My sight reading practice has been totally transformed by Sheet Music Direct’s subscription service. It’s all-you-can-eat sheet music, a nice addition to IMSLP for modern stuff. Most songs have “easy” arrangements ~around my sight reading level. Tons of new music every night!

Also nice to use it in conjunction with RCM’s popular selections list, since it’s helpfully broken into fine-grained grades. Can usually read laterally within any of the volumes mentioned, in addition to the specific pieces. https://rcmusic-kentico-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/rcm/media/main/about%20us/rcm%20publishing/popularselectionlist2022.pdf

I’ve noticed that if I sight-read an “easy” arrangement of a piece, I can often sight-read some of the “real” arrangement afterwards—a bit of scaffolding… I guess it gets the basic harmonic structure in my head.

I do find that I often want something in between the “easy” arrangement and the “real” arrangement. Sometimes the “easy” arrangements are much too reduced. Seems like that kind of interpolation would be a fun and very tractable ML project…

Related: https://andymatuschak.org/sight-reading/

@andy_matuschak Do you read from a tablet? A laptop? Paper? Always curious to hear how musicians are consuming sheet music these days.

@adrian The 12.9” iPad works really nicely for this. The display is just shy of normal 8.5”x11”.

@andy_matuschak when i bought some easy arrangement of holiday tracks for irene i strongly considered it but didn’t have the time to devote to it, glad it’s good, though, maybe when i free up a little i’ll give it a go

@andy_matuschak this is absolutely me btw, got a hal leonard book two page disney super easy songbook for irene, super approachable, i could play everything in one go with the chords, irene thought i was a real good piano player 🤫, i bought chilly gonzales’ reintroduction etudes and used that to get some variety in my life