Patrick,
When I think about the building blocks of sight-reading I think about interval relationships (which are developed through scales, arpeggios, interval studies, and/or solfege), internal pulse, and rhythmic identification. I know that most of us have had our scales under our belts (in all different forms) for years. I made significant strides in sight-reading when I targeted internal pulse and rhythmic identification in short, dedicated practice sessions (during my rest breaks).
There is a wonderful book called
Rhythmic Training by Robert Starer that specifically targets internal pulse and immediate rhythmic identification.
Please go to a post called
A Rhythmic Challenge and then follow the link to
A Rhythmic Epiphany in that first post. If you purchase the Starer book and work out of it for only several minutes a day, you will target both pulse and rhythmic identification. In about a month you will be able to see tangible differences in the way that you see and “feel” the music on the page.
AverageJoe (Paul Poovey) suggested a book in a recent sight-reading post on TH:
Quote:
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A good, progressive type book (starts easier and gradually gets more advanced) is DEVELOP SIGHTREADING by Dufresne. Mixes up rhythms very well!
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I looked Dufresne up on Wikipedia to learn more about him and this is what they said:
Quote:
Gaston Dufresne was a contrabassist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a teacher of Solfege. Among his contrabass students are American composer Leroy Anderson and Boston Symphony principal trumpeter Roger Voisin. He also taught solfege to Voisin and to Boston Symphony hornist Richard Mackey. His most well known publication is Develop Sight Reading, a book of progressive sight reading studies which has been transcribed for use by all orchestral instruments.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_Dufresne"
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I think I’m going to get a copy of this one myself and spend some time with it!
I hope some of these ideas are helpful!