Improve your Sight-Reading!, the best-selling series by renowned educationalist Paul Harris, has been helping students improve their reading ability and pass exams for over a decade. With over a million copies sold across the series, it has impacted on the musical lives of countless young musicians as they refine this vital skill.
The ability to sight-read is so important; it will help you learn new pieces more quickly and make playing with others more enjoyable. Master this skill and you’ll not just pass exams - your enjoyment of music will progress to a higher level, as Paul Harris has proven.
The ABRSM sight-reading syllabus for piano has been completely revised, with effect from January 2009. To help students prepare for these new exams, a brand new edition of Improve your sight-reading! will be published in September, with separate workbooks available for each of the grades 1–8. It’s been devised to support the new criteria at every stage, and with numerous practice tests included in each book, guarantees sight-reading success in every exam!
In these new editions, teachers and students will find the same well thought out material they’ve come to trust; rhythmic and melodic exercises, prepared pieces with associated questions and meticulously graded sight-reading pieces to ‘go solo’ with.
The written and musical material has been extensively revised by Paul Harris, with many new specially-composed pieces included. The books have been adapted to support the new ABRSM criteria at every stage, so for example the test pieces at the lower grades are shorter and the grade 2 tests use hands together and stay within the five-finger position. Fingering suggestions are now included at all grades and for the starting notes of grades 1–5. The test pieces at grades 6–8 now have titles, to present them as ‘real’ pieces of music and to help the student feel the style and mood of the music. And musical elements such as keys, hand positions, rhythms, time-signatures and other pianistic techniques follow the exam requirements.
In addition to these revisions, the layout has been refreshed with new typography and music setting throughout making them clean and easy to read. A practice chart is included in each book and new tick boxes added to every exercise to encourage students to work through the material methodically.
Improve your Sight-Reading! offers a thorough and musical way for students to improve their reading ability. And with plenty of practice tests at every grade, guarantees success for those taking graded exams.