Sight singing exercises

Sight singing is the ability to look at a piece of music and sing it after having been given “do“, the root note of the scale. It can be quite difficult, but there are a number of exercises that you can use to improve your sight singing skills.

Here’s the list:

• Practice sight singing
• Learn solfege
• Pitch match
• Drone “do”
• Scale exercises
• Arpeggios
• Hear the melody in your head

Inner hearing

Before we get into the specifics of these tips let’s talk about inner hearing. Inner hearing is what you hear in your head. Another word for this is audiation. It’s the ability to hear things in your head.

Sight singing is very related to inner hearing. If you can’t hear what a melody sounds like in your head then you won’t be able to sing that melody. You need to work on inner hearing if you want to get better at sight singing.

Some of these practice tips will be related to inner hearing and will help you improve your inner hearing abilities.

Practice sight singing

I’ve added this one hear because though it might be obvious I think it’s worth mentioning. If you want to get better at sight singing, then you should practice sight singing. These exercises are all useful and can help, but the main thing is to practice sight singing.

Simple melodies are useful to use at the beginning so try to find songs that don’t use many scale degrees. Folk songs can work well and so can Kodaly songs. The Kodaly method is a method of music education started by the musician and music teacher Zoltan Kodaly and it focuses on learning simple solfege songs, that use progressively more solfege syllables. If you can get your hands on a book that has a list of those songs that are notated they can be great practice for beginner sight singers.

There’s also plenty of sight singing books that can be used.

Hymnals may also work because they have many songs that are fairly simple.

Learn solfege

My number one tip to work on sight singing is to learn solfege. I’ve got a video that goes into some depth on why solfege is useful which I recommend you check out.

Solfege is an Italian naming system for the notes in different scales. Using movable “do” you can learn each scale degree as it relates to the root note of “do.” Having unique syllables like do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti can help you learn them more quickly because you have something specific to hold on to.

Do sounds like do all the time. Re sounds like re all of the time. Each syllable has a specific sound.

You can also use numbers, but I don’t like numbers as much because numbers are already used for roman numeral analysis.

Here are the solfege syllable for the major scale.

Do (pronounced like “doe”) is the first scale degree. Re (pronounced “ray”) is the second scale degree. Mi (pronounced “mee”) is the third scale degree. Fa (pronounced “fah”) is the fourth scale degree. Sol (pronounced like “soul”) is the fifth scale degree. La (pronounced “lah”) is the sixth scale degree. Ti (pronounced “tee”) is the seventh scale degree.

In minor you’d have some alterations, but those are the basics.

Di (pronounced “dee”) is used for a sharp first scale degree. Ri (pronounced “ree”) is used for a sharp second scale degree. Fi (pronounced “fee”) is used for a sharp fourth scale degree. Si (pronounced “see”) is used for a sharp fifth scale degree. Li (pronounced “lee”) is used for a sharp sixth scale degree.

Ra (pronounced “rah”) is used for a flat second scale degree. Me (pronounce “may”) is a flat third scale degree. Se (pronounced “say”) is a flat fifth scale degree. Le (pronounced “lay”) is a flat sixth scale degree. Te (pronounced “tay”) is a flat seventh scale degree.

Using all of those you can create all of the different scales and modes.

Pitch match

Pitch matching is the ability to sing a note that you hear. It can also be the ability to sing a specific scale degree within a scale, after having been given “do”, the root note of the scale.

Practice matching pitches randomly on your instrument. Just doing this can help a lot with intonation. Play pitches at random on your instrument and try to sing or hum them.

You can use pitches all within a specific scale at first. That may be a little easier. Then transition to random pitches that aren’t within one specific scale.

Drone “do”

Another great exercise to work on both sight singing ability and inner hearing ability is to practice singing different degrees of a scale while playing do on an instrument. Piano is the easiest to do this with, but other instruments can work too.

Give yourself do and then choose a scale degree to sing after that. Let’s say you choose to sing mi. Sing mi and then after you’ve sung it check your tuning against your instrument. Then sing do again and sing another scale degree.

Keep doing this within only one major or minor scale at first. Practice singing in different keys. Once all the major and minor scales within your range are comfortable mix them together. Sing both major and minor solfege syllables in this way.

One variation of this exercise is to not give yourself do or sing do after singing each solfege syllable. This way you practice hearing do in your head without giving yourself do from an instrument and continually hearing it over and over again. This helps with inner hearing.

Scale exercises

Another thing to do to work on sight singing practice is to practice singing scale exercises. Singing scales up and down can help, but practice singing scales in different combinations. Sing scales in thirds. Sing scales in fourths or fifths. Try sixths and sevenths, though those will be a wide range.

You could also practice singing scales in arpeggios which brings us to the next tip.

Arpeggios

Singing arpeggios is a common singing exercise, but it can also be used as a way to practice inner hearing and improve your sight singing skills.

Practice singing scales in arpeggios or whole chord progressions. Sing the arpeggio do mi sol then sing re fa la then sing mi sol ti and so on up the entire scale if your vocal range can handle it.

It can take some time to get comfortable with all of this in major and minor scales, but once you are comfortable with it try singing arpeggios in different inversions. Sing the arpeggio of do mi la and then re fa ti and then mi sol do and so on. This can help singing different parts of chords and common interval groups in music.

Try second inversion triads starting with do fa la.

Another way to practice arpeggios is by singing whole chord progressions as arpeggios. I recommend starting with common chord progressions first and then transition to less common chord progressions. Start with something like I V vi IV then sing a twelve bar blues. Sing a ii V I and any other common chord combination you can think of.

All of these will help you better hear chord tones and better sight sing music.

Hear the melody in your head

Before you attempt to sight sing a melody, practice hearing it in your head. Try to hear it in as much detail as possible. Hear as many of the articulations and dynamics as you can. Try to hear it played on whatever instrument it is written for. If there are lyrics hear the lyrics.

I’ve got a video on writing without an instrument and many of those tips will be useful to improve your inner hearing abilities.

The goal is to hear as much detail as possible. Really hear the distance between each interval and how it relates to the tonal center or the root of the chord.

Final notes (pun intended)

That’s it for my list of tips to improve your sight singing. As with all of these tips it’s necessary to test them out yourself and see what works for you. Some of these practice methods might not be the best practice method for you. If that’s the case test out other ways of practicing to find what works best for you.

And remember that your practice should be specific to whatever you’re trying to learn. If the goal is to sing atonal melodies then your practice should reflect that.

ISJ