How to Sight Read Music

[edit] Steps

1. Breathe. Nervousness causes the most problems in sight reading. It can cause a cracked note, an overkill of vibrato, or a mistaken tempo, and you must avoid those errors at all cost. Relax, take deep breaths, and start to look at the music.
2. 

   Hope that the title is more helpful than this one!
   Read the title of the piece. This may not sound like it will help you actually playing the piece, but it really does -- after all, the title summarizes the entire piece into a few descriptive words. If you do not read the title, then you are losing a key advantage into the mood of the piece, and the emotion you should put into playing it. Provided that there is a title given, you should always read it before looking at the music. You may also look at the composer of the piece, to get an idea of the time frame in which the piece was written and the style of the composer, but this is slightly less important most of the time.
3. Look at the tempo. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the tempo will be given to you, and woe upon the sight reader that does not look at it. Sometimes the provided tempo will be more vague, such as simply saying "Slow" or "Jazzy", and sometimes it will be much more exact, such as saying "Moderately slow with a slight upbeat swing feel to it, quarter note equals seventy-two". No matter what the given tempo is, you must try your absolute hardest to follow it. Some room is normally given for slowing it down or speeding it up to give the absolute best emotion or feel to the piece that you can, but when you play or sing the piece, you need to make sure that the people listening to you realize that you did, in fact, look at the tempo.
4. Check out the time signature. This is a basic- always look at the time signature no matter if it's your first time looking at a piece, or your thousandth. There is a huge difference between, say, six-eight time and common time, and if you happen to not look at the time signature, and play the piece in common time, the people listening may think that you don't actually know how to play in six-eight time, which is worse than thinking you didn't look at the time signature.
5. Check out the key signature Another basic. Playing the wrong key signature will make the piece sound discordant and make it seem like you can't read a key signature.
6. Look for changes. Is there a new key signature introduced halfway through the piece? What about time? Is there an accelerando or a ritard? Pay special attention to those, and be sure to note all of them. If you are allowed to keep the music, which is not likely, but just in case, you should underline them on the music. If you are not the only person who will be sight reading that particular piece, never make marks to it. You do not want anyone else to have the advantage of changes marked on their music when others did not.There may be places where you can get faster or slower, softer or louder to fit the style of the piece. These may not marked in the music. Add these little changes as long as it fits the style, because the people listening will realize that you know when to change things around a bit to make the piece sound nicer.
7. Check out the dynamics. It's very important to start off at a forte if the piece says to, and not a piano, because then the piece will probably ask you to get quieter, and if you are already at piano, then there's not much further to go until you aren't even audible any longer. Inversely, if the piece asks you to start off at a piano, don't start off louder! If the piece asks for a specific dynamic, you can be quite sure that that's meant to be very obvious. If there is no marking in the beginning, look ahead to see what is going to happen later, and decide based on that. If there are no dynamics in the whole piece, which is very rare, then the best bet is to start off mezzo-forte and get louder and softer when it should.
8. Look over the beginning. Pay especially close attention to the first few measures of the music -- go over them at least three times before proceeding on. A solid beginning is the key to making sure the music sounds right, and, oftentimes, the opening line will repeat itself throughout the piece, so it's crucial to understand it before moving on. You can also sing the first line or so in your head. This helps you get the style of the music easier than if you just read the music.
9. Skim over the easier bits. If you know you can play one rhythm, just slide over it. If it's a rhythm you saw earlier in the piece, though, you may want to compare the two. It's a common error to see two similar rhythms and play them the same, when actually, the composer made a change in one of the notes, which is also extremely common.
10. Read the very last line. This is the conclusion of the piece, and it is normally quite different from the rest of the piece, or it is purposefully harder than the rest, with a final element added in to the piece to make for a dramatic finish. The beginning and the end are vital- the beginning gets the music off to a good start, and the end makes sure the listener is left with a solid final impression. Speaking of the beginning..
11. Read the beginning again. After looking through the whole piece, you have a dozen rhythms in your head, and probably hundreds of notes. It is a silly thought to think that you remember all of that, and the first thing you will forget will be the very first thing you looked at- the beginning. If you forget the beginning so quickly, you may ask, then why look over it so much at first? Simply put, the last look over the beginning will be a refresher of sorts- you will just need a bit of mind-jogging, if you will, to remember all that work you put into figuring it out at first. Once you get started, your mind will already be in a "refresher" mode of sorts, meaning it is remembering the notes and rhythms just as you are playing them, since you already started the refreshing by looking at the beginning a final time.
12. Start playing. If your instrument is one, such as the Horn in F, that has pitch problems, pay careful attention to your starting partial. It's not uncommon for inexperienced sight readers to start off on a partial above or below the written one, and continue on in that partial, playing incorrect notes, for a portion or even all of the piece. If you do start off on the wrong note, correct this immediately.
13. If you mess up, keep going! Don't completely stop or get discouraged. Try to correct what you did wrong the next time it comes up. Learn from your mistakes!

[edit] Tips

• Focus on getting rhythms correct first. There are an infinte combination of rhythms but there are only 12 notes.
• If you play a brass instrument, you will want to oil your valves shortly, but not immediately, before sight reading.
• Brass players, empty your spit valves before sight reading; reed players, get the spit out of your reeds in advance.
• If you play a clarinet or saxophone, check your reed constantly before sight reading. Squeaking at any time is bad, but squeaking during sight reading can kill what may have been a pretty decent audition, even if it isn't your fault.
• Tune, tune, tune! Though most people cannot tell between an in tune note and a slightly out of tune one, keeping your instrument in tune is important. Your instrument is designed to produce its best tone when it is properly tuned. If you are playing with an ensemble it is especially painful for listeners if you are out of tune with the other players.
• Though many instruments only play in one, check out the clef of the music. It's not entirely impossible that the piece you are looking at is in treble and you're reading it as if it were in bass, or is in bass when you're used to treble.
• Practice sight reading everything you can get your hands on. Many music stores sell books available in a variety of difficulties to suit your needs. These are excellent for practicing as you can work through a page a day.
• Most musicians are perfectionists; when sightreading you should be happy with 85-90%. There is no time for corrections or stopping!
• French horn players, (especially at orchestra auditions), check the key! Transposition is an important skill to have, and it would be very bad to play a piece in the key of F when it is supposed to be in the key of C.
• Look for patterns. Does the piece go in arpeggios or center around one note? Are there repetitive rhythms?
• In an audition, smile and be friendly and polite to the auditors.