Review mistakes

After a run, SightReader can walk you back through every slip on the score, say in plain words what happened, and point out the habits behind them. It is free, after every piece, Grades level, lesson piece and exercise.

Open the review

When a run has mistakes, your results show how many, as a link such as Review mistakes (4). Tap it and the review opens where the controls usually sit: the rest of the music dims, and the first mistake is ringed on the score.

• Close it and tap any marked note on the score to open it again at that note.
• Results takes you back to your results. On most pieces you can also try again or move on from the review itself.
• The on-screen piano steps aside while the review is open, and comes back when it closes.

After a clean run there is nothing to review. The Notes and Scales drills have no review: they are a few notes at a time.

Step through each mistake

Use the arrows in the review, or the left and right arrow keys on a computer, to go from one mistake to the next. Each one says where it is (the bar, the beat and, on two staves, the hand) and what happened:

• A wrong note: what you played instead. With Wait for the right note on, it also says when you then found it.
• A key signature slip: when the key signature makes a note sharp or flat and you played it natural, the review reminds you.
• A missed note, or one you played that isn’t in the music.
• Early or late, with the metronome on: by how much, as a note value (about a quaver) and in milliseconds.
• Let go too soon, or held into a rest, with the metronome on and a keyboard or the on-screen piano.

The chips along the top narrow it down: All, Notes, Timing, Length and Dynamics. The last three appear only when your run had something to judge there.

Habits

Tap Summary to see what the run says about how you read, not just what went wrong. For example:

• The same note played as another every time, like F♯ played as F, with a reminder when the key signature asks for it.
• Notes played in the wrong octave.
• Most of the mistakes in one hand.
• Playing ahead of the beat, or behind it, on average.
• Long notes let go early, or held on into rests.

Tap a habit to step through just the notes behind it, and Show all to go back to every mistake. A habit only appears when it happened often enough to be worth telling you about.

Dynamics

Play on a touch-sensitive keyboard connected by cable or Bluetooth, and the review points out where the music asks for louder or softer and your playing stayed the same: a p that turns to f, a crescendo, a diminuendo.

It compares you with yourself, not with a fixed volume, so any clear change the right way counts. The on-screen piano and your computer’s keys play every note at one volume, and the microphone doesn’t measure it, so dynamics are judged only on a keyboard with its touch sensitivity switched on.

Pauses, speed and hands

Without the metronome, nothing marks your timing as you play, but the review still notices:

• Pauses: the notes you stopped to work out, and for about how long.
• Speed: bars that ran noticeably slower or faster than the rest of your playing.

With the metronome on, those show up as late or missed notes instead. And in either mode, on a keyboard connected by cable or Bluetooth, the review tells you when one hand comes in after the other. The small lead a pianist gives a melody is left alone.

Stopping to work notes out is the habit sight-reading is meant to cure: keep going, and read the next bar while you play this one. None of these come from the microphone, which can’t time your notes closely enough.

Was this useful?

Every habit in the summary asks Was this useful?. Your answer tells us which habits are worth pointing out, and helps us make them more accurate.

Practise this bar

Found the bar that keeps going wrong? Tap Practise this bar and SightReader sets up that bar, with one either side, to play on its own. Practising some bars earns no stars or XP, but it is the quickest way to fix a slip, and the whole piece is waiting when you’re ready. Practise some bars has the rest.