Lessons › Singing

How to sight-sing

Sight-singing means singing music you have never seen before, straight from the page. Unlike a pianist, a singer has no keys to press, so it depends on hearing each note in your head first. This method builds that skill step by step.

1. Find home

Every melody is built around a home note, called the tonic. Look at the key signature to find the key (see Key signatures made simple). Then sing the tonic, the scale up and down, and the home chord (the first, third and fifth notes of the scale). This tunes your ear to the key before you start.

2. Use solfège or numbers

Many choirs sing on solfège syllables: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. In movable do, “do” is always the home note of the key, so the same syllables fit every key and each syllable gets its own sound. Some teachers use scale numbers (1 to 8) instead. Either way, you learn how each step of the scale feels, rather than the letter names.

3. Read the shape, not every note

Look at the melody’s outline: where it moves by step, where it skips along the home chord, and where it leaps. Steps are easiest to hear. For leaps, use interval landmarks, such as a fifth that sounds like the start of “Twinkle, Twinkle.”

4. Get the rhythm first

Before singing pitches, speak or tap the rhythm while keeping a steady beat. A wrong note is easy to recover from; losing the beat usually stops the performance.

5. Sing slowly and keep going

Hear your starting note, think the first few notes in your head, then sing at a slow, steady tempo. If you miss a note, find the next one and carry on, just as you would in a rehearsal.

6. Check yourself

Without feedback it is easy to practice mistakes. In Sight Reading Practice, press Hear it for your starting note, then Check me and Use microphone. Each note you sing turns green or red, so you know exactly which intervals to work on. Leave Exact octave off so it works for any voice.

A ten-minute routine

1. Sing the scale and home chord in today’s key (1 minute).
2. Sing three Level 1 or 2 exercises with the microphone check (5 minutes).
3. Sing one exercise a level higher (2 minutes).
4. Go back to the notes you missed and sing just those intervals (2 minutes).