Relationships Among Music Sight-Reading and Technical Proficiency, Spatial Visualization, and Aural Discrimination

The purpose of this study was to examine predictors of music sight-reading ability. The authors hypothesized that speed and accuracy of music sight-reading would be predicted by a combination of aural pattern discrimination, spatial-temporal reasoning, and technical proficiency. Participants (N = 70) were wind players in concert bands at a medium-sized university in the Midwest. In a regression analysis with music sight-reading as the criterion variable, aural-spatial patterning and technical proficiency explained 51% of the variance, F = 37.34, p <.0001. These results support previous research that suggested that auditory, Visual, spatial, and kinesthetic activations occur in coordination when wind players sight-read music notation. The results of the regression analysis suggested that although aural-spatial skills and technical proficiency skills were orthogonal, or separate, they both were essential to the complex task of sight-reading.