Treble spaces: F A C E (face)
Treble lines: E G B D F (every good boy does fine)

Bass spaces: A C E G (all cows eat grass)
Bass lines: G B D F A (good boys do fine always)

Having a piano would help ALOT.

I am a competition judge, and hear sightreading every time – and I teach both voice classes and private flute, where we work a LOT on this.

1. LOOK AT THE KEY SIGNATURE – and know what key you are in! This sounds obvious, but people will play the whole selection in some kind of weird mode of E, and not even realize it was supposed to be in E flat!

2. Before you look at pitches – RUN THE RHYTHM. Look at the meter signature (time signature) and TAP the whole thing out on your leg, or silently clap it. This will make it MUCH smoother, and actually SAVE tou study time. We only give our students ONE MINUTE to study a graded 8-bar melody.

3. THEN go back , and read PITCH. If you are a singer, use a system – either solfege, or numbers works best. If you are an instrumentalist, you can now *ghost finer* you wat through. We disqualify anyone who PLAYS it thru quietly before we are assessing them – all wind instruments must be AWAY from you mouth, bows off strings ( no pizz., either!)m hands above keybaord, mallets and sticks off the instruments, etc.

4. The judge will give you a tempo in graded exercise situations. Make sure you are SOLID with that, and understand the meter – whether you are thinking in common time or cut time, for example, or whether the counting unit in 6/8 meter is the eighth or dotted quarter.

5. Go to sites like and run thru the exercises there. Apply what I have told you.

6. GOOD LUCK!!!!

yas