Please click on the link below to access the sight singing assignment for next week. You must bring the assignment to your sight singing lesson. You may choose to print it out, or to view it on a laptop or tablet device. Please do not attempt to read the assignment from your phone in the lesson. This seldom results in a high score.
Simple Meters In simple meter, the beat is divisible by two. A simple time signature contains a numerator and a denominator. The numerator indicates the number of beats in the measure, which gives you your conducting pattern. The denominator indicates the beat note, i.e. “4” is a quarter note, “2” is a half note, and so on.
Conducting patterns In all simple time signatures, certain factors remain the same. The downbeat is indicated by a downwards movement, and the pickup by an upwards movement. In triple time, the second beat goes away from the body. In quadruple time, the strong beats – 1 and 3 – are indicated by strong movements, 1 downwards and 3 away from the body. The second beat – a weak beat – goes across the body. There is a simple reason for this: in an ensemble, players and/or singers can keep track of beat patterns by looking for the strong beats, so the strong beats must be indicated by unmistakable movements. In quadruple time, it isn’t a problem for the second beat to be less visible to the players because it’s a weak beat.
Solfege syllables In this class, we will use a sight singing system known as “movable-do solfege.” The tonic of any key will be assigned the syllable “do.” The other syllables will be assigned accordingly.
| Scale Degree | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Theoretical Name | tonic | supertonic | mediant | subdominant | dominant | submediant | leading tone |
| Solfege Syllable | do | re | mi | fa | sol | la | ti |
Unit 2 Singing Focus