Sight reading is the reading and performing of a piece of music or song in music notation that the performer has not seen before, also called a prima vista. 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. While both sight-reading and sight-singing can be significantly challenging, in comparison to the normal way that notated music is learned–practicing the melodies and passages individually–sight-singing is more challenging, because the musician does not have any keys, frets or valves (on keyboard instruments, guitars, and valved brass instruments, respectively) to help them obtain the correct pitches.
Studio musicians (that is, musicians employed to record pieces for commercials, etc.) often record pieces on the first take without having seen them before. Often, the music played on television is played by musicians who are sight-reading. This practice has developed through intense commercial competition in these industries. In some circumstances, such as examinations, the ability of a student to sight-read is assessed by presenting the student with a short piece of music, with an allotted time to peruse the music, then testing the student on the accuracy of the performance. A more challenging test requires the student to perform without any preparation at all.
Very talented musicians have to possess a strong skill for sight-reading in order to achieve a certain level of success in their careers. Often times no matter how good a player can be, if he or she cannot sight read with proficiency then he or she is disqualified or excluded from certain performances or groups. There are no easy tips to help you learn to sight read better, you simply have to do it often enough that it you reach a point where nothing surprises you when you start a brand new piece of music. Becoming a master of scales does help some in sight-reading. In an earlier post, I wrote about scales and how they make up all music in some way or another. Once you have reached a certain point of mastery you can look at any piece of music and break it down in to smaller sections of scales. In order to improve your sight reading skills, I suggest to simply pull out random pieces of music and play through them every time you practice. This will help you become more comfortable being faced with new music.
