Yamaha Education News

New app to help improve sight reading

The Wessar sight reading app for iPad

Good news for all teachers who want to help their pupils improve their sight reading. Wessar is to launch its SightRead4Piano iPad app in December 2011, providing the complete answer to piano and keyboard sight reading problems, direct to your iPad. A retired Trinity Guildhall examiner, Dr Christopher Wiltshire helped pioneer the groundbreaking examination syllabus for Yamaha's Play for Keeps keyboard course. Having felt frustration for many years on behalf of examination candidates who performed poorly on site reading tests, losing marks simply because they kept stopping, Chris developed the new app to provide help.

His company, Wessar International Ltd, is launching theSightRead4Piano app for iPad, designed to train eyes and brain to obey the oft-quoted command: 'Keep going!' The sophisticated technology allows the chosen piece to be studied for the requisite thirty seconds and then, with metronome set, the player is counted in and launched into a performance. With each bar of the score disappearing from view on completion, the player's focus is constantly pushed to the right. As Daniel Barenboim puts it in his book, 'My Life in Music': "By definition, sight reading means playing bar one with your eyes while your brain is on bar five."

As well as official sample piano and keyboard tests from six exam boards (including the ABRSM, LCM and Rockschool), Chris provides a set of samples to cover the sight reading from Grade 3 to Grade 8 of Yamaha's own PFK exam syllabus, accredited by Trinity Guildhall. The full App will contain over 1,000 pieces of piano and keyboard sight reading across all grades but teachers will be able to purchase just those grades they need on a pay-as-you-play basis.

As Chris claims, "This app does what no book can possibly do: it doesn't just tell you to keep going, it makes sure you do!" The SightRead4Piano app will undoubtedly make a substantial difference to sight reading standards and many a candidate will learn to actually enjoy that element of the exam. The examiner will be pleased, too!

More details will be available in December.

(ends)

(posted: November 2011)