Determining what expert piano sight-readers have in common

ABSTRACT

Music sight-reading is a valuable skill that eludes and frustrates many musicians. Techniques for teaching sight-reading are varied, with teachers mostly falling back on personal experience or simply hoping that, somehow, the penny will drop for the student. This study reports on a survey of the music learning and playing habits of expert and non-expert piano sight-readers. Pianists were categorised as ‘experts’ according to their ability to perfectly perform a 6th Grade AMEB (Australian Music Examinations Board) sight-reading assessment piece. This grouping was determined by the analysis of eye movement patterns as pianists performed various sight-reading tasks (Arthur 2017). The data show significant differences in musical training and performance experiences between the two groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Expertise
• sight-reading
• piano
• eye-movements
• pedagogy

Acknowledgement

Dr Sieu Khuu: School of Optometry and Vision Science, UNSW Sydney, Australia for encouragement and technical expertise and Dr Katie Zhukov: University of Queensland, Australia; for sharing her knowledge of sight-reading pedagogy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding details

This work was supported by the Australian Postgraduate Award (Patricia Arthur, 2012–2016).

Data Availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, Patricia Arthur, upon reasonable request.

Notes on contributors

P. Arthur is an Optometrist (UNSW 1981) with a degree in music (Dean’s Medalist from Western Sydney University, 2012) and PhD in Vision Science (UNSW, 2017). Her research involves the visual processing characteristics of expertise, music sight-reading expertise in relation to eye movements and the role of innate versus environmental factors in the development of visual processing expertise generally.

E. McPhee is an instrumental teacher and ensemble director with over twenty years’ experience. Her PhD (Western Sydney University, 2014) investigated the ways that instrumental teachers learn to teach. She was awarded the ‘Australian Society for Music Education Callaway Doctoral Award’ for the best doctoral thesis in music education from an Australian university (presented biennially). When not teaching, Eleanor performs with The Moving Picture Show; creating historical performances of silent films from the 1920s with a live orchestra and sound effects.

D. Blom is a composer and pianist, published on higher education music performance, the artist as academic, student popular songwriters, auto-ethnography and preparing contemporary classical Australian piano music for performance. She has co-curated several composition/performance/CD projects. Scores and CD publications have been released by Wirripang P/L., Orpheus Music and Wai-te-Ata Press. She is co-author of composition textbook, Music Composition Toolbox (Science Press). Diana is an Associate Professor of Music at Western Sydney University.