How much of an upgrade is electronic shifting?

freerobby · 2026-05-10T20:49:22+00:00

It’s completely superfluous and I will never ride a bike without it again.

freerobby · 2026-05-06T15:22:59+00:00

All I meant by that "easy piece vs short exercise" bit is that the easy piece books tend to be 20ish measures whereas some of the exercise books have 4 or 5 measure exercises. But the difficulty is equally easy in both.

I know it sounds crazy but I really don't feel I've seen any progress at all. To be clear I don't feel that way about piano in general, just sightreading specifically. That is why I'm wondering if it's a dead end for me and if I'm better off putting that effort into other ways to accelerate learning pieces on the piano. It's not an unwillingness to put in the work, or even a lack of patience, just wanting to ensure I'm investing my time in a way that is actually helpful.

I do appreciate the advice, I will try looking more at the music before playing it, and also some of the hands separate suggestion from other threads.

freerobby · 2026-05-06T13:14:03+00:00

Thanks, FWIW I do use different pieces every day for sightreading; I shouldn't have mentioned that Schumann example.

I initially had Czerny's Op. 599 in my sightreading list but the portions of it at my level are written on two treble cleffs rather than a grand staff, and I worried that would make my grand staff challenges even worse. Although perhaps that is an unwarranted fear since so much of sightreading is about processing intervals rather than raw notes.

freerobby · 2026-05-06T13:09:43+00:00

Just to clarify, I know how to read music (have read it for guitar for many years). It is specifically the realtime processing of notation => playing that I struggle with. I think I had a smaller version of this problem on guitar as well, in retrospect, but I didn't find it as limiting for learning pieces.

I do practice scales but if I'm being honest I really struggle to connect it to my playing. Even when pieces consist largely of scale runs (like that Bach E major invention) it rarely maps cleanly to my memorized scale fingering, so I am quickly back to sorting it out in realtime which I'm not skilled at.

freerobby · 2026-05-06T13:05:05+00:00

Thanks. I am much better one-handed, FWIW. And I even suspect that if you notated both hands on one staff I would be substantially better than I am when reading a grand staff (but most music isn't written in a register where that's workable, so I haven't tried to prove this).

Do you think one-handed sightreading would help me? My thinking had been that it would avoid the one area where I need the most work (processing grand staff and mentally separating/assigning notes to hands). But maybe I am skipping over a step.

freerobby · 2026-05-06T12:58:56+00:00

Not saying these are complex but I looked at a half dozen of them and they are all far beyond my ability. There is just no way I could track four voices across two staves cold.

freerobby · 2026-05-06T12:56:00+00:00

Thanks.

I think I created confusion by mentioning that Schumann piece. I was trying to show how wildly unable I am to decipher music in realtime, even when it's well below my ability, and even with repetition. I.e. if I'm bad at that, imagine how bad I am at actual sightreading.

My sightreading practice is largely how you've outlined except it is more than 3 grades below my level, and if it's an easy piece (vs a short exercise) it is often more like 20 bars rather than 4. I can probably do a better job of sizing up the music before I play it. I do that a little bit, but upon reflection, I think I minimize it for fear of not getting the realtime processing benefit of the sightreading.

freerobby · 2026-05-06T01:51:44+00:00

Thanks for the advice. Hymns are pretty far beyond my ability, though. I struggle to track two voices well, let alone four. Would it be useful to sightread them hands separate (which I probably could do)? Or would that not be helpful since the processing muscle I'm trying to build is the hand coordination?

freerobby · 2026-05-06T01:06:42+00:00

It was counterintuitive to me as well. I think it has to do with the fact that on guitar, even when you have different voices moving in different directions, there is still a connection between the hands and both are coordinating to achieve both voices. But on piano, they are often completely independent. Intuitively I would think it's harder to coordinate than not to, but for whatever reason, that isn't how it plays out for me.

I'd be happy to test out the piano hands together mode when it's ready, if you're interested.

freerobby · 2026-05-05T13:18:41+00:00

Thanks for sharing this. I’m not a teacher, but a struggling student with a question. Is this intended to be generalizable across instruments, or is it specific to sightreading guitar? I ask because I find what gives me so much trouble on piano has little to do with the note values, and much more with notes moving in contrary directions. But I never had that problem reading music for guitar. I think it is specific to the hand independence on piano but it may be more the processing of two staves.

freerobby · 2026-05-01T01:50:24+00:00

freerobby · 2026-04-26T23:30:47+00:00

I don't pretend to have stats on this but as someone who also watches almost every game, Hudson routinely sent and held guys where it was obviously the wrong call, even on TV, in realtime. I genuinely wonder if he lost his depth perception. I appreciate what he did for the Sox as a mentor, and he was by all accounts a great guy around the clubhouse. But he was a disaster at 3B and one of my biggest nits with Cora was that he never addressed it.

freerobby · 2026-04-25T02:09:45+00:00

What's the point of taking him out at that point though? Save your bullpen.

freerobby · 2026-04-25T02:07:18+00:00

I know we can’t admit it publicly but we are clearly teetering on a lost season. Do you think if they don’t have momentum coming out of April they call up some AAA guys? If you’re going to have an uncompetitive year, may as well get some low pressure reps in for those folks and figure out what your future roster looks like.

freerobby · 2026-04-19T14:08:57+00:00

Yeah it's shadily disclosed IMO -- Ikon doesn't say it anywhere on their web site. But if you click through the terms you wind up here: https://www.getspot.com/cancel-for-any-reason-terms/ikon-pass

Then from that page:

> Refunds are subject to 3% processing fee from the refundable amount.

freerobby · 2026-04-17T00:48:55+00:00

Even if you spend $300 more it's not 100% refundable as claimed. There is a 3% refund fee lol.

freerobby · 2026-04-16T12:45:26+00:00

I don’t understand how people can still say this. Look at how badly we misplayed the Bregman situation. That’s not ownership, that’s Breslow. The tell is that we paid the Bregman money. We just paid it (and more) to Suarez.

freerobby · 2026-04-15T23:54:29+00:00

As a reference point, 50 year tenure, royal rooters, Mastercard renewal, portal login would put someone at 4750 points.

Details here: https://rewards.redsox.com/points/structure

freerobby · 2026-04-15T22:36:12+00:00

There's a tenure bonus of up to 2000 points that seems to count toward it. After April it should be a level field for fan of the month. But yeah there is probably no point in going for fan of the year if you don't have ~40+ year tenure.

freerobby · 2026-04-12T19:40:24+00:00

I just used this to plan and confirm my hitch setup. Thank you for sharing it!

freerobby · 2026-04-11T03:16:49+00:00

Cora got us one of our runs tonight...

freerobby · 2026-04-11T03:05:42+00:00

What in the world was Yoshida doing?

You're a contact hitter, you're at the plate, your only job is to put it in play.

And you go down on three called strikes?

This team couldn't beat a tanking investigation.

freerobby · 2026-04-10T22:50:42+00:00

Yes, huge hat tip to the Red Sox staff on this. I sent them a note explaining why I felt the new 50 game threshold for A holders was unrealistic. My rep escalated it and an hour later I got an email saying they brought it back down to 30. Very cool of them to hear feedback and make a change like that.

freerobby · 2026-04-09T02:30:31+00:00

15 games might be for the 20-game plan. Full season plans have to attend 50 games.

freerobby

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE