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Thank you both.

I need to spend a lot of time on just site-reading, meaning not with songs just pieces meant to site-read and build that skill, when I use music to site-read, it just turns into practice & trying to learn that song, which defeats the purpose of the task. I also need to remind myself daily....I'm just a month in!

I think the point of having two treble clefs is to avoid the problem of the beginner having to remember two different sets of note values for each of the lines and spaces of the staves. With two treble clefs, the bottom-most line is always E, the space above it is always F, etc., so "Every Good Boy Does Fine" and "FACE" are all you have to remember.

AND .... being just a month in ....

It is way too early to even talk about Sight-Reading.

You should be practicing when comes next in your method book and playing while looking at the notation.

Then you will be learning to read music as you play .... a very important skill.

When you can do that at grade 3 level ..... it is time to look into sight-reading if you wish to.

Then try to sight-read music which is at the grade 1 level (incredibly easy for you).

Then, you will have the skills to be successful.

Now, with no skills .... forget sight-reading.

dmd... that's my thought too but the songs in the book are a struggle because I can't read the notes and play through without taking extra time to figure out what note it is so I can play it.

How should I approach the songs in the book at this point? Play it once and move on or keep repeating it until it's smooth while struggling to figure out notes and then move on?

Go through that Alfred's method book page by page and do what it tells you to do.

Go as slowly as you need to and as many times as you need to in order to feel comfortable with what is on each page. You are learning the basics.

Forget about "sight-reading". You are learning to read music as you play. Sight-reading is years away if you ever want to work on it.

A teacher would be a big help.

Good Luck

I agree with dmd on this one. Forget about "sight-reading". That's not what you need at this point. What you need is to learn how to read music better and quicker. To do that, you'll need to learn piece after piece and just learn to read them (NOT sight-read them) and learn to play them. It's absolutely normal to struggle with reading the notes on the page because you are an absolute beginner as you say. It is also absolutely normal to have to take extra time to figure out what each note is on the page. There's nothing abnormal about what you are experiencing. There's no rushing this and at this stage, it can often feel super frustrating.

Also, do not play the songs in the book "once" and move on. That's not the purpose of the Alfred's book. Learn the notes in each piece by looking at the notes and thinking in your head what each note is, then play the treble clef with your right hand, then play the bass clef with your left hand, then combine them SLOWLY. After they are combined, try to speed it up. Eventually, you should be able to get to the correct tempo, at which point, you can move onto the next piece in the book. You will be repeating the piece over and over again until it is smooth and close to correct tempo.

I also agree with dmd that a teacher would be ideal here, even if it's for a couple of week or months.

Welcome to the forum, KJP_65.

I see you are in good hands from the conversation above. You ask good questions, and, best of all, listen to the answers. Your attitude will serve you well.

Please do keep recording and listening to yourself. The feedback a teacher provides, sometimes instantaneously, is an extremely important asset. For those of us self-teaching, the recorder and the honesty to listen to ourselves objectively, is the next best thing. So, do keep that up.

Also, to keep the joy in it as you slog through beginner pieces, I would pick any of the pieces you deem worthy, and spend some additional time with it, making it as musical sounding as possible. It can be a nice reward for your efforts, and, help you develop the techniques that improve musicality. Most beginner pieces are designed to teach a particular skill, and, you will frequently sufficiently learn that skill long before you have perfected the piece. So, you will learn and move on from a lot of pieces before you have them polished and sounding nice. This can be a bit of a drag, so, spending a little time really working one piece into nice shape can be a nice reward for all your hard work.

There is a massive collection of professional recordings of nearly every beginner piece ever reduced to written form. They are performed, recorded, and effectively catalogued by members of the U. of Iowa Music Department, and free to access at the YouTube page of the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Project, found here: UIPPP

As you consider purchasing beginner piano repertoire books, you can first go to UIPPP and listen to the music to see if you like it. There is so much beginner piano music on the planet, that previewing the music before purchasing can go a long way toward saving you bad purchases, and, saving you money.

It's nice see you embarking on your journey. Good luck, and have fun!

Agree with this, 100%

I have observed, as a beginner myself, sight-reading to be amongst a few of the other obsessions suffered by fellow beginners.
For some reason, it's seen by beginners to have some magical quality, or that it's going to make you somehow, magically reach a higher level of something.
Nope I don't get it, but then I don't claim to be able to do things that I really can't. Sorry.
Unless you've reached a certain level, and I postulate that you'll know when you've reached that level, or unless you can "play the music in your head" which I think is as much horse-doo-doo as people who claim they "think" in numbers / colors...you should just leave sight-reading alone.
Put the work in, grind the grind, spend that time better on learning rhythm, or scales, or arpeggios or even music theory.
If you still have time available, learn orchestration, learn the theory of other instruments.
All of those will actually improve your playing.
Sight-reading won't.
Sight-reading is a tool.

I also do not understand this obsession with "sight-reading".

I do think some beginners confuse the concept of "sight-reading" with the more mundane-sounding concept of "learning how to read music". While they are related, they are certainly not the same. Learning how to read music should precede learning how to sight-read.

Thank you all for the well thought out replies, I really appreciate it and all of you have touched on the exact thing that seems confusing... everyone states: read and practice 'repeatedly', what is in the course work, know it and play it smoothly and then move on, which makes perfect sense to me.

The part I'm not getting is, isn't that sight-reading? How are the 2 different?

You've stumbled on a Pianoworld Forums speciality. People love to point out that you are not really sight-reading if you read and play a piece more than once. Sight-reading is an old musical term meaning "read at first sight". Handel complained that one of the singers originally hired for the premiere of Messiah "could not read at sight". The man was a fine singer but could not simply sing the music straight off the score without prior rehearsal.

The term has got a bit misunderstood over the years and some people (including my professional piano teacher) use the term "sight-reading" to refer to any part of reading.

You'll avoid confusion on this forum if you keep "sight-reading" for "first time through" and use "reading" for everything else.

understood. many different thoughts and opinions here, some tell noobs like myself, to not even bother training sight-reading until much further down the road and others tell them to start sight reading now to help further down the road

Today was: 2 hrs

Working first scale of C Maj, repeatedly for about 15m HS. HT got a little confusing when it was time to switch over to smoothly make it to the last of the 8 notes. HT on just 5 notes was smooth for both HT & HS.

Went through 5 pages of Alfred's AI1 book which drills C Maj & G7 changing

A few run throughs of what I know of Claire De Lune

You can’t ‘sight read’ until you can read fluently. Work On reading music

I am totally confused by all of this too.

I thought you read and play the music until you make a mistake, then you stop and correct the mistake. When you can read and play a new piece without mistake you have become a sight reader.

Of course one can debate the various degrees of attainment.

No
Sight reading is when you can play a new piece without stopping—- reasonably accurate (credible) with dynamics and expression

New beginners cannot do this. The skill
Is a subset of reading and it usually lags 2 grades below your current level

How do you get better at reading? Read a lot of music Approximately AT YOUR LEVEL not 8 grades above your level. Why not 8 grades above? You can’t read as much different music for the time you are using for the Grade 8 music

Why "No"? Not sure what you are referring to, but why not say "Yes" and be positive?

Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. YES, YES, YES, YES, YES!

Feeling better yet? :-)

Sight reading implies you read and play for the first time a piece which you do not know without stopping end to end as in a performance. Practising sight reading is a different activity. Practising music and then playing it by reading does not necessarily mean you are a good sight reader.

How is a ‘yes’ appropriate when the assumption was incorrect re sight reading ? I personally don’t find anything wrong/negative about correcting an incorrect assumption.

Dear Winthindale,

dogperson and the other posters above are correct. The term “sight-reading” has a very specific meaning in music and it often gets confused. What you describe is NOT “sight-reading”, it is simply “reading music”.

It is not a matter of being “positive” or “negative”. It is simply incorrect. So the correct answer is “No”.

I see you’re from England and the ABRSM is very popular there. The ABRSM tests its examinees on “sight-reading” during exams.

Here’s the definition on Wikipedia:

In music, sight-reading, also called a prima vista (Italian meaning "at first sight"), is the practice of reading and performing of a piece of song in a music notation that the performer has not seen or learned before. Sight-singing is used to describe a singer who is sight-reading. Both activities require the musician to play or sing the notated rhythms and pitches.