Example sight reading exersises for ocarina

The general idea in practising sight reading is to create a gradual difficulty progression, allowing the subconscious mind to internalise notation patterns, and connect them with the actions required to perform them on an instrument.

These demonstrate how one may create a difficulty progression appropriate for a complete beginner, but the principle is applicable to any level. Each subsequent exercise should be very slightly harder than the previous.

Start with something extremely basic, with notes of just one pitch. We are using some notes from the middle of the range because higher notes have more stable pitch, and there is less chance of miscovering a finger hole with fewer holes to cover.

First clap the rhythm, look up how to finger the notes, and perform it using tonguing to separate the notes:

Then start introducing notes of different pitches, staying within a 3 note range, and using only intervals of a second. Make exercises at this level and practice them until it becomes easy.

Then you start introducing some more variation in the rhythms, clapping them first, and then playing.

As well as increase the complexity of the melody by introducing leaps of a diatonic third. Make exersises around this complexity level and practice until it gets easy:

Introducing figures

Once you can read notation reliably in a range of 3 notes with a variety of rhythms, its a good point to start introducing common melodic figures such as scale runs and arpeggios, reading over a larger range of notes.

And so on: