(MNS) Sight - Singing Lesson

Sight-Singing Lesson

Sight-singing is the reading and performing of a piece of music that the performer has not seen before. This skill requires the musician to sing the notated rhythms and pitches. Sight-singing can be significantly challenging and therefore requires practice to master the skill, even on the simplest of melodies.

The process for sight-singing can be as follows:

  • First, identify the meter. The meter can be found by looking at the top number of the time signature. Then identify the beat value and the division value from looking at the bottom number.
  • Identify the key. The key signature will give you two possibilities for key: one major and one minor. Then look at the first and last notes of the melody: these will often be tonic, especially the last note. This will help you decide between the two possibilities presented by the key signature.
  • Look for any accidentals. Raised pitches that would be la or ti in the minor key suggested by the signature will confirm that minor key as the key of the melody.
  • Scan the rhythm for the fastest notes, and the pitches for the hardest passages. Choose a tempo that will make these passages comfortable.
  • Find the highest and lowest notes. When singing by yourself, you can sing in any key you like. Choose a key that will put the highest and lowest notes in your range.
  • Once you have key and tempo chosen, orient yourself to the key. For example, you can sing scales or arpeggios, to orient yourself to either major or minor mode.
  • After orienting yourself to the key, look for the hardest and trickiest passages. Sing through a couple of these passages out loud.
  • Be sure to sing the lowest and highest notes out loud before you begin the melody. This way you will know both the sound and the feel of those notes ahead of time, which will help you perform them and detect errors as you sing.
  • Finally, with a comfortable key and tempo, and at least a rough handle on the toughest rhythms, sing the melody straight through, without stopping.

Choose a method of sight-singing and stick with it. You can sing by numbers (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1). You can sing by solfege (do,re,mi,fa,sol,la,ti,do). Or you can sing by the syllable "la" on every note.

Below are 3 examples of singing a simple minor melody using all three of these methods.

Here is the music to be used in this example:

Music in the example

Here is an audio sample of using numbers.

Here is an audio example of using solfege.

Here is an audio example of using "la".

 

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