The coming week’s sight singing lesson will continue to focus on singing intervals using moveable-do solfege, chanting rhythms in simple meters, and putting the two concepts together in stepwise melodies in major keys.
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.
Intervals: perfect and imperfect consonances All the perfect and imperfect consonances – perfect unisons, fourths, fifths, and octaves; major and minor thirds; major and minor sixths – have something in common. They can all be found within the tones of the major triad and its inversions.
As you know, an inverted major third is a minor sixth, and an inverted minor third is a major sixth. The perfect fifth is commonly associated with the two outer pitches of the major triad, and in its inverted form composes a perfect fourth. Therefore, it makes sense to think of these inversions using the same solfege, i.e.:
Solfege of perfect and imperfect consonances
| Interval | Inverse |
|---|---|
| M3 = do, mi | m6 = mi, do |
| m3 = mi, sol | M6 = sol, mi |
| P5 = do, sol | P4 = sol, do |
Melodies composed of major triad skips In any diatonic melody, you should locate do, mi, and sol. These are your signposts that will guide you around melodic shapes. In this unit, we will focus on melodies that explicitly use tones from the major triad. Many melodies do this: it’s very common to begin sol, do or some other combination of tones from the tonic triad such as sol, mi or mi, sol.