How Can I Improve My Sight Reading?

[Eruantien]

I've played the cello seriously for about a year and a half. By far the weakest part of my playing is sight-reading. In fact, I can hardly sight read at all. The worst part is note lengths. I know intellectually how long each note is, but I can hardly play it unless the music consists of a very simple or intuitive pattern. I mostly play by ear. If I've heard how something goes, I can generally play it pretty well. My teacher said that I play by ear and the sheet music just reminds me how it sounds. That seems pretty accurate to me. I really need to learn sight-reading. I'd be useless in an orchestra as-is. Might anyone have some advice on how I could best learn sight-reading? Thank you all in advance.

[giggleycraft]

The best way to improve sight reading is sinply to do lots of it. Get some Etudes books, or see if your teacher can get some etudes or short pieces for you each lesson to work on.

[tiandao]

Play more etudes and studies and find alternative fingerings for them. The more you do this, the more standard finger patterns will be learned and the easier it will be to find notes and positions. The more you play, the better.

~Lucian

[gpjt]

I had exactly the same problem; still have it to some degree (I think learning to read note lengths quickly and with ease is just fundamentally difficult and takes time) but one thing that really did help a lot was to get a book of relatively easy pieces (it was "Jigs, Reels and more") where I was sure that I didn't know the pieces already, and then to spend a week on each piece, just working on it for 20 minutes a day, bar by bar with the metronome. My sight-reading of pitches improved beyond all recognition after a month or so, and my reading of rhythm went from 1 out of 10 (playing entirely by ear) to, say 4 out of 10.

Of course, YMMV.

[Eruantien]

Thanks a lot for the advice. I'll order some new books to work through, some things that I don't know at all. Hopefully I can get up to where I should be.

[jgnew]

I think that working with a metronome regularly is, if not essential, than at least hugely helpful with improving sight reading.