Finding a Place on the Page
As students in grade school we spend years working on our ability to translate words we see on a page into spoken word. We have hours and hours of practice. It’s easy to forget that our ability to read out loud was earned after a long and arduous journey. With this recognition, the amount of concern surrounding sight singing that I hear from students is absolutely legitimate. If learning to read had as many elements as a score does (not only pitches and rhythms but a key signature, a mode, a time signature, a tempo, dynamics, and for singers all of this is in addition to words or syllables!) Just like we did early in our reading lessons, we need a few markers to guide us.
The questions a young reader might ask could include the following:
Where do I start?
Where do I end?
Is there any punctuation?
Where are the spaces?
What is the content between the spaces? (What are the words?)
Go slow and steady for success on a first try.
Let’s apply the same to our sight singing samples:
Where do I start? (When the key is clear, sing an ascending pentachord and a descending leading tone to feel established and then find the first note).
Where do I end? (Can the established pentachord or descending leading tone help me predict how the end sounds?)
Is there any punctuation? (How many phrases are there? Are there “restart”/major breathing points?)
Where are the spaces? (do I have any big jumps? What are they?)What is the content between the spaces? (What kind of stepwise motion do I have within phrases and between large intervals?)
Go slow and steady for success on a first try.
Most importantly, offer yourself as much practice time as you would devote to learning to read.
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