Sight reading for young pianists

Sight reading and aural tests are often a dreaded part of music exams but they don’t need to be feared. Piano Star Theory establishes dynamics and articulation so that young pianists can become familiar with the concepts. Sight reading after beginning stages often has dynamics omitted, which can make it very hard for students. Piano Star Theory cleverly uses the visual prop of a megaphone that amplifies sound in the shape of a crescendo mark to help students understand music gradually getting louder. Actually putting dynamics onto the music and playing it allows students to practice writing the terms. Encouraging students to think about the different musical effects that they can have on the music is great way to making them comfortable with playing music dynamically. Piano Star Theory uses a ‘pizza illustration’ for a fun dynamics quiz along with dynamic detective activities! It is important to identify a sound before linking it to a symbol and if a student can’t identify how legato or staccato sounds aurally, they will struggle to perform it themselves. Piano Star theory provides some practical examples that can be played. Visual representations are cleverly used in Piano Star Theory in a way that children can easily relate - they include a ‘smooth cat for legato’ and ‘spiky hedgehog for staccato’If you’re wondering how you can incorporate some of these techniques into your lesson you could try this activity: Play some legato and staccato passages to your student and ask them to identify them as legato or staccato, perhaps even using images of a Cat (for legato with a phrase mark) and a Hedgehog (for staccato with dots above a note).Piano Star Theory is packed with quizzes, aural tasks, singing and playing activities with exercises, crosswords and games all to make music theory accessible to all. Opportunities to compose and wonderful clear theoretical explanations of tricky concepts such as time signatures and the grand stave will all work together to make music theory not only understandable but a huge amount of fun!