Sight Singing for Beginners in 5 Easy Steps!

HONK! HONK! Are you a singer who feels lost as soon as you look at a sheet music? Then, you are at the right place. Learn sight singing easily with me today! You will find ‘Sight Singing for beginners’’ to be a comprehensive text containing sight singing exercises for beginners and every basic concept you need to know to start reading notation.

It also includes free sight singing resources and beginner sight singing tips to make your learning process less challenging.
Let’s head on!

Sight-read loads and loads of music. Don’t let perfectionism or fear stop you in your tracks. Let your curiosity guide you

What is sight singing?

Ah, the usual question! Tutors usually make a big fuss about it and make it sound too hard to learn sight singing. I know mine did! For 4 years. It’s quite simple really.

Sight singing is the ability to read musical notation and symbols and sing. Sight singing for beginners starts at learning the basic concepts of music theory. Checkout this article to learn about Notation and Sight Reading.

In other words, to learn sight singing to be able to read musical notation, understanding rhythm and pitch, while singing the written melody. Phew!! Big words!. When singers skim through a piece of music, they need to be able to recognize time signatures, intervals, key signatures, and how the notes move. Now this is sight singing for beginners. Sight singing exercises for beginners includes practicing the above mentioned basic concepts.
I’m not gonna lie, to learn Sight Singing, does take a lot of practice, deeper understanding and a grasp of music theory.

Few Techniques to Learn Sight Singing

1. Learn Basic Music Theory

Clefs: look to identify if the piece of music is written in Treble or clef. This would help you identify pitches of the notes accurately.

Notes: Let’s begin from learning Notes and Note values.

Intervals: to learn sight singing better you should understand how intervals work in music. Basically, learn seconds, thirds and fourths.

Time Signatures: Basically, learn the simple time signatures. 4/4, 3⁄4 and 2/4 just for getting the hang of reading notes. You can check out the many free sight singing resources available online like Time Signature to learn sight singing easily.

Rhythms: After learning notes and its values, try to clap or tap the rhythm according to the note values you’ve learnt.

Here are a few rhythmic Sight singing exercises for beginners to try!

2. Solfege- an Easy Sight Singing Exercise

I personally recommend solfege to learn sight singing for beginners. Solfege is an Italian syllable system that is used to represent the most basic musical notes or the 7 pitches.
“Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do” are the solfeggio syllables. This system is a great tool to learn sight singing because it helps the beginners to recognise the pitches and intervals and therefore learn sight singing without much challenges.

Check out this blog called Solfege and remember these are some brilliant ways to get started on sight singing for beginners.. Let me give you a few progressions of the solfege that you can try.

Did You Know?

Without the ability to sight read fluently, musicians are limited to playing music they can play by ear or else have memorized.

3. Scales

Practicing major or minor scales is an excellent tool to learn sight singing for beginners. Scales help sight reading the ascending or descending progressions of the notes.

Scales usually span out for an octave and have repetitive patterns from lower to higher pitch and vice versa.

Remember that there are many modes of the musical scale. The major scale and minor scales are the most often used modes. We also have other modes such as Dorian, Phrygian, and Mixolydian.

Major Scale: One of the most essential practices you need to learn sight singing. This pattern is made up of entire steps (tones) and half steps (semitones).

Minor Scale: The minor scale has a somewhat different interval structure. Minor scales come in several forms, such as harmonic minor, melodic minor, and natural minor.

4. Sight Sing Simple Melodies:

After you have a fair understanding of basic music theory, try to figure out very simple melodies. This is a very good sight singing practice for beginners. You can begin with simple melodies with simple movements, rhythm patterns and intervals.

Few pointers to start sight singing simple melodies for Beginners,

• Start by finding out the key signature. This will give you an idea on what notes will be used.
• Next step will obviously be looking for the Time Signature. This will help you understand the rhythmic structure.
• Quickly scan the entire piece of music be it 4 bars or 20 bars. You can find out the melody’s range, or the repeating patterns.
• Keep an eye out for the intervals or any jumps. Try to work it out beforehand.
• Start sight singing the melody. But more importantly check it with a piano or any free sight singing

5. Beginner’s Sight Singing Tips!

• Slowly develop the habit of breaking down long phrases or complex note progressions into smaller parts and try to work the melody out. This will help you give it your undivided attention and to learn sight singing becomes tad easier. Breaking the melody down before trying all together is an excellent sight singing tips for beginners.
  
• You should start sight singing for beginners by listening to the melody before trying to sight sing, initially.
  
• Encircle the difficult passages or intervals and notes patterns so you can remember to work it out separately.
  
• Try to understand the basic elements of Circle of Fifths, a free sight singing resource available on our website. This helps you recognise key signatures, fairly quickly.
  
• Begin practicing using a metronome to enhance rhythmic accuracy is just a perfect tip for sight singing for beginners.
  
• You must develop the habit of allocating a certain period of time each day to learn sight-singing and practice a few easy sight singing exercises.
  
• try using free sight singing resources like apps online and check the accuracy.

Sight Singing Exercises for Beginners

Easy sight singing exercises help you get a grip on the concepts to learn sight singing. Let me introduce exercises that will assist you in remembering intervals including thirds and fifths. You can use solfaggio syllables DO RE MI FA SOL LA TI DO or 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 to practice the scales. Start with major scales and then work your way to minor scales.

Here are a few proven sight singing exercises for beginners that I have personally fact checked for you.

Sight singing exercises for beginners also include ear training. It may sound strange but keeping on listening to melodies to grasp its pitches and sing them out is going to help you remember how certain progressions sound. This way you can work the notes in your head if the melodies are familiar before singing. I’ve learnt such an awesome sight singing tip very late in my career. Checkout another article of ours on Ear training to know exactly how it works and how it helps to learn Sight Singing.

Closing Thoughts

I have added some easy and free sight singing resources online that had helped me to sight singing in the past. Always remember patience and persistence is the key to learn anything perfectly. So no matter how hard it is, keep trying. But as always, I would recommend professional assistance. To learn sight singing with proper resources and guidance, enroll with us today for a Free Demo!