Can anyone suggest how I can improve my sight singing in the aural part of exams ? I easily managed the test for grade 5 as it just involves getting the pitch right at more or less your own speed. Now I am in the later grades , I just have no idea how to do it. The piano accompaniment puts me right off, I can't cope with hitting the right pitch and sticking to the rhythm while the examiner, to my mind ,is playing something comletely different and far too fast for me to cope with. I have the usual self-help c.d and tape and also joined a sight singing evening class but am still competely in the dark. Anyone else find this difficult ? Is there any hope !?

There's a thread on this somewhere - hang on I'll try to find it for you..............here it is - read this. Hope this helps!

I struggle with sight singing too Katie, and made a complete dog's dinner of my grade 6 sightreading piece.

The only advice is I can give you is practice practice and more practise. My teacher and I have contracted to do ten minutes practice at the beginning of each lesson. Also between leesons I will do some work on my own just picking up any old piece of music I've got lying around. My difficulty is more about getting the rhythm right than the intervals, but even the intervals leave somewhat to be desired!

Good luck with it and let us know how you get on. And thank you to the others for those book recommendations,.

How does one find a sightsinging group - that sounds great?!



Amber
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The sight singing class was at the "Mary Ward Centre " in Holborn. It was pretty simple stuff- not really advanced enough for post grade 5. We used a book called " Successful Sight Singing Book 1 " by Nancy Telfer.
I haven't investigated Book 2 - maybe it might help.

Glad that you sound as lost as me ! In my last exam the examiner wrote that my singing was "rather wayward " !!

Thanks !

A sightsinging group sounds fab!

I don't know about other people but I have never needed to do sight-singing in my daily life, as I've not (yet) been a member of a choir or anything. I guess the thing to do in the exam is imagine that your line is the most important line and sing it as if it's a solo! That's what I tried to do in my violin exam today! (But I don't know what kind of mark I got yet! )

This opens up a wider issue: that of the relevance of the aural part of exams to people's musical experiences. I have found that few teachers provide much practise of things like sight-singing and identification of cadences/modulations, etc., so to suddenly have to learn these for an exam seems quite alien and unconnected with the whole process of learning your instrument.

Any thoughts?

I have found while practising my sight-singing lately with my piano teacher that I can do it, I just don't think I can - so it's confidence I lack rather than anything else. Plan to get a sight-singing book though, as practice will hopefully beget confidence.