Exercise III - Visual Scan

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Visual Scan is a vital skill for sight-readers. While reading music, our eyes scan the score searching for targets. In order for you to understand visual Scan better, I will post a few definitions before describing the exercise.

Ocular Motility: the system that controls eye movement. It brings the fovea into alignment. It is very important for fast search (eye saccadic movement) while reading. Saccadic movement is the fastest movement our body performs. It happens between fixations.

Ocular Motility/Visual Tracking: it occurs when our eyes move without blurring or loosing the image. Very important for reading.

Directionality: it is the way our eyes follow text and music: top/bottom, left/right and return sweep (changing lines).

Temporal Visual Processing: see post January 11, 2010.

Exercise III

Visual Scan according to the PTS II manual, is a "perceptual cognitive practice that requires temporal visual processing, directionality, ocular motility, figure ground recognition, perceptual speed and planning".
The exercise requires you to spot targets among random characters. According to your level, these characters can be scarce or abundant.
The reader has to perform a very complex task. Besides identifying the targets, the main problem for me is the directionality. When the characters are scarce, spotting the target is easier. However, changing lines is harder because often there are no characters at the beginning of them. It is also hard to keep a strait eye movement when there are so many gaps between characters and target.
As the levels advance, directionality is easier and finding targets is harder since the screen is crowded and the targets are more disguised.


The goals in order to advance levels are: < 4.0 average errors per trial,
there is a time limit to finish the task according to the size of the target.


Variables are: size of the target,
number of random characters,
number of targets,
targets can be numbers, upper or lower letters and symbols (*,#.?,{,],etc).

At the beginning, I really struggled with this exercise. I am improving thanks to lots of practice. It looks like my visual scan needs work.

* Double click on the image to see my results.

Tansman's Piano Music

I love teaching 20th Century and Contemporary music because primary, elementary and intermediate repertoire is so diverse and abundant.
Tansman is one of my favorite composers and yet, I do not hear a lot of students performing his pieces.
Tansman has a very diverse background (I will post a few links about him at the bottom of this article). It would be a shame not to expose students to his music.

If you want to keep students interested in sight-reading, I believe you should give them beautiful music to read. Modern harmonies are more attractive to students then transcribed folk or classical.

I recommend Tansman's collections: On S'Amuse Au Piano
Je Joue Pour Papa
Je Joue Pour Maman
Ten Diversions for the Young Pianist
Novelettes Pour Piano
Vingt Pieces Faciles Sur Des Melodies Populaires
Polonaises.
Pour Les Enfants

Happy Times or On S'Amuse Au Piano is my student's favorite! Even adults cherish these books. They offer progressive technique development since they are somewhat contrapuntal, and therefore help students develop independent hands.

Book I (Primary): levels 2 and 3
Common Tones (#3) is wonderful for sight-reading allowing students to spot connections between two beats.
These are so popular with my students that I am starting to get tired of them :)

Book II (Elementary):levels 4 and 5
I love these pieces!!! The melodies are so beautiful that students learn phrasing with no afford at all.

Book III (Intermediate): levels 6 and 7
Some pieces were inspired by Gershwin, Schumann and Bach
If you don't own it, order it right now!

You can find more detailed explanations about all of these pieces on The Pianist's Guide to Stand Teaching and Performance Literature by Jane Magrath. . You can also find descriptions for all Pour Les Enfants on Marath's book.

A great collection for SIGHT-READING is Vingt Pieces Faciles:
These 20 pieces are very short and go through lots of different keys. Most of them are written in 4 voices. I use them to test levels 6 and above. They are not, however, as easy as the title suggests. Intervals are wide and they are very chromatic. Harmonies are sophisticated making hard to predict what is coming next. The sight-reader has to be paying lots of attention.

Another favorite is Ten Diversions for the Young Pianist (level 7):
Very beautiful slow pieces (adults also like them) requiring lots of introspection. For mature students. The fast pieces, on the other hand, are exciting and somewhat virtuosic.

Novelletes: This is also a precious set that I bumped into while working on this project. I can not believe I did not know it before :( I will list their titles bellow in order to illustrate how diverse in style they are.
- Caprice
- Etude
- Exotique (Danse Javanaise)
- Danse Tzigane
- Obertas (Danse Polonaise)
- Blues
- Prelude Et Fugue
- Improvisation

Je Joue Pour Papa and Je Joue Pour Maman (beginners):
Tanman wrote "douze morceaux tres faciles et en grosses notes" (12 little pieces very easy and with big notes).
Measures go from 3/4, 4/4, 6/8 and 2/2.
Key signatures are: C,a,G,e,D,F,d.
There are many dances that explore ties, broken intervals and chords, balance, the C Major scale and sequences.
Because of the size of the notes, they are great to teach how to read intervals and to recognize "chunks".
Low points: a) melodically they are the least attractive pieces Tansman has written; b) the edition I have (Esching) does a good job with the large print but the fingering is bad and the teacher has to add phrasing. There are none.

I have bumped into a lot more of Tansman's piano music during the past months. They are not suitable for student's sight-reading because of their higher level.

I will write more about repertoire in future postings.

www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Tansman-Alexandre.htm
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Tansman
www.musimem.com/tansman_eng.htm

Exercise II - Visual Motor Integration

According to the user manual, Visual Motor Integration "is the ability to integrate a visual target with an accurate hand movement". It is a very important skill for a sight-reader to have.
The way this exercise is designed needs no adaptation for us musicians.
The "player" has to accurately hit moving balls with a bat which is controlled by the mouse.
The variables are:
- Ball speed: there are 6 different speeds according to the level you are.
- Bat size: there are 4 different sizes.
- Distractions: the distractions include moving objects sometimes on the upper part of the screen and sometimes on the lower part of it, still objects and moving walls.

I find it interesting that moving objects are easier to deal with because I can trace the angles ahead and the direction of the balls are more predictable. The still objects many times make the balls wiggle and the outcome is always a surprise.

The goal, in order to advance to a higher level, is to hit the ball 30 per "game".

So far, this exercise along with the visual concentration program (I will explain it later), have my best scores. In 50 sections (2 games per section) I have missed only one ball.

However good I am, I take Exercise II very seriously because a musician can always improve his or hers eye-hand coordination.
This exercise also works the parafoveal vision because many times, you have to "see" several things at once.

"Sight-Reading" Twice

Before I talk about eye exercise #2, I would like to ask my readers to participate in a survey. So next time you log in, leave your opinion about sight reading a piece for a second time and whether or not it is helpful.
Thanks.

Exercise I - Parafoveal Stimulation

The parafoveal stimulation is the first of the 11 exercises from PTS II I will describe.
The parafoveal stimulation exercise is designed to make you identify stimuli outside of the parafea (see posting on November 18, 2009).
The working position should be the Harmon distance (see posting November 25,2009). This sitting distance makes a world of difference.
The goal of this exercise is to get 70% to 100% right answers in order to move to the next level. The stimuli type are upper and lower case letters and numbers. The speed range from 15/60ths of a second, 10/60 of a second and 5/60 of a second.
The computer screen shows a small box with a dot inside. The dot will move in different combination from left to right. At random intervals, two letters or numbers will flash on the screen. One inside the box and one outside. With the keyboard arrows, you have to match the dots. You push the space bar only when the stimuli match.
This exercise requires VTP (see posting January 11, 2010), motor and eye hand movement coordination.
Everything happens very fast. So far (I am now on level 10) I have been doing very well. I will keep you informed on how future levels go.

Before I started on this program,I had hit a wall. Improvements on my sight-reading were happening very slowly if any. Practice alone had helped for the first 5 months only.
A month into this program, my tempo is faster and my playing is more accurate. While sight-reading Mozart violin sonatas, I was able to add ornaments, dynamics and articulations. I have been through 27 sections and several practice trials. There are 123 to go.

Temporal Visual Processing

TVP is a very complex subject for me to discuss. At this point, I have been reading a lot about it and I am yet to learn more. However, I am prematurely going to write about it because this is one area where I have been noticing great improvement. I will try to explain in a very simple and summarized manner. According to the PTS II manual, TVP controls the ability to change visual fixation from one point to another as we read. It enables us "to read smoothly, rapidly, and efficiently. It enhances reading fluency and comprehension." A deficit in temporal visual processing will compromise reading ability. Minor deficit in temporal visual processing can cause loss of place while reading, slow speed, visual fatigue, poor comprehension, frustration reading and images overlapping or running together.
Temporal processing interprets the messages that reach the visual area. Temporal processing is responsible for recalling memories of previous visual experiences or activities.
I have gone through 26 sections of the PTS II program and I have already noticed a substantial improvement. I am now much faster. My parafoveal vision has improved and allowed me even to see or recall previous accidentals. I believe memory of previous activity, such as where my hands were on the keyboard so I can plan for future placements, are vital for successful sight-reading.
Besides doing the tests required by PTS II, I have been working through a lot of the practice sections.
I suggest you read the article:

Measurement of temporal processing abilities.

Vishakha Rawool, PhD, CCC-A

Doctor of Audiology program

Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology

West Virginia University, Morgantown WV 26506

This article will give you great insight on other functions of the temporal processing.

PTS II Therapy

The PST II therapy proposes to improve information processing skills, temporal visual processing skills, and rapid automatized naming skills.
During the holidays I started working on this therapy.
The doctor should assign you about 20 minutes of exercises a day, 5 days a week. There is a feature that allows the doctor to customize your therapy, and a feature for you to check therapy results at the end of each section.
For each exercise, there is a practice section which one can do as many times as one wishes.
Exercises are designed according to needs and age of the patient.
I have been using the Auto Mode which advances me through the program according to my performance.
There are 150 sections on the Auto Mode setting.
So far, I have found the PTS II very helpful.
There are 11 procedures one has to perform. Each section goes through 4 of them.
I intend to describe each of the 11 procedures in future postings.
Stand by.