What is Music at First Sight?

This is a developing body of beginning, elementary and intermediate instrumental music parts for orchestral, folk, and keyboard instruments. It will allow you to play along with available commercial recordings of great classical, jazz, pop, folk music using a variety of simplified, graded parts without interfering with any teacher or teaching method you are currently working with.

It won’t matter whether you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced player. It is there for you as a scaffold on which to drape your very first four or five beginning notes. No matter what you play, you can experience whole sections of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik."

In Music At First Sight you are “sitting in” with your string quartet, orchestra or folk group. The unique aspect here is that your own part is mostly separate from what the others are playing. This allows you to hear each of the other parts while you play along. Your instrument has a mellow, deep tone. It avoids harsh and shrill sounds and your part tries to bring out this quality but also hints at exercises, scales, and drills- which you can insert yourself with world class performers next to you as role models -which you change for variety- with each new recording. As a woodwind or brass player you have access to the great string literature with fine, repeatable performance, phrasing, interpretation models to stretch your own limits, give added richness both to your music and to your life.