Sight Singing

"Sight Singing" (or "Sight Reading") is the skill of being able to read and sing music the first time you see it, without practicing ahead of time. This is a valuable skill to learn for all musicians as it not only helps improve your ability to read sheet music, but also helps strengthen your pitch and rhythm accuracy.

Welcome!

This set of resources can help you practice and improve your sight singing skills, alongside the work we do in class.

These resources are broken into two sections:

1. Rhythm Reading
2. Sight Singing Pitch

In addition to these sections, interval ear training is also highly suggested, as training your ear to hear intervals will greatly improve your pitch accuracy when singing

Sight Reading Rhythms

Sixteenth + Eight Combinations

Rhythm Reading

Overview

Rhythm reading can be broken down into three essential skills, each of which build upon each other:

Steady Beat > Subdivision > Rhythm

It is recommended that you ensure you can maintain a steady beat, both with and without assistance from a metronome or other source, before moving on to any other skills. Working on feeling the even subdivision of the beat into eighth notes (2s), eighth note triplets (3s), and sixteenth notes (4s) is also essential to performing rhythms.

Steady Beat

Can you internalize and maintain a steady beat, with and without the assistance of a metronome?

Introduction to the Steady Beat

Can you feel the steady beat in a piece of music? Can you put it on your body by tapping your foot or hand, bobbing your head, walking, or dancing to it? How do we most commonly count the beat?

Steady Beat, or Not?

Can you hear the difference between a steady beat and random beats/no beat?

Steady Beat Practice

Can you tap or clap along with the steady beat in the song?

Do you have a tendency to RUSH (get ahead of the beat; too fast ) or to DRAG (fall behind the beat; too slow)

Steady Beat Test

Say the word "Down" on each down beat through the whole video.

Are you steady with the metronome?
Can you maintain the beat without the metronome?

For further practice with the steady beat, find a metronome (there are many sites and app versions of a metronome, or you can just use Google's here), press play and practicing keeping the steady beat by tapping, clapping, walking, etc along with the beat. Try this at a variety of TEMPI (Suggested common tempi: 60BPM, 76BPM, 90BPM, 112 BPM, 128 BPM)

Subdivision

Can you evenly divide the beat into 2s, 3s, and 4s?

Subdivision Overview

How can we divide the beat into equal parts?

How do we communicate subdivisions of 2s, 3s, and 4s?

Subdivision Practice

Practice subdividing the beat with this video. Tap your foot on the beat, and say the subdivisions with the demonstration.

You can use the numbers for the subdivisions if that is easier!

Subdivision Practice 2

This is the same practice exercise as before, but without the counting included! YOU speak the subdivisions while tapping your foot. Listen to the hihat for assistance!

Subdivision Test

Tap your foot to the beat and speak the subdivisions in this assessment. Ask someone to listen to you:

Did you stay on the steady beat?
Were all of the subdivisions even?

Once you are able to internalize and maintain a steady beat, with or without assistance, and evenly subdivide that beat into even divisions of 2s, 3s, and 4s, you are ready to move on to rhythm!

Rhythm

Reading and performing patterns of different note values along with a steady beat and appropriate subdivisions.

In music, sight reading and performing rhythms (without using instruments) generally follows one of two basic systems: counting, or rhythm syllables (also referred to as rhythm solfege).

Counting is generally the system of choice for instrumental music, and rhythm syllables are the system of choice for vocal music. At LGA, all middle school music classes, and most high school vocal music classes, utilize rhythm syllables. As such, this guide will focus on a system of rhythm syllables.

Rhythm Syllable Systems

Rhythm syllables are a musical way to read and perform rhythms on their own. There are a variety of different rhythm syllable systems in use around the world, but they all work in a similar way by representing different note values and rhythm formations with nonsense syllables or sounds. Similar to lyrics in song, each note in a rhythm that is one beat or less in duration will be represented by a single syllable, while longer note values will add additional syllables to represent each additional beat, or subdivision of the beat that the note receives.

Here you can see four different examples of rhythm syllable systems that are used around the world.

While similar in many ways, each system has some differences both in syllables, as well as in the reasoning behind them. (For more information on these system, this is a great article, and the source of the graphics to the right.)

At LGA we use a modified version of the Kodály (Koh-dye) rhythm syllable system.

Sight Reading Rhythms

using the Adapted Kodály Rhythm Syllable System

Sight Reading Quarter and Eighth Notes Original.webm

Learn

Practice

Quarter Notes

In common time, the quarter note is just the steady beat! So if you can keep a steady beat by tapping, clapping, or with "Ta", you've mastered the quarter note!