Sight reading and all that jazz!

I have gone on a bit about sight reading over the past few weeks and that is because there has been quite a turn around in Eden and Niamh's playing because of it. I am so glad that Eden's music teacher allowed her to play strongly by ear with sight reading on the sidelines for the last two years. He has treated her very individually in this regard and she has progressed phenomenally as a result and progressed through 5 grades in just over 2 years, but now he has told her she has to play completely by sight reading. He gave her a book with lots of grade 2 and 3 pieces in that she had to sight read. Once she had done a piece she needed to move on to the next, he knew that if she played it through more than twice she would have it by ear and the sight reading would be pushed out of the way again, so he had to strip her of playing by ear and just gave her piece after piece to play by sight. After nearly a month of this, I received a lovely email from him, I will paste a segment of it as an encouragement to Eden whenever she reads the blog:

Unbelievable!!!

One of those lessons that makes one proud to be a teacher. She has made more progress this last week, than in all her time with me.

The reading was off and running. Let me assure you, if that girl just keeps reading piece after piece, she is going to go places. I think she knew it, as well.

Eden had come out of this lesson on top of the world, so I know it meant a lot to her too.



This is her playing a jazz piece by sight, it has opened up a whole new world to her as she picks up many pieces and plays them now, and with more confidence too.



Another sight reading piece.



Niamh has been practising her sight reading for her exam coming up in December, and was so pleased to recognize this from one of our hymns at church. It made me realize that I can now start getting hold of Christian music for both of them to play. I have always felt that our sacrifice we make for Eden and Niamh's music financially and timewise will very likely be used by the Lord, and this has in fact been my prayer from the beginning. We have violinists, flautist, pianists, oboe players and piano players in our church, and in the future it will be the young children of the church who will be the players, it is lovely to think that our children may be serving in the church in this way one day.