Systematic method of sight-reading on the organ

Although I have written quite a bit about sight-reading in the past, created my most popular coaching program to master this vital skill where more than 50 students have benefited from it so far, but because lots of people have asked me to give them some additional advice on sight-reading lately, I decided to talk about it today.

Another reason for sharing this video with you today is that one of the greatest weaknesses in the vast majority of my students of any kind (ear training, organ, piano) is their inability to read music well. Because of this they get discouraged to pursue music studies or ear training classes start to become too difficult, writing dictations becomes too hard etc. They could attempt so much more in music and they could have so much bigger dreams if they only practiced-sight-reading regularly.

There is an amazing correlation between the value of regular reading of books to the development of the person and the value of sight-reading music pieces to the development of the complete musician. Maybe one or two books won't do the miracle for you yet, but read 100 books and you will become completely different person. The same is with music sight-reading.

I discovered in my students, that whenever they learn sight-reading systematically, their progress is much faster. And I can testify this myself - whenever I regularly sight-read unfamiliar organ pieces, my ability to read new music is much greater and I can prepare for organ recitals much faster that normal.

That's why having excellent sight-reading skills is so important to have because you can simply read your music during the recital. No, you don't have to really open the unfamiliar organ score at the time of your recital or performance in public, such as church service (unless you are up to this challenge), but the time required to prepare this music can be reduced to weeks and days, instead of months and years. So here is how it works.