thicker, up to

8-part chords at times, but the arpeggiation and slow speed allow me to manage them

quite reasonably. I should assume that since I possess a solid background in harmony,

both common practice and modern, reading chords was relatively easy.

Considerations: I decided to allocate one section to chordal reading since I though “Itʼs all

well if one reads, hears and thinks ahead, but what happens when the music itself requires

the player to read vertically?”; music such as hymns and chorales are chordal by nature,

and many Lieder call for chordal accompaniments on the piano. Clearly, the expert reader

is able to draw from a wealth of pre-existing knowledge including standard cadential

formulas and progressions, modulations, voicings, etc. Once again, awareness of the style

will suggest to the player how dissonances, suspensions and non-chord notes are treated,

enabling him/her to anticipate the music. The ability to recognise intervals at a glance
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comes in handy and I almost exclusively resort to that when it comes to reading notes with

too many leger lines (rather than reading B6 above the treble clef, I see the interval of a

5th above the more recognisable note with 3 leger lines which is E6). Shapes such as

triads and their inversions must trigger an immediate psychomotor response since we

havenʼt got time to read the individual pitches that make up a chord. Now, if I could only

translate such proficiency in reading chords into the other departments of sight-reading, if I

could somehow horizontalise my reading I could be making an improvement. On second

though, playing a vertical structure horizontally and a horizontal structure vertically was at

the core of those booklets “Sight-reading at the Piano” I went through previously....

WEEK 7 - other clefs and score reading

Material for daily practice: various transcriptions of Bill Evansʼ solos and original

compositions.

Pieces on video: exercises 1 and 2 from the book “Preparatory Exercises in Score

Reading” by R.O. Morris and Howard Ferguson

Comments: exercise 1 and 2 feature two staves: an alto clef instead of a treble clef and

bass clef. I had to take it at a very slow speed in order to feel secure, since I rarely play

from different clefs. As I attempted an exercise with three staves (treble, alto and bass

clefs) it was too much information to process and I had to stop.

Considerations: clef reading is something I had done in solfeggio when I was a kid.

Failing to see its benefits, I dismissed it. Today, I realise that being able to read also tenor,

alto, soprano and baritone clef makes at least reading the grand staff feel a little easier.

When confronted with an unusual clef, where familiarity with the individual notes on the
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staff is diminished, I automatically switch to reading more in intervals; therefore the ability

to recognise intervals at a glance (similarly to chord reading) comes useful once again.

Score reading has many practical applications in the working life of composers,

accompanists and conductors. However, it does imply adding extra layers of processing:

not only one has to read more than just two clefs, there are also different types of clefs and

transposing instruments to deal with. In addition to that, when sight-reading an orchestral

score it is necessary to be able to recognise foreground material (the melody, for instance)

and give it prominence while playing, while at the same time identify background material

(accompaniments, chords, ostinatos, etc.) and render it in a way that does not overshadow

the foreground. In all effects, score reading amounts to reducing an orchestral score to a

piano score in real time; as always, a pre-existing knowledge of the style of music or even

of the particular composerʼs style will help the player in such task.

WEEK 8 - Back to the grand staff

Material for daily practice: a selection of Domenico Scarlatti keyboard sonatas, two per

day.

Pieces on video: Les nouveaux animaux magiques by Gerard Meunier

Comments: I chose to end the cycle on the second volume of Meunierʼs music for

children since the level of difficulty steps up a notch, and in this case I would not look at

the music previously like I have done with the first volume.

In more than one occasion I struggle to hold it together, however I never stop completely

(except in the “Hippopotamus” piece at 28:00 where I start too fast and have to start over

and also forget to put one sheet of music on the stand): I might play entirely different notes
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or reinvent a chord altogether, I may even drop out one hand completely but I always

manage to keep the beat and carry the piece through to the end.

Considerations: as I wrap up this moduleʼs project I come to realise how it is important,

when sight-reading, to let go of the conscious mind (at least partially) and let the

subconscious take over. This concept has been coming to me in the past few years from

different sources, even external to music. For example, in his seminar titled “Liberating

Performers”, David Gorman mentions a “Coordinating System” which is built-in ourselves

and, if not interfered with, assists the player in the most natural, stress-free way; pianist

and writer William Westney talks about a more “Allowing” way of playing in his book “The

Perfect Wrong Note”. My martial art instructor used to tell me many times that I “Think too

much” (and martial arts are the application in real-time of a rehearsed motor program).

Probably having a mind that is over-analytical doesnʼt help when sight-reading music: it is

hard for me not to stop and correct mistakes, to skip ahead and not read every note, but

when I do and see that it works, the feeling of achievement is a really good one.

If I manage to make time for it, I should get myself in some “swim or drown” situations like

accompanying singers or chamber music, where having to work with others means the

impossibility to stop playing to correct mistakes; I think that would improve my reading

dramatically in a relatively short time.

However, I have been taking steps in the right direction and I know what I must work on;

as always in music (and martial arts) the journey of self-discovery is the goal in itself.
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FINAL THOUGHTS:

As mentioned briefly in section two, the “online” activity of sight-reading music at the piano

can be reduced to a continuous sequence of these events:

- perceiving notation

- processing of information

- generation of movements

All exercises aimed at training the eyes into looking ahead, reading in groups, leaving

unnecessary notes out (if need be), etc. and indeed most of the activities discussed so far,

have the scope of making the perceiving notation phase more efficient. The human eye

can only take roughly 5 snapshots of information per second, therefore it comes clear that

while sight-reading we want to use those snapshots in the best possible way in order to

acquire as much useful information as possible from the printed page.

Research studies in eye movement show that expert sight-readers differ from novices in

their more efficient looking behaviours: they look ahead of the music all the time and do

not fixate over each and every note. Thus, becoming a better sight-reader entails working

towards achieving more efficient looking behaviours. Also the use of peripheral vision will

help form an idea of the approximate location of the hands on the keyboard, provided one

maintains a stance that allows the hands to fall within such visual field.

Once the visual stimulus has been acquired, it is processed by means of other cognitive

processes whose in-depth analysis goes beyond the scope of this paper; it concerns us,

though, that the expert sight-reader can acquire, process and play longer, more substantial

chunks of information than the novice (an ability that, in turn, allow him/her to look further

ahead of the music). It has been theorised that expert sight-readers have access to their

long-term memory (which stores a patrimony of figurations, patterns, arpeggios, scales,

etc) with a speed which is characteristic of the short-term working memory.

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This readily available bountiful of musical information is used to process the information

that is perceived visually, and to reproduce at the keyboard familiar patterns and

figurations (pattern recognition), acquire, merge and process even longer bits of

information by relating to existing chunks of information already stored in long-term

memory, and also to make relatively accurate predictions and guesses of what the music

might be in relation to context (stylistic awareness). Thus, becoming a better sight-reader

entails working towards building such a repertoire with daily practice and continuous

exploration of never-seen-before music.

After having been acquired and processed, the musical information is then translated into

movement which, together with a musical instrument (a piano keyboard in this case),

produces a sound. When sight-reading or playing from memory we execute a motor

program (i.e. a sequence of cognitive representations of movements, arranged

hierarchically into programs): the main difference being that while in playing from memory

the motor program is always the same and itʼs rehearsed thoroughly to perfection, in sight-

reading the motor program is assembled in real time. In the excellent article “Strategies for

sight-reading and improvising music” by Sam Thompson and Andreas Lehmann, a

rehearsed musical performance is likened to the sporting activity of swimming while sight-

reading and improvising to soccer. The reason for it is that in order to succeed the

swimmer must repeat the same sequence of movements over and over, with the aim of

refining it to perfection in order to achieve maximum efficiency; when the soccer player

enters the field he does not know what is going to happen, except maybe he has been

briefed about the other teamʼs tactics and watched few videos. The swimmer has to

rehearse his motor program to perfection while the soccer player must adapt to the

present situation making the best of his experience and preparation.

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In his book “On Piano Playing” György Sándor simply states that a piano score contains all

the information required to transform the notes into the appropriate techniques to produce

the desired sounds (note: his book is exclusively about technique! Not a word on

interpretation and musicality which, according to him, will come through naturally, provided

the right techniques are employed); in other words, according to Sándor the score IS the

motor program.

Fingerings represent a major difference between a rehearsed performance and sight-

reading: while much attention is devoted to selecting the best possible fingering in

preparation for a performance, in sight-reading such decisions must be made on-the-fly.

While pre-existing knowledge of established patterns such as scales and arpeggios will

greatly assist the sight-reader, it is also possible that practicing such patterns using

nonstandard fingerings will help the player deal with unexpected situations that might arise

(for example finding oneself having to start a B flat major scale using the thumb because it

happened so): we might experiment simulating unexpected situations in practice so that if

they happen while playing they do not feel too uncomfortable under the fingers and we can

restart or carry on the motor program without much disruption.

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LIST OF SOURCES

Books:

Chaffin, Roger, Imreh and Crawford. “Practicing Perfection, Memory and Piano

Performance” (London: LEA Publishers, 2002)

Sándor, György. “On Piano Playing: Motion, Sound and Expression” (New York: Schirmer,

1981)

Williamon, Aaron. “Musical Excellence” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 143-157

Web articles:

http://www.music.sc.edu/ea/keyboard/ppf/2.2/2.2.PPFke.html

http://www.music.sc.edu/ea/keyboard/PPF/1.2/1.2.PPFke.html

http://collaborativepiano.blogspot.ie/2006/09/10-ways-of-improving-your-

sight.html#.UKOxys2gmXw

http://soundtrk.blogspot.ie/2006/09/secret-to-sightreading.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sight_reading

http://www.music.sc.edu/ea/keyboard/PPF/1.2/1.2.PPFke.research.html