# Sight singing lessons online



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I found this online:

http://moveabledo.com/

I wonder if it is any good? Any opinions here from our music nerds? 

Not that I can sing a note, but I would like to learn a bit of basic sight reading, if only to hear the sounds in my head as I read along. But there are so many systems and so much conflicting advice I don't know where to start...


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Looks reasonable. It's basic solfege just like what was suggested to you on another thread.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Taggart said:


> Looks reasonable. It's basic solfege just like what was suggested to you on another thread.


I cannot work out what the whole point of solfege is, or how exactly it differs from just singing intervals. But perhaps I should first read through that site a bit and see if I can make more sense of it.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

I was maybe a little curt in the previous post. The idea is that once you know the do re mi and how to sing a scale using that you can learn how to sing intervals e.g. re to sol. The beauty is that if you change your do you _should_ be able to sing the same interval in a different key. This then allows to "hear" anything once you've got your do - usually from a keyboard.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Taggart said:


> I was maybe a little curt in the previous post.


Not at all: you are very helpful.



> The idea is that once you know the do re mi and how to sing a scale using that you can learn how to sing intervals e.g. re to sol. The beauty is that if you change your do you _should_ be able to sing the same interval in a different key. This then allows to "hear" anything once you've got your do - usually from a keyboard.


Okay, that much makes sense, but I thought this is pretty much what everybody does anyway (except of course for the lucky few with perfect pitch!). So there is nothing special about the names, and you basically just learn to sing intervals from a chosen tonic? I can do that without much difficulty, but still cannot sight sing for the life of me, because of problems I have mentioned before. For one thing, within a measure or two, and what with singing up and down a scale, I forget which note I chose as tonic!

Perhaps all of this improves with practice, and perhaps the exercises on that site are precisely the ones that will gradually improve one's abilities?

Are there any other ways to learn the skill? One way that occurs to me is to dispense with the idea of intervals from a particular tonic, and just learn to recognize and sing whatever intervals you encounter. It has the advantage that it can be applied to more chromatic music, and may also make it easier in music where there are frequent key changes (I am not sure whether, in solfege, one learns to recognize a key change and chooses a new "do" accordingly, or whether one keeps on using the old "do" - perhaps they go into that on that site).

The disadvantage of just learning to sing intervals without a reference tone is that any mistakes will tend to accumulate.

What other ways are there of going about it?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

The site looks as if it is trying to teach you basic a cappella singing. By the time you get up to lesson 21 they're doing 4 part stuff which means you have a built in backing track to sing along to.

It's all basic aural training - hearing a note and repeating it back; recognising a cadence; singing one of the parts of a melodty after hearing it played twice - with guidance on the tonic.

Try aural training in google and there are a whole range of sites offering examples and tests.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Taggart said:


> Try aural training in google and there are a whole range of sites offering examples and tests.


The embarrassment of riches on the web is actually part of the problem: there's so much I don't know where to start, and as always with the web, quality probably ranges from excellent to useless. I know too little about it to know which sites are good and which are not.

I am actually not so much interested in sight singing (or any singing) as in learning to audiate, i.e. hearing in my mind what I see on the page (and conversely, being able to write down what I hear in my mind). I'm not sure it is a completely separate skill from sight singing, mind you.

Incidentally, "cadence" is another one of those terms that I never quite understand. Is there any way to understand it without first having a lot of harmonic knowledge, i.e. suppose we wanted to explain what it means to someone who cannot read music at all, how would we go about it? Is there some sort of verbal definition independent from reference to printed music, or is it best to just play someone lots of examples until it "clicks" on an intuitive level? Where would one get hold of such examples?


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

brianvds said:


> "cadence" is another one of those terms that I never quite understand


A cadence is the end of a musical phrase.

Two frequently used cadences are the authentic cadence (V-I or V7-I) and half cadence (anything ending on V, often I-V).

If you can sing "Happy Birthday to You" you already know them.
The end of the first phrase of "Happy Birthday to You" is a half cadence.
The end of the second phrase as well as the end of the song are authentic cadences.

EDIT: Some cadence mnemonics for Suzuki students
V-I: "ta-da"
I-V: "what next?"
IV-I: "A-men"
IV-V-I: "and we're done"


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Seems to me then that for most of us, cadences are already part of our musical vocabulary; one just needs to learn their names. Or perhaps it is not quite as simple as that.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

brianvds said:


> perhaps it is not quite as simple as that


Sure it is. Enough things in life are complicated; let's let the simple ones be simple


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

hreichgott said:


> Sure it is. Enough things in life are complicated; let's let the simple ones be simple


I think recognizing them on the page is probably far more difficult, considering all the different keys, and the inversions of chords etc. Perhaps there should be a law that all composers should work in C major or A minor, and keep chords in root position. Then actual music will have something in common with what you see in textbooks of theory.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Incidentally, is it really necessary to memorize all those solfege syllables? Why not just "la la la" or "Hmm hmm hmm"?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

brianvds said:


> Incidentally, is it really necessary to memorize all those solfege syllables? Why not just "la la la" or "Hmm hmm hmm"?


Oy vey! One minute you go on about C major and then you want to la la la! The whole point about the solfege syllables is that you can recognise a V I as a sol do _*regardless*_ of the key you are in. You can recognise a minor third as a do to me (do based minor).

Going back to keys and chords, it's all a matter of simple counting, and solfege is one way of doing that. If you use roman numbers as I do, then it's just the same I is always your first note e.g. F# in the key of F# major V is always your fifth note e.g. C# in the key of F# major and so it goes on. Solfege is a good start but you need to understand how things work and do some simple counting.

Enjoy.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Taggart said:


> Oy vey! One minute you go on about C major and then you want to la la la! The whole point about the solfege syllables is that you can recognise a V I as a sol do _*regardless*_ of the key you are in. You can recognise a minor third as a do to me (do based minor).
> 
> Going back to keys and chords, it's all a matter of simple counting, and solfege is one way of doing that. If you use roman numbers as I do, then it's just the same I is always your first note e.g. F# in the key of F# major V is always your fifth note e.g. C# in the key of F# major and so it goes on. Solfege is a good start but you need to understand how things work and do some simple counting.
> 
> Enjoy.


Well, that's the thing. I know about the degrees of the scale. If you ask me to sing a I and then a IV or a V then I can do so, whereas if you ask me to sing Do and then La, I first have to sit and work out what La is again. Now I don't know if there is something particularly useful about knowing the solfege syllables - are they perhaps used in some other way as well, apart from simply being placeholders for the degrees of the scale? Perhaps they are just there so that singers will have an actual syllable to sing instead of just boring humming? I am not so much interested in singing as such, as learning to audiate the sounds as I see them on the page.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Yes, it just to have something to sing instead of hum, and it's an alternate way of thinking of I II III IV V.

Would those of a nervous disposition please look away now.

Thank you, I'll continue.






If you're still watching and are shocked.. I _did_ warn you.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

I guess you could just learn to sing numbers (do is I, re is II, etc) and it would come out to the same thing.

Singing is a necessary step on the way to audiating accurately. With both, you're producing tones from inside your own body. With singing, your physical ears provide an extra clue as to whether you were accurate.

It is interesting that you've set this goal for yourself -- audiating accurately -- but then you are very resistant to many of the helpful suggestions offered to you. Of course you could avoid solfege, singing, etc. etc., and just sit and stare at scores hoping the music will arrive in your head in an accurate manner. But it sounds like that's not working for you. The suggestions offered are meant as intermediate steps that will hopefully help you arrive at your goal. They are also the steps that most people follow in order to learn the skills you're interested in.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

hreichgott said:


> I guess you could just learn to sing numbers (do is I, re is II, etc) and it would come out to the same thing.


Well, that's a relief. 



> It is interesting that you've set this goal for yourself -- audiating accurately -- but then you are very resistant to many of the helpful suggestions offered to you. Of course you could avoid solfege, singing, etc. etc., and just sit and stare at scores hoping the music will arrive in your head in an accurate manner. But it sounds like that's not working for you. The suggestions offered are meant as intermediate steps that will hopefully help you arrive at your goal. They are also the steps that most people follow in order to learn the skills you're interested in.


When I said I am not interested in singing, I just meant that I have no interest in becoming a particularly good singer, or singing for an audience. I do in fact hum and whistle to myself all the time. For some reason I can't quite explain myself I have just always found those solfege syllables vaguely distasteful and would much prefer to just hum or whistle notes, which is what I try to do.

I have thus far not really put in much effort, I have to say, mostly because of lack of time and energy - I have a full time job plus several other hobbies I am trying to juggle. Thus my constant efforts to find shortcuts are not so much a symptom of laziness as an effort to save myself time.

Anyway, I see there are indeed all manner of potentially useful websites and free software on the web. I have used software called GNU Solfege in the past. It makes no mention of actual solfege, but it did teach me to recognize intervals, so there's some progress there. And it has plenty of other exercises as well.

I found an interesting thing: I am better at writing down a melody than reading it from printed music. I wonder if this is common. I seem to remember that when I first learned to read and write, I had a similar experience: I could write fairly well long before I could read fluently. I have not tried this out, but I think I could probably also far more rapidly write down a given chord and its inversion than I can recognize it when I see it printed. Not sure whether this is weird or normal.

And then, forgetting which note I chose as tonic remains a persistent problem, and once again I am not sure whether this is normal.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

brianvds said:


> I found an interesting thing: I am better at writing down a melody than reading it from printed music. I wonder if this is common. I seem to remember that when I first learned to read and write, I had a similar experience: I could write fairly well long before I could read fluently. I have not tried this out, but I think I could probably also far more rapidly write down a given chord and its inversion than I can recognize it when I see it printed. Not sure whether this is weird or normal.


Seems to fit with what you are saying, it seems you could write down c a t when you thought about a cat, but when you saw cat written down you didn't recognise it as a "cat".



brianvds said:


> And then, forgetting which note I chose as tonic remains a persistent problem, and once again I am not sure whether this is normal.


Question is, do you stay in tune? My wife tells me I used to sing hymns changing key for each line (same thing as forgetting your tonic). However, I was in tune for each line, I just got lost along the way. Since I've started doing aural training for music exams and a lot more piano, it has stabilised a bit. (I change key on every verse.)

If you don't stay in tune, you will, probably, need help to get it right.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Taggart said:


> Question is, do you stay in tune? My wife tells me I used to sing hymns changing key for each line (same thing as forgetting your tonic). However, I was in tune for each line, I just got lost along the way. Since I've started doing aural training for music exams and a lot more piano, it has stabilised a bit. (I change key on every verse.)
> 
> If you don't stay in tune, you will, probably, need help to get it right.


I would think that inability to stay in tune, and forgetting one's tonic, may in fact be basically the same thing. 
Lots of kids at the school where I work have the same problem. The school anthem has a change of key, as does South Africa's national anthem. Not a good idea, because few people can deal with that, and it is quite literally painful to my ears to listen to the kids singing. :lol:

I don't think I have a very serious problem about staying in tune, mind you, at least not with songs I know and that fall well within my vocal range. In such songs I never even know what the tonic is, mind you. I have on occasion tried to work out what the tonic is of some well known tunes, and couldn't. Forgetting what the tonic is seems to happen mostly when I try to sing from printed music.

As for getting help, if I could afford music lessons, I may well have gotten some. Perhaps a bit of practice will help to solve some of the problems. As I reported before, I have actually not spent much time working the thing yet. All my questions here are to help me improve my focus. I don't want to spend months battling it out with some method or software only to find that it is actually of no use and I should have done something else.


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## cjvinthechair (Aug 6, 2012)

Mr. brianvds - good for you; you sum up what many of us with no clue about formal musical training feel....it's oh, so easy if you're in the know.
I've spent hundreds of hours, literally, trying to pick up some sight reading skill latish in life from the myriad possibilities on the net, and by studying specific scores that my choir is tackling. I'm clearly quite moronic, as I have now, possibly, 5% sight reading capacity...thought it might even be as high as 10%, but having failed completely to move on from lesson 1 to lesson 2 on the program you're trying, I've had to adjust downwards.
Good luck to you..I'll stick to learning by rote, as when I was at school in the 19th Century !


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

cjvinthechair said:


> Mr. brianvds - good for you; you sum up what many of us with no clue about formal musical training feel....it's oh, so easy if you're in the know.
> I've spent hundreds of hours, literally, trying to pick up some sight reading skill latish in life from the myriad possibilities on the net, and by studying specific scores that my choir is tackling. I'm clearly quite moronic, as I have now, possibly, 5% sight reading capacity...thought it might even be as high as 10%, but having failed completely to move on from lesson 1 to lesson 2 on the program you're trying, I've had to adjust downwards.
> Good luck to you..I'll stick to learning by rote, as when I was at school in the 19th Century !


Well, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one with this difficulty. Perhaps we should take a time machine to the 10th century, before Guido came along to mess everything up, and when everyone simply had to memorize everything. 

Seriously though, it seems to me I am actually just missing some piece of some puzzle somewhere. I am not tone deaf and fairly good at singing or imagining intervals (though perhaps not good enough?) It shouldn't be difficult for me to reproduce intervals that I see on a score, but somehow it is. I think it is partly because a score contains a lot of information, including rhythm, and all the black dots begin to run around in front of one's eyes. I have a feeling professional music teachers have all manner of tricks with which they help students to overcome these difficulties, but I don't know: perhaps a certain percentage of people never learn the trick no matter what training they undergo (in the same way that most people will never acquire perfect pitch, no matter what they do).

And one is inundated with all manner of often conflicting advice. On another board, someone told me he learned to sight sing by just humming along whenever he played his guitar, and that now, whenever he sees a score, he quite spontaneously audiates everything. The same trick had absolutely no effect on my sight singing ability. Perhaps what works for one person does not necessarily work for all.


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## cjvinthechair (Aug 6, 2012)

Yup - that's roughly what I feel !

Don't know if you're singing anything specific, and if so have tried the part-learning sites on the web ? I've sung in a number of large/medium scale works by learning my (bass 2) part through these....and probably picked up the 5% reading ability by following the score at the same time.

Cheers. Clive.


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## Yardrax (Apr 29, 2013)

brianvds said:


> I have a feeling professional music teachers have all manner of tricks with which they help students to overcome these difficulties,


I don't think there is any tricks. I've never found reading a score to be complicated or difficult unless the content of what was written was precisely that. Do you actually play an instrument and can you sight read for that instrument? If you're trying to learn how to sight read at the same time as you're learning how the stave works I can see how their might be some difficulties.

If you aren't willing to learn Solfege, there is the 'Functional Ear Trainer' from this site which I've seen people recommend for ear training on other forums. It's a similar principal to movable Do except it uses interval names instead of syllables and there's no singing necessary, although the program itself recommends singing early in the process. I've tried it myself and I think that it's definitely useful in helping people at a beginner level.



> And one is inundated with all manner of often conflicting advice.


It probably is a good idea in the beginning stages of ear training to whether you were right by playing things on an instrument after attempting to sing them. Otherwise it will be difficult to tell whether you were right.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Yardrax said:


> I don't think there is any tricks. I've never found reading a score to be complicated or difficult unless the content of what was written was precisely that. Do you actually play an instrument and can you sight read for that instrument? If you're trying to learn how to sight read at the same time as you're learning how the stave works I can see how their might be some difficulties.


I can play a bit of guitar and piano, and can sight read for both, although I would not call myself brilliant at it. 



> If you aren't willing to learn Solfege, there is the 'Functional Ear Trainer' from this site which I've seen people recommend for ear training on other forums. It's a similar principal to movable Do except it uses interval names instead of syllables and there's no singing necessary, although the program itself recommends singing early in the process. I've tried it myself and I think that it's definitely useful in helping people at a beginner level.


Yes, I have that one. It is too early to tell whether it works, but it is fun to play with, so I'll definitely keep on playing with it. As mentioned before, I also tried GNU Solfege, and it was great for improving my ability to recognize intervals. It is possible that I just need a bit of practice. As I also mentioned before, I have actually not yet done a great deal of work on this, so it is too early for me to start lamenting yet. 

I was just curious to learn how others learned the skill, so as to avoid wasting time with ideas and methods that do not work well. So thanks to all for the input thus far!



> It probably is a good idea in the beginning stages of ear training to whether you were right by playing things on an instrument after attempting to sing them. Otherwise it will be difficult to tell whether you were right.


I agree. The neat thing about the software is that it does give feedback.


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