One thing I've heard a lot of beginners on Reddit talking about is sight reading.
However, for the first several years of learning (and often longer) sight reading is actually a specific exercise to help you develop your skill. Here's the thing, you’re not just “reading music”, you’re learning and embedding the technique and developing the skill of reading progressively harder excerpts of music, in real time.
There’s a process to it:
Identifying key signatures
recognising patterns,
learning hand positions,
Fingering
developing interval recognition,
and training your eyes to stay ahead of your hands.
Learning not to stop
Learning the discipline of starting slowly
Learning to keep your eyes on the sheet
That’s why graded sight-reading books are so useful. They introduce these skills progressively.
A lot of beginners try to jump straight into random sheet music thinking they’re improving their reading, but usually they’re just struggling through pieces without building the underlying sight reading skill.
Working through structured sight-reading exercises consistently will help much more in the long run.
I'm a teacher, new to Reddit. I am interested to know if this helps anyone.