Sight singing practice

Sight singing is a skill that takes time to develop, but with some dedicated practice it’s something that many people can improve. I highly recommend using solfege, but you can also use scale degree numbers. Interval practice can also be useful because you want to be able hear different intervals in order.

Here are some tips.

Hymnals and folk songs

All religious preferences aside hymnals are a great resource for learning to sight sing. All of the songs are going to be tonal and few will modulate if any. They’ll also likely be fairly simple melodies that are meant to be sung. That might sound like a strange thing to point out, but what I mean is that they will likely be fairly easy to sing. Playing large interval leaps is easier on an instrument than it is with singing, and often vocal music only uses specific intervalic leaps (like thirds or fifths), or uses mostly step-wise motion. They’re written to be sung by many people, not just professional singers.

It’s a great way to get a lot of sight singing practice because most of the hymns will have 3 or 4 parts. That’s extra practice if you learn to sing each of the harmony parts. I recommend singing these parts within your range, even if that means transposing them up or down an octave. The goal is to practice sight singing, rather than putting together a choir.

I love using hymnals as practice because in addition to working on sight singing it also helps you develop an inner sense of harmony and how to create vocal harmonies. You’re practicing singing harmonies and with that you’ll start to internalize how those choral harmony parts are written. They’re not written the same way as pop harmonies (a lot of the time at least), but they’ll help with developing a sense of how chords are voiced within choirs.

Other useful songs are folk songs. Regardless of where they’re from, they’re often not overly complex and were created to be sung by a group of non-professional singers. This means they’ll likely be easier to sing than a songbook of vocal arrangements by a singer like Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston. They’ll also often be tonal or modal, which helps you develop a sense of what each mode or scale sounds like.

Sight singing books

There are books on sight singing that have tons of graded examples. Some books will also have lessons within them which include tips for singing specific intervals or exercises for improving your internal sense of pitch. Each of the examples is slightly more difficult than the previous example. These books will also likely include music in different keys, modes, scales, time signatures, and with different grooves. The examples I’ve seen in sight singing books are often fairly short, allowing for multiple read throughs and to allow for them to be taught and used in classes or exams.

They may also include rhythms to be sight read as well. These can be useful because sight reading rhythms can be tricky. These will also likely be in different time signatures and with different subdivisions of the beat, like 8th notes as well as 16th notes and 8th note triplets.

These books might be fairly expensive because they’re often used in college level courses on sight singing, but if your local library has one then they can be a great resource.

Instrumental music

Instrumental music can be another great resource for finding music to sight sing. Specifically orchestral pieces can be useful. I recommend using pieces that are tonal. Start with easier sections of the music, and work your way through other, more difficult, sections of the music.

It doesn’t matter if it’s specifically vocal music because the goal is to be able to hear the intervals and be able to vocalize those intervals and notes. Whether or not it’s vocal music doesn’t matter so much.

The only place it might matter is when you’re trying to sight sing instrumental music that doesn’t translate to the voice well. But again the goal is to practice hearing different intervals and relationships between notes. The goal isn’t to sound like the instrument that you’re sight singing.

Kodaly songbooks

This is how you can tell that I’ve taught music. The Kodaly approach to music education focuses on using songs that get slightly more difficult. You start singing songs with only two solfege syllables. Then you sing songs with progressively more solfege syllables. The songs get more difficult as you go. Other concepts are taught through those songs.

If you can find a Kodaly songbook, the examples are great sight singing practice for beginners. The first few songs will likely only use solfege syllables sol and mi, and the next few will use sol, la, and mi. As you go through the book the whole scale will be used, and then different scales will be used.

They can be a great resource to get yourself started because they start so simple and get progressively more complex as you get to the later examples. You can also practice specific groups of solfege syllables if there are specific syllables that are hard for you to hear.

Lyrics

If the song that you’re sight singing has lyrics, a good challenge can be to sing the lyrics as well. This is yet another reason why I’m a fan of using hymnals and folk songs for sight singing practice.

Once you’ve sung through the song and know how the notes are supposed to sound I highly recommend trying to sing through it while singing the lyrics as well. It’s another challenge to add to improve your sight singing skills even more.

If you’ve never tried to sight sing something while singing lyrics, rather than solfege syllables, it can be quite difficult because you can’t rely on that specific tool and have to hear it in your head without it.

Final notes

Sight singing can take some time to improve, but all it takes is practice. With some dedicated practice it’s definitely do-able. One of my biggest tips, that I didn’t include above because it’s so specific, is to join a choir and sight sing at the gig. That’s one thing I did while I was at Berklee. I sang bass for a local church choir and most of the time I wasn’t given the music ahead of time. So when I showed up to sing that day I was often sight singing. That alone helped my sight singing the most because it was so immediate and so hands on. I had no choice but to figure out how to sing the parts. I will say it did help because there was an organ player who often doubled the bass part so I could follow along with the organ if I needed to.

I hope these tips are useful and help you improve your sight singing skills.

ISJ