The 3 Proficiencies Needed

to Sight Sing

 
This topic presents a sequence for sight singing development so you can be a person who can accurately read music and not be reliant on others or a keyboard to learn new songs. Sight Singing is made up of 3 Separate Proficiencies which when they are integrated together will allow you to be a completely independent sight singer - not dependent on an instrument or another singer. Most of the Proficiencies cannot be done quickly so the whole process may take at least a full year to complete. I suggest working on them in small bits of about 5 minutes at a time and can be easily integrated into a warm up or craft period for a chorus, quartet rehearsals or your individual learning sessions. The results will give you a great deal of confidence and satisfaction. Proficiency 1 (P1): Knowing the System. The first Proficiency that needs to be developed is to “Know the System’. Although several System are possible as we discussed in “Music Reading For Singers”. we strongly recommend the Solfege System of Syllables based on the song’s Key Signature. I have discussed the reason for my preference completely also in my topic “Music Reading For Singers”. I believe the easiest way to learn the System is to sing Scales in Syllables. By singing Scales and Chords in Syllables, you will develop your understanding of pitches in reference to their tonality and will start to develop the Sound Association between the Syllables and their Sounds. Proficiency 2 (P2): Positioning the System on the Staff. Once you have some grasp of “The System” ( P1), you need to go on to “Positioning the Syllables on the Staff” (P2). This is based on the Key Signature. Many singers pay very little attention to the Key Signature but that is a grave mistake. There are only Sharp or Flat Key Signatures, each with it’s own rule, plus knowing that “no sharps and flats is the key of C”. We simply memorize these few things and then apply them to the Key Signatures. I’ll also give you a trick to make positioning Syllables on the Staff quite simple. Proficiency 3 (P3): Associating Sounds to their Syllable Names. Singing scales and the I chord in Syllables as we do in Proficiency 1, is a good start, but is not enough to develop a complete Association between the Syllable and their Sound. “Sound to Syllable Association” is the most challenging Proficiency and we will give you several gradual Step to develop this necessary Association. A very helpful concept is the use of “Helping Tones”. These are tones you already know that can assist you in getting to another tone. In other Steps we will give you other techniques including learning the Syllables to Familiar Songs. Since the sounds are already learned, it’s relatively easy to put the Syllable Names to the Sounds assuming you have done the work on Proficiency 1. With serious work on these 3 Proficiencies you will find that you are able to independently Sight Sing. On the next page we will give various “Steps” for each of the 3 Proficiencies, organized in 3 columns and in abbreviated form. Since the 3 Proficiencies are basically discrete (separate from each other) you can mix up the order for doing these “Steps” as suggested on the “Sequence” page where. we give a suggested Sequence of 15 or 17 Steps to follow. Click Here To Continue If you have any confusions or suggestions, click on my E-mail address to send me a message. tednorton@roadrunner.com Click here to Return to MusicEdTed.info HomePage. ../SightSinging/Introduction.html../SightSinging/Introduction.htmlThe_Steps.htmlmailto:tednorton@roadrunner.com../indexSite/index.htmlshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2shapeimage_2_link_3shapeimage_2_link_4