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Dear Graham
 
I found your five free lessons interesting, but I have to confess here that, when at school, I did attain Grade 6 piano.  I have two specific problems which I was hoping your course might solve, although I realize that it is aimed at the complete beginner.  I'll be brief but here is my story.
 
I learned to play piano by ear when I was 3.  We lived deep in the country and lessons were not available.  However, I have always been very musical.  When I passed my 11-plus (boy, how that dates me!), I went to high school 14 miles away.  It wasn't until I was 14 when we chose our options for 'O' level that my parents thought I ought to take lessons.  By this time, I had taught myself the first movement of Beethoven's 'Moonlight' sonata and things like that, but my sight reading was worse than desperate.  I began lessons in the September.  In November, I passed Grade 1, in March, Grade 3 and in June Grade 5.  I then took another 12 months before I did Grade 6.  You can see where all this is leading, can't you?  My fingering has always been quite as bad as my sight-reading.  I sing very seriously and can sight-sing most things very well, even complex music, I find it easy to sight sing.  I have spent my life in various choral societies and operatic groups, singing principal roles etc. and my singing teacher Janet Shell thinks I should have turned pro years ago.  But what I would dearly love to do is be able to sight-read on the piano. 
 
The two problems mentioned earlier make that extremely difficult.  I seem to get a kind of panic-ridden dyslexia when I try to read and my eyes simply cannot see what the notes are, which is silly because I know perfectly well what they are when I look at them in isolation.  This is confusing, since I took a secretarial course including touch-typing and shorthand, so my eyes should know to keep going and looking ahead but I can't work out why this does not happen.  Allied to this is the fact that because I did the grades too quickly, I never had a good basic grounding on fingering.  Indeed, when not looking at the keyboard, I have no idea where my hands are in relation to the notes.  I can see that the next note is down a tone but my fingers seem to just grab at any old note they can reach.
 
Do you have any suggestions to combat these two problems?
 
Thanks and regards
 
Avril Field-Taylor

Answer/ Hi Avril
You appear to be an extremely accomplished musician.
The only thing holding you back is your sight reading -
which actually holds MOST people back -- it is not an easy
thing to do!

All you need is practice and more practice.
Pick up as much music as you can that you have never seen
before and just plough your way through it.

It will be slow at first, but if you do this day-by-day you will
definitely see some signs of improvement after a short while.

You will notice that your reading speed will increase.

The reason for this is that you brain will start to recognize
chords and your fingers will automatically find the right notes
on the keyboard. It is all about your brain recognizing these
patterns over and over again.
Have you read my sight reading article yet?

Here it is in case you haven't:
http://www.ukpianos.co.uk/specialpianoreport.pdf

Regards,
Graham Howard
UK Pianos

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