I have a couple suggestions for people wanting to improve sightreading
and general ability to be more aware of harmony and melody - working
on jazz music has really helped me be more aware of chords, whether
soloing or not. Standard tunes often have a repetitive chord structure,
and you become acquainted with those sounds and how your line fits in
to them. It helps if you can play the bare chords on a piano for
yourself. I was surprised at how I could start to distinguish which
chord tone I was on, especially the upper level ones like the 9th and 13th.
Jazz also helped me lose my fear of complicated rhythms.
The other thing that's helped me become familiar with scale degrees is
Indian classical singing. Unlike in Western European music, Indian
classical music involves only one scale per tune (though the variety
of scales is daunting!). The structure of the pieces is rather like
jazz - intro, melody, improv, melody, tag. The improv section is sung
on the Indian solfege syllables, so those become second nature to you.
I began to feel free to wander around the scale, trusting that I could
pick the next note, and that I would match the pitch to the solfege
syllable and vice versa. Of course, I could have worked this hard at
western solfege, and gotten similar results, but there was more
incentive when I was learning a fascinating style of music, too...
Sadly, when I don't keep these skills in constant practice, they do
diminish. I'm thinking of digging out my sight-reading book and doing
a few exercises each morning.
-rosemary
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