Effects of Brain Gym for Sight Reading in Piano Learning

Abstract

The ability to sight read is essential for pianists to interpret and perform music accurately in real-time, involving rhythmic accuracy, note placement, and fluency. However, sight reading skills are not explicitly taught at the college level. This study aims to explore the potential influence of Brain Gym on improving pianists’ sight-reading abilities. A pre-experimental, one-group pretest-posttest design was used to measure the impact of the intervention on participants’ error rates before and after the intervention. Sixteen college music education students with at least six months of piano learning experience participated in this study. The sight-reading test was given on the first day, and the participant conducted a Brain Gym exercise for 14 days. On the 14^th day, the participants took the sight-reading posttest. Findings from paired t-tests yielded significant improvements in missed notes, missed rhythms, repetitions, and pauses in the participants after intervention. The analysis demonstrated that Brain Gym yielded positive results in the sight-reading proficiency of pianists, as evidenced by the reduction in the frequency of errors observed after the implementation. Applying Brain Gym as a warm-up activity, specifically in piano class, is advantageous to reduce potential errors that may occur while learning. These results prove that implementing Brain Gym is an effective strategy for improving the sight-reading ability among pianists. Thus, it is recommended that piano teachers adopt the Brain Gym exercises in teaching to aid sight-reading ability.