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.
Sightreading This week, you will again sight-read a short piece of music. Your professor will give you a tonic triad, a starting pitch, a tempo, and about 60 seconds to prepare yourself.
Please sing the excerpt using solfege, conducting yourself as you sing.
As you prepare, please take note of the following features of the piece:
Importantly, please don’t hesitate to sing during your preparation time. If you prepare out loud, then when you have to sing “for real,” it will be your second time through. You will not be graded on any of the sounds you make during the preparation time.
Prepared Materials - The Dominant Seventh
The V7 chord is composed of the dominant triad – sol ti re – with the addition of a minor third above it. The solfege is therefore sol ti re fa. It is the same for both major and minor keys; when notating it in a minor key, be sure to raise the seventh scale degree to create ti.
The function of V7 is to set up the expectation of a resolution to the tonic triad (or a resolution to the submediant triad in a deceptive cadence). Though they are both familiar chords, V7 is different from V because it is a dissonant chord. In fact, it is doubly dissonant: ti and fa give us a tritone whichever way up you spell them, while sol and fa give us a minor seventh. In both cases these dissonances need to be resolved. In voice-leading procedure for the V7-I progression, fa must resolve downwards to step to mi (or me, in minor keys). Ti usually resolves to do.
Take careful notice of the intervals created by the tones of the V7 chord. Become adept at singing the minor seventh – sol fa – and the diminished fifth – ti fa.