I occurs to me, as I scramble through some tough rhythms for Tom Sawyer, that the process for sight reading is different from non-sight-reading in a key way. That is, when I read a piece that I already know, I can hear it in my head ahead of time, but that is not always the case with sight reading. With sight reading it may make sense as the notes are sounding, but you may not always have time to get the sound in your mind ahead of time.

(Is it like flying a plane by radar versus the normal way? I always wondered if pilots hate having to land by radar.)

If sight reading is tough (I haven’t aways been too great at it myself) I recommend actually tapping your foot or your toe, and actually thinking the beats in your head (actually thinking 1, 2, 3, 4). A favorite joke of mine is that musicians can only count to 4. If the music is in 6 that’s just 3 plus 3…