A Line a Day Sight Reading, Level 1
Sheet Music Book
By Jane Smisor Bastien

I've been trying to get back into Piano as an adult, and I dug my old Bastien books out of my parent's attic. But I never had the sightreading books, so I decided to pick up the first two levels and give them a shot. This first one...

is pretty basic, but that's appropriate for someone with elementary sightreading skills. My biggest complaint with the book is its brevity. It's only 32 pages long, with only 87 lines of sightreading material and 29 or so "Daily Note Search" exercises, which are lines of non-melodic note-matching sequences. So while I think it's a good supplement to the other Bastien books, it is a small supplement. If you actually practice one line per day, you'll be through the book in 3 months. I would have hoped with the allusion to a page-a-day calendar on the cover, and the fact that the standard pace for a Bastien course is 1 level per year, that this book would have had a year's worth of exercises.

This book is great to use. with very little time commitment, the student can learn to sight read excellently.

My daughter just turned 9 and has been playing piano for about a year. The sight reading book is an excellent tool and has helped her tremendously.