First steps to sight-singing
Learning to sight-sing can be rather like walking in the dark - familiar objects (notes, rhythm patterns) loom alarmingly as you grope around for the light switch (a sense of pitch) in a strangely unfamiliar environment. But it does not have to be like that, as long as you move from the known to the unknown, a small step at a time.
First, let’s consider the entwining strands of sight-singing. We hear music in our heads easily; both the musical and the less musically able have no trouble in remembering the melody of Happy Birthday to You. Try this: tap a pulse and then sing the opening phrase of the song, asking your pupil to continue the song in his head until the final line, ‘Happy birthday to you’, which he then sings out loud. Does the sung phrase coincide with your own mental sense of pitch and rhythm? This useful exercise in internalising melody is easily extended into instrumental practice. Ask your pupil to remain silent in a particular section of a piece, simply hearing the music in his head, before picking up the playing again at the end of the internalised section. If this seems too complicated at first, many nursery songs build up the required skills by leaving gradually increasing gaps in the words - silent, internalising spaces. Heads, shoulders, knees and toes, John Brown’s Baby and My hat it has three corners, all found in A & C Black’s excellent Okki–tokki-unga, are useful examples.
Secondly, how important is it to have a fixed sense of pitch? A few children are born with perfect pitch and some others, usually string players used to tuning regularly to A, acquire it fairly easily. When I worked with Yvonne Enoch on her piano group-teaching project, she would ask one of the children to sing an A at the start of each lesson before a note had been played. She would then ask the other children whether they thought this note was too high, too low or just about right. Gradually a consensus A was reached which was finally checked on the piano. These children did not necessarily develop perfect pitch, but they did get a sense of relative pitch – an A is about here.
A third sight-singing strand is simply to make sure that children have a large fund of well-known tunes, jungles and rhymes to draw on so that they have some sense of how a melody is likely to sound or behave. Nursery rhymes and traditional songs, although at the moment out of fashion, do give children a strong sense of melody, harmony, rhythmic pattern, phrase shape and form. An aural memory bank of early songs will strengthen all aspects of musicianship, including sight singing.
Now to the practicalities of incorporating sight-singing into a short instrumental lesson. We must start by making sure that pitching a note can be achieved easily and accurately. This is best done in the very earliest lessons by asking your pupil to sing a comfortable note before trying to find it on the keyboard. When this is understood, let him copy pitch from your voice, and only later sing straight from the piano sound. At the same time, it is a good idea to establish ‘up’ and ‘down’ securely. Try ‘sing me a really high note’ or ‘a low a growly note’. Later he can learn to sing a little higher or lower from a starting note.
Once the idea of high and low is really established, you are ready to start out towards a scale. Try singing Frère Jacques and Three blind mice at first. It is a good idea to play them by ear on the piano as well, accompanied as soon as possible with a simple I – V – I bass. How many keys can he do this in? Build on this by making some simple flash cards. These can be used for singing or playing; a mixture is ideal. Consolidate here with practice of the Grade 1 Aural Test B, which uses these particular degrees of the scale. Specimen Aural Tests Grade 1 – 5 (ABRSM (Publishing Ltd) has plenty of examples.
To extend the range further, a most useful melody is Hot cross buns, which also makes the octave interval very familiar. Girls and boys come out to play provides another good resource. Again, use the melodies for playing by ear (and also for harmonising) as well as singing them. Hot cross buns works well as a round, and sung or played twice through can be easily combined with Frère Jacques. Two singers or players can have a lot of fun with this, and one intrepid pianist can combine the two melodies, one in each hand. After this kind of thorough workout, extend the range of the flash cards and cover the Grade 2 Aural Test B.
By now your pupil will be ready for scales and arpeggios. Write out a major scale (D major is suitable for pitching) ascending and descending. Give the key note and ask your pupil first of all to sing it out loud, and then to sing it in his head. Now ask him to sing two or three notes, starting easily with, for example, 3 - 4 – 5, moving on to skipped notes, 2 – 4 – 6 or 8 – 5 – 8, and then extending to more complicated patterns. A useful way to focus attention and increase concentration is to cut out simple frames from a piece of card. The frames can then be placed over the notes of the written out scale which are to be sung. Allow time for the pupil to internalise the missing scale notes at first, but repeating the process will help ‘skips’ to speed up. Build on this by singing the now familiar songs using letter names or numbers (or tonic solfa) without looking at the keyboard. Useful materials now will be: the Aural Test B from Grades 4 and 5; Tests C and D from Musicianship in Practice Book I (ABRSM (Publishing) Ltd); Aural Time, Easy Sight Singing Practice by David Turnbull (Bosworth); and 333 Elementary Exercises from the Kodaly Choral Method (Boosey and Hawkes).
By now quick skips around the major scale will be aided by focussing on intervals. Remember to work on these both up and down. While many pupils find it fairly easy to pitch a fourth upwards, many find it much more difficult to do this downwards. Well known tunes can be used to help fix the interval securely, but if you do this, you will have to go over it many times to make sure that the correct tune and interval are matched – they do tend to get mixed up. Flash cards of intervals consolidate the whole process, and it is useful to point out positioning on the stave, for example, that a third is always either form a line to line or from a space to space whereas a fourth is form a line to a space or from a space to a line etc.
Your pupil is now ready to sight-sing the melodic line of the next piece (in a major key) that he is going to learn. Can he hear it in his head, perhaps just a few notes at a time? Perhaps he can sing it out loud too. Persuade him to memorise (without playing) just a few bars of the left hand opening – can he play this while singing the melody off by heart or even tapping the melodic rhythm? Invaluable in developing this two-activities-at-a-time work are the echo singing with ostinato tests of the Practical Musicianship Syllabus, Grades 1 and 2. Again, Musicianship in Practice Book I (ABRSM (Publishing) Ltd) gives plenty of examples.
Follow on by making minor and then modal patterns familiar in the same way. Playing by ear, harmonisation and improvisation will also improve musicianship skills, as will an understanding of theory. All sorts of ensemble work, from simple two-part sight-singing to playing rounds and duets will enhance confidence in holding a musical line. Space has not allowed me to discuss rhythmic work here, but all aspects of this too need to be steadily built up hand in hand with those of pitch.
The aims of all this work are two-fold; firstly to become a good sight-singer (and instrumental sight-reader) who can enjoy a range of musical activities. Unless our pupils are to become good sight-readers we have failed in our efforts to produce independent musicians. The second aim is to be able to look at a page of music and hear it in our head. Can we tell by looking if a sheet of music is by Beethoven or Brahms? Only by becoming familiar with the composers’ styles. Can we hear the harmony in our head? Not, I suspect without having spent time playing cadences and chord progressions. Can we remember accurately the sound of an oboe? Again, only through repeated listening. As teachers, part of our job is to knit together many of these fringe skills which are actually central to a musician, and which will open up for our pupils the magical musical kingdom.
Caroline Diffley is an experienced teacher, examiner and piano mentor on the Certificate of Teaching (CT ABRSM) panel.
