Play intervals of thirds along a scale is a great way to start. This video introduce a couple fun exercises.
They should be practiced in all major and minor keys. Practicing them in 'inversion-image' manner would be much more difficult but can be beneficial.
Don't practice sight-reading! Practice reading music instead. Sviatoslav Richter has an extremely proficient sight-reading ability according to his teacher Neuhaus. Richter has a habit of reading music, step by step meticulously careful reading of music. Liszt is well known for his abnormal sight-reading skill. He also had the habit of carefully reading music, lots of music.
Insight Number One
Having said, I discovered today a way to read music. For each measure, scan from top to bottom to see what notes are used. From top to bottom, not left to right. After collecting the notes, which you should remember are different pitches, and if you can, try to sound the pitches in the mind, take a mental visualization of their keys corresponding to the keyboard.
Then mentally play those keys from the left to the right.
Insight Number Two
When practicing a measure on the piano, press down all the keys that are used in this measure. They for good probability are broken chords. Then play normally from left to right. But now we play with very different perspective--not purely horizontally but from harmonic structure.
When this approach is practiced as a routine, chord pattern recognition and harmony cognition will greatly improve!
Just tried playing G-Major scale with the right and left hands in the opposite direction. Metronome goes from 60 to 145 bpm and cool down. The F-sharp key really helps me to have a more vivid mental image of the keyboard. A wonderful exercise.
[somersault touch]
In this video, the runner tripped over the beam, but she instinctively somersaulted forward, winning the championship. It stimulates me the think that one kind of touch technique is based on the same principle. Your drop your hands and when they touch the keys, you immediately let the fingers roll forward, which creates a downward momentum to press down the keys.
This is kind of advanced touch technique. [Youtuber ..] explains it very well in his Youtube video.
(link to the video will be put here later)
It can also cure a problem corrected by Dorothy Taubman in a video. The problem is that the player already press down the keys before touching the keys.
(link to the video will be put here later, maybe if I can re-discover it.)
