Oh sight singing....

Freshmen year I was terrible at sight singing. I mean yeah everyone was but I never really thought I'd ever get better. As high school progressed and I continued to attempt every sight singing example in chorus I saw myself getting better. This along with my recent theory training has really helped with auditions and learning music. Obviously not everyone in chorus is going to take music theory and we can only learn the very basics of reading music during chorus class. But the stuff we do learn in chorus is helpful. Realizing the solfege syllables of notes in a piece and the relationship between those syllables can help someone learn a piece. I mean there have been plenty of difficult intervals that I’ve looked at and been like “How do I even sing that?” and I’d always want it to be played on the piano for me so I could just mimic it. That’s not “good” singing though. I think it’s really important to learn sight singing because through that a singer can learn how to sing between intervals so eventually they can start to apply it to a piece and work it out on their own. This builds better musicianship skills without even taking a formal theory course. Obviously it’s not everyone’s passion to be a musician, but while we’re all in chorus class together it’s important to be able to do sight singing. I truly think it builds our chorus.