Improve Your Sight-Reading! Clarinet, Levels 6-8 (Advanced): Clarinet Book & Online Audio

Advanced clarinetists often plateau in sight-reading, and generic exercises bore them. This book respects where they are musically while building the precise skills that separate fluent readers from hesitant ones. Harris structures each lesson around real technical challenges (key signatures, rhythmic complexities, register shifts) rather than arbitrary difficulty, so students understand why they're working on something.

Methodical and affirming. Each unit progresses from concrete, isolated challenges to genuine musical problem-solving. The graded passages build momentum without overwhelming, giving students the satisfying experience of tackling increasingly complex scores.

Advanced high school clarinetists and college students who read decently but know they're slower than they should be. This also works for musicians returning to regular playing after time away, or those preparing auditions where quick learning matters.

• Study the rhythmic and melodic preparatory exercises before tackling the full pieces. These aren't warm-ups; they're diagnostics for what your hands need to learn.
• Check your performance against the online audio, but don't listen first. Read silently, play it cold, then listen to compare your tempo choices and phrasing.
• Work through the graded pieces in sequence rather than jumping ahead. The progression is intentional, and skipping steps creates gaps in confidence.

Assign this as independent study during the season when section reading fluency matters most (fall/early winter). Individual progress through the book also makes it valuable for clarinet students preparing for regional or all-state auditions, since sight-reading often appears in the testing.

• Reading advanced key signatures and accidentals without hesitation
• Navigating rhythmic patterns combining sixteenth-note subdivisions, syncopation, and mixed meters
• Interpreting articulation and dynamic markings on first reading
• Recognizing and executing register changes smoothly
• Building sight-reading speed and accuracy at performance tempo