Sight Singing - Intervals in Context

Preparation for Unit 4 Sight Singing

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.

Sight Singing Instructions

Intervals: perfect and imperfect consonances

All simple intervals may be found within the tones of the diatonic scale. When you first learned simple intervals, you may have found it easiest to relate them to do as you mastered their terminology in relation to each other. Now, we will place them within their commonest melodic and harmonic contexts as they appear in major keys. Please commit these contexts to memory for easy recall.

Interval Name Solfege (Ascending)
Minor second ti, do
Major second do, re
Minor third mi, sol
Major third do, mi
Perfect fourth sol, do
Augmented fourth fa, ti
Diminished fifth ti, fa
Perfect fifth do, sol
Minor sixth mi, do
Major sixth sol, mi
Minor seventh sol, fa
Major seventh do, ti

Rhythms: dotted rhythms in simple meters

Adding a dot to a note adds half the value again to that note. In professional music-making, it’s very important to be able to perform dotted rhythms crisply. For this reason, you should always practice them with a subdivided metronome to ensure maximum accuracy. You should also ascertain what kind of dotted rhythm you are performing. Does the dotted note cross the beat, divide the beat, or subdivide the beat?