A hypothetical question

[missroserose]

Say I need to learn to sight-sing music fairly accurately, starting from a position of almost no skill in such. I have one month in which to practice.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Comments

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

Do you currently sight-read (to any degree) on any other instruments?

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Love your icon. =)

To answer the question, yes, I played flute for several years, so I'm already familiar with the basics of pitch and rhythm and suchlike. Most of the problem stems from some sort of block about being able to look at a given note on paper and hear it in my head. If someone gives me the key note, I can sometimes figure it out by relativity, but just looking at a sheet of paper and trying to sing (unless it's a fairly simple scale or some such) without an instrument so I can hear what it sounds like is tough.

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I haven't been on LJ much recetly so I don't know how new it is, but I like your new icon too :-)

hmm. Flute, eh? when I want to figure out how something goes I usually pluck it out on the violin - I've been playing for over 20 years, so that's usually reasonably manageable. I go through it once or twice that way, and then lay the words over it. (I can't actually speak and play at the same time, but if the words are part of the music I can... it's like my brain can only produce one kind of output at once.) When I've been doing this more frequently, I have a much better correspondence between the note on the paper and the sound that it calls for. (Getting my voice to behave is another exercise entirely... it's my worst instrument by far).

What I'd suggest is working on sight-reading some stuff on your flute. Concentrate on listening to what it sounds like, and like you're teaching yourself vocab words in elementary school, learn to match the visual and the aural together.

A roommate in college found a website that trains you to listen to music and analyze it - pick out intervals by hearing them and then picking whether they were a third apart, etc., recognize notes by hearing a note and picking which printed note it was, things of that nature. I have no clue what the website was, though, or whether it still exists, or whether it was free. But that sort of thing sounds like it might help too.

How good are you at making your voice do what you want it to? If you hear something in your head, can you match it? I realize that I'm thinking more about your ear and the note-on-paper/note-in-your-head correspondence than actually *producing* what it is that you hear in your head. (The music, not the voices...) For instance, I can look at music and pluck it out, and if it's not too tough I can look at it and aurally 'visualize' it in my head... but if I were to try to sing it, most people nearby would look for something to smother me with.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

It's pretty new. I made it out of my 24th birthday pictures (posted a couple entries back).

I'm actually pretty good about being able to reproduce what I hear in my head; I've always had an excellent ear for music. Most of the problem, as previously mentioned, stems from looking at notes on paper and trying to correlate that with a tone in my head. With a flute, it's easy - just press the right keys (and get the breath right) and you've more or less got the note. Maybe I'll practice some with that first.

The main issue is, I have an audition in a month for a part in a musical - in this case, a brand new one that's constantly getting rewritten. I don't really expect to get the part, but I figure I'll have a helluva better chance if I can display some proficiency at picking the notes off the page without having to have the accompanist play it first.

I guess we'll see how I do...

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

Those birthday photos are *excellent* - you look fantastic, and you really know how to dress up to show yourself off! Thank you for sharing.

It sounds like you need to put yourself through ear-training drills. If I were on the violin or piano, here's how I'd do it... I expect that aside from both of them using your lungs, doing it with the flute will work pretty much the same.

Random Notes: Have some piece of music open, or make some flash cards. Pick a note, and sing what you think it's supposed to be. Then, play it on your flute, and use that as a pitch-pipe to aim for with your voice. Alternate between flute and voice until you're close enough to make you happy. Do this with a handful of notes, and come back to ones you've already done a few times. Hopefully, you'll remember, over the course of a few minutes, what some of them sound like. If it works, then your initial guess will be closer and closer to the actual note. I'm willing to bet that if you did that every day for a week, then on the last day your first attempt at singing the first note would be a bunch closer than it was when you first started. (training your voice? Or beating it into submission like the poor dude being attacked by his bouncy ball? I leave it to you to decide :-) )

Also mess around with some intervals - I don't know if there are really common ones in vocal music or favorite keys/modes of the person writing the pieces you'll be auditioning for, but if you learn to sing those intervals, then the jumps will seem more natural to you in a month than they do now. Practice singing a note and then the next note up, the third and fifth up, and the 4th down. (at least, I think those are some normal jumps, at least in major keys, right? Sorry, not so hot with music theory...) If you do that a bunch, then you'll also build up a good idea of where the notes are in relation to each other. (I've done this with violin before - it works!! Then, if you only have two or three notes that you know really well, you can find all the others relative to your landmarks, just by having a good idea of how far away they are.)

If you're doing this with flash cards, after a while line a few up in order and do the sing&play the sequence. If it's with sheet music, pick a measure or a phrase.

Also try this with sheet music for tunes or songs that you know. That way you'll be visually learning to recognize the stuff your ear already knows, not just learning to hear/produce the stuff your eyes are familiar with. (if that makes sense...)

Ok, I'll stop babbling now. Good luck with the ear/voice training, and with the audition!

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

So how's the practice going? :-)

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Not bad. My music teacher gave me some practice sheets that focused on intervals in the different modes, so I'm working on relative pitch for now. I'll probably start working on absolute pitch in a day or two; I liked the flashcard idea you came up with.

Now, if only I could find my pitch pipe...