Hi my daughter is taking her grade 2 cello this summer and we are a little stuck with the oral.

She has a nice voice when she uses it but she just won’t sing and when asked to sing something back its all over the place. We have used and oral cd in the past but daughter is reluctant to use it, she doesn’t even sing to the radio or any music cds, any advice welcome.

Hi!

My english is not that good. So, could you please explain what you meant by " all over the place" ??

By all over the place I mean, when she is asked to copy a few bars her teacher has played or sung she cannot seem to do this, she will get the first note correct but then will just sing anything that comes to her.

Try starting with one note, then two, and build up very gradually.

If you can practise with her, use your own voice rather than an instrument at first.
If either of you finds it difficult, try humming rather than lah-ing.

This is exactly the problem we had/have.
I can tell you what we have tried and what worked and what didn't.
We got the ABRSM book and CDs and used that. We used Hofnotes. I arranged singing lessons with a very patient and very good teacher with the express instruction to get her through her aural.
I spent hours struggling to play the same notes and rhythm twice without rehersal so that I could play examples for her to sing to.
I bought the Paul Harris aural books and the better ear books and CDs.
Lastly her excellent sax teacher decided that aural wasn't going to beat her and she has done hours of aural with my daughter.
So what do I think helped.
I really do think the singing lessons made a big difference. She started them exactly a year ago when she couldn't sing in tune. Within a few weeks she was singing in tune. Unfortunately none of us could hear her so much of our efforts in the last year have been focused on getting her to sing louder.
The other thing that has really helped has been the work the sax teacher has put in. She has been creative, persistent, caring and encouraging. In recent weeks she has taken my daughter for 2 hours a week. A 1 hour sax lesson and an hour of aural.

Hopefully you are not facing quite such a mountain as we have been dealing with. Getting her to sing along to the radio and cds would be a good start point. Does anyone in the family sing? If not then is someone willing to lead the way. Is there a choir in school, will she join.
Singing lessons have been well worth it for us.
We've done two grade 5s now and I can tell you that the aural does not get any easier. So getting a good start now is the best thing to do.
Good luck
Dora

Just to put the other point of view... My daughter, now 12, loves to sing. She is always singing round the house. She has had singing lessons since she was 8ish, and has just taken grade 5 singing. She has sung for several years in a local children's chamber choir, and also sings in two school choirs. However, she still loathes aural tests, and the bit she particularly struggles with is the singing back!!!

I recognise your description of singing that is "all over the place". My daughter often begins singing back accurately and then sings something that even I can tell is completely different from the original. In my daughter's case the problem is not with pitching, I think, so much as with remembering what she has heard. Oddly, all her singing doesn't seem to help her with that, or at least not sufficiently for the level of aural tests she is now faced with. Furthermore, the singing has not helped her to achieve any sort of consistency of result in aural tests at any given grade. As she learns cello, clarinet and recorder, as well as singing, she has done the aural tests at some of the grades several times, and her aural test results have varied, apparently randomly between full marks and fail! I'm afraid I have come to believe that success in the aural tests can be largely a matter of luck!

So, my recommendation would be for your daughter to take singing lessons or join a choir only if those are activities that she might enjoy. They certainly don't guarantee success in the aural tests or even, in my daughter's case, greater confidence in approaching the tests, I'm afraid.

Like Dora we've tried all sorts to help, but I am not convinced there is any quick solution. Things do get slowly better. My daughter took Grade 2 piano last term and found the singing back quite easy. BUT this is with quite a few years of music making on other instruments behind her now. She certainly didn't find it easy the first time she took a Grade 2 exam, or the next. I can see that her skills have been developing gradually over time in a way that they did not, necessarily, during our sometimes frenzied efforts in the run up to earlier exams.

I think that Kodaly is very helpful...

Part of the trouble with singing is that it can be done so easily with no intellectual understanding of where the notes are. Kodaly gives you that understanding on a deeply internalised level. But I think to learn this well it needs to be done from the start, I teach violin and the first piece my kids learn with fingered notes is one which uses the soh-mi interval that they almost all can sing straight away. I match where they sing to where I get them to play, pitchwise.

Solfa really does help with memorising - because it gives a NAME to every pitch that you sing/hear.

I rarely forget things that I have sung in solfa - but if I've only ever sung them with words or 'la' then I WILL forget them!

Like Dora we've tried all sorts to help, but I am not convinced there is any quick solution. Things do get slowly better. My daughter took Grade 2 piano last term and found the singing back quite easy. BUT this is with quite a few years of music making on other instruments behind her now. She certainly didn't find it easy the first time she took a Grade 2 exam, or the next. I can see that her skills have been developing gradually over time in a way that they did not, necessarily, during our sometimes frenzied efforts in the run up to earlier exams.
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This is exactly our experience too. My daughter took her Grade 3 piano yesterday with absolutely no concerns about her aural. We will have to await the mark to see if that is reflected in her results. Her first Grade 3 was a completely different story.
In my heart I feel that we are paying the price now for her taking exams while still relatively young. I think her marks will be affected by that alone but since she is keen to press on and isn't unsettled by failing aural marks I think we will live with it.
Dora


In practice can you use solfa for the echo singing test?
Having asked that it seems pretty obvious that you actually can. I absolutely agree with you that giving a name to each note (I probably mean pitch) would really help.
I might see if we can do that.
Dora