How to Improve Sight-Reading Skills on the Piano (For Real)

Vanissa Law
Jan 17
3 min read

Sight-reading is hard — even for experienced pianists.Yet it’s often one of the most misunderstood and under-taught skills in piano learning. Some teachers don’t prioritise it, and even when they do, students and parents may not realise how sight-reading is actually supposed to work.

Before talking about how to improve sight-reading, let’s first clear up why sight-reading feels so difficult for many piano students.

Why Is Sight-Reading So Hard?

A common misconception: “Good sight-reading means spelling out notes quickly”

This is probably the biggest misunderstanding. Good sight-reading does not mean naming individual notes faster and faster. If that were true, how would anyone sight-read something like a Chopin Nocturne, which is made up of dense chords, long semiquaver runs, and wide leaps?

Mastering sight-reading involves recognizing patterns such as intervals, chord formations, scales, and arpeggios.

You’re not spelling out each note in your head. Instead, you read patterns: intervals, chord shapes and inversions, scales, and arpeggios.

This is exactly why technical exercises exist. Most technical methods focus on one musical idea at a time, training your eyes and hands to recognise patterns quickly. Over time, your brain stops seeing “individual notes” and starts seeing musical shapes.

Not playing enough new music.

When learning a piece, we usually go through several stages:

Learning pitches and rhythms
Working out efficient fingering
Coordinating hands together
Shaping phrasing, expression, and structure

Here’s the key point:

Actual note-reading mainly happens only in stage one.

If a student spends weeks (or months) on the same piece, they get very little ongoing practice in reading new notes. A student is “bad at reading,” but because they simply aren’t reading often enough. And no — this doesn’t mean learning a full sonata every week. Short, manageable material is far more effective.

What Can You Do to Improve Sight-Reading?

Play something new every week. Regular exposure to new music is essential.

Short studies and exercises are ideal because they:

keep the reading manageable,
allow quick turnover,
reinforce pattern recognition.

Good options include:

short technical exercises
beginner-to-intermediate études
simple pieces you don’t intend to perfect

The goal is not performance — it’s reading flow.

A short technical exercise focusing on one topic at a time — in this case, major-minor seventh chords. (From A Dozen a Day, Book 3) — A short technical exercise focusing on one topic at a time — in this case, major-minor seventh chords. (From *A Dozen a Day*, Book 3)

Practise scales and arpeggios (with correct fingering). A huge amount of piano music is built on scales and arpeggios.

When you practise them properly:

your fingers already “know the route,”
you don’t need to consciously decide fingering while reading,
your mental energy is freed up to focus on rhythm, coordination, and unfamiliar details.

So when a scale appears in a sight-reading exercise, your hands respond automatically — and sight-reading becomes less overwhelming.

Start practicing today

Sight-reading isn’t a mysterious talent that some people are born with. It’s a trained skill, built through pattern recognition, frequent exposure to new material, and solid technical foundations.

Here are a few technical exercise I would recommend, apart from scales and arpeggios