Sight singing for instrumentalist.

On fall the skills required to master a musical instrument, perhaps none is more important than a well-trained ear. Proper embouchure, breath control and good technique are essential components for learning a wind instrument, but unlikely to yield positive results in themselves, unless guided by the ear. Every single activity associated with making music depends on hearing. Just as an artist needs to visualize what a painting is going to look like before setting the brush to canvas, a musician needs a clear mental image of a musical passage prior to playing.

At some level, everything we know about proper pedagogy as it applies to instrumental performance, is dependent on the ear. We may think we know what a properly formed embouchure looks like, but the "correct" embouchure produces the desired tone; it cannot work the other way around. If a student cannot form a clear mental image of the desired tone, all the coaching in the world will not bring about a beautiful sound.

Surprisingly, teachers sometimes fail to heed this observation. Conscientious instructors routinely devote a great deal of attention to embouchure formation, breath support and a relaxed throat, while neglecting to consider whether the student shares a common aural image of the desired sound. If the student and teacher do not have a mutual goal, the entire search is futile. One might as well be giving advice to an archer on how best to hit the bull's eye when the two are looking at different targets.

While it may be evident that tone and pitch are closely dependent on the ear, it may not be readily apparent that all musical parameters depend on a prior mental conception. Performing rhythms accurately is not a process of mathematical calculation, but rather a process of deciphering and hearing what is on the page prior to actually executing it. Similarly, technical fluency is nor simply a question of moving fingers quickly and smoothly--it results from hearing the passage the way we desire it to sound and making it happen.

MENTAL IMAGERY

This kind of mental imagery is well known among athletes. Tennis players visualize the ball going over the net. Golfers concentrate on the relaxed control that will put the ball where they want it, and baseball players trying to hit a homerun see the ball traveling into the bleachers a split second before actually making the attempt. In all these cases, the mind forms a clear picture of what it desires and tells the body, "Make it happen"--the fact that musicians do this with sound does not change the process.

But, there is a level of complexity when musical pitch is involved that requires special attention. There is nothing arcane about looking at the left-field wall and visualizing the baseball sailing over it. While meeting this objective may not be so easy, there is little doubt regarding what one wishes to accomplish. Now, suppose a clarinet player is confronted with a new, unfamiliar passage. Let us further suppose this player is well-advanced with a full-bodied tone and good technique. Imagining the passage performed in good tone and even rhythm is one thing, but what are the pitches? How can you possibly hear a passage well enough to form a clear mental image of its execution if you don't know the pitches? You can't. And this is where the specialized role of ear training comes into play.

Simply put, an instrumentalist cannot play any passage accurately and musically unless there is a prior mental conception of how the passage is going to sound. If the notes resulting from execution come as a surprise to the performer, so will the tone, pitch, articulation and rhythmic accuracy. True, even the untrained ear may have a general idea of what a passage will sound like based on shape, contour and register--but a vague preconception simply is not good enough. Each forthcoming note must be heard as a complete entity, in tune, with all musical parameters in place. An ear that cannot go beyond anticipating the general shape and approximate register of a passage is incapable of producing a proper musical interpretation.

In a sense, only a trained ear is capable of a bona fide musical performance. While definitions of music may vary, most agree that, on some fundamental level, music involves human expression. A person makes a musical statement by reproducing what is first conceived in the mind. Of course, we all hear things slightly differently, even when the music is written, which is what makes music so personal and fascinating. The simple translation of written notes into sound is something a computer can do, but arguably, is not music. By the same token, a performance rendered in a machine-like manner, where tones are physically produced but not in response to prior hearing, is not a musical one.

SIGHT SINGING

The need for an instrumentalist to have a well-trained ear has been firmly established for centuries. The central component of this training always has been sight singing--the ability to sing a piece of music upon seeing it for the first time. While dictation skills--the ability to write down music that is heard--are important, especially in the study of harmony, the use of the voice clearly is the best way to train the ear during the early stages of musical development. Moreover, singing is the only true test to see if the instrumentalist actually can hear the music being played with the mind's ear, without an instrument.

Skill in sight singing comes from reading a great quantity of comparatively easy music. Thus, the seemingly obvious advantage vocalists have is slight. Learning even hundreds of songs and arias will not offer the kind of practice that will lead to strong sight-singing skills. Sight-singing skills will improve, but slowly, through concentrated practice on a small amount of challenging material. It is far more beneficial to read through a large amount of material with a difficulty level well below the student's ability.

Acquiring a repository of melodies for sight singing is not difficult. A wealth of textbooks has been published for this specific purpose. While some of these texts offer instructional commentary, others are little more than anthologies of short melodies, combining newly composed and pre-existing music in varying degrees. Some have gone through numerous editions, but, typically changes involve only slight modifications and re-organizing material. Accordingly, for personal study, students may as well work from whatever books are available without the need to acquire the most current editions.

Since at least the 11th century, when Italian Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo put forth his methods for choir training, many teachers have agreed that associating specific syllables with specific notes can facilitate sight singing. Known variously as solmisation, solfeggio or solfege, numerous systems have appeared over the centuries, all fashioned to meet specific needs or based on divergent theories.

While many systems and variations of solfege systems are in use today, three basic systems prevail in the United States: Fixed Do, Movable Do and La-Based Minor. Each is based upon specific theories, and each offers its own advantages and disadvantages. Curiously, sight-singing textbooks rarely adopt or even suggest a specific system, presumably to keep the book's market for adoption as wide as possible. This minimizes the possibility of acquiring a book employing a system that one might not wish to adopt, but it also implies that specific solfege instruction is not going to come from the text itself. The student must either learn from a teacher or find some other source for solfege information. Fortunately, none of the systems are difficult to learn.

FIXED DO

Fixed Do is the traditional European solfege system and is used by about 20 percent of music departments in the United States. The premise is simple: the notes of the C scale are named Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do. Vowels are pronounced in the European fashion, thus "do, ray, mee, fah, sol, la, tee, do"--Europeans generally say "Si" instead of "Ti." It is important to understand that in most European countries, these are literally the names of the notes. In other words, in Italy the note between the bass and treble clef is Do. Accordingly, D is Re, E is Mi and so forth. Therefore, Italians do not translate notes into a solfege system, but, rather, simply say the names of the notes.

This being the case, would it not be best simply to say the names of the notes in English? Not necessarily. The fact that the American system, and that of many other countries as well, borrows the names of the notes from the alphabet, adds a level of confusion, since each note no longer has a unique name. In a simple experiment, those who have already learned solfege demonstrate that letters of the alphabet are not inherently easier to say: sing a C scale rapidly, saying the names of the notes (C, D, E and so forth). Now sing the scale in solfege--unexpectedly, the solfege is much easier to pronounce.

Oddly, the Fixed-Do system does not address accidentals. A note has the same name, whether it is sharp, flat or natural. This is troubling to American students who confront the system for the first time. It is somewhat difficult to accept that the diatonic melody in D major would be sung with the same syllables as one in D-flat major.

Fixed Do has two advantages over other systems. One, conductors use it throughout the world. With the great number of keys likely found in an extended work, there is no way a conductor is going to make an instant determination of what key he believes the piece to be in at a given moment and sing it in Movable Do. Invariably, international orchestral conductors refer to notes by their Fixed-Do solfege names.

The second advantage of Fixed Do is that it encourages a sense of absolute pitch. When one says the syllable Do, a C is heard, unless it is sharp or flat. Educators who promote Fixed Do believe that, in time, those who use this system will acquire some degree of absolute pitch. Every time the Fixed Do system is employed, one constantly is reminded of exactly where pitches sound, no matter where the tonal center lies.

MOVEABLE DO

With its roots in the original concept of d'Arezzo, Movable Do became fashionable in the late 19th century and remains the most widespread solfege system used in the United States today. The theory behind it diverges from that of Fixed Do. Advocates of Fixed Do maintain that solfege names always should refer to the same pitch, whereas advocates of Movable Do counter that it is the relationship between solfege syllables that is crucial. The distance from Do to Re, for instance, should always be a whole step; the distance from Do to Mi a major third and so forth. In Fixed Do this certainly will not be the case. For the Fixed Do singer in D-flat major, Do to Re is a half-step and Do to Mi is a minor third. In other words, Movable Do abandons any sense of absolute pitch to achieve relative pitch. One makes logic of the music by establishing the tonal bearings. Everything is heard in relationship to the tonic, and the tonic is always Do.

The drawback of Movable Do, besides abandoning any sense of absolute pitch, results from the problem of accidentals. A system that affirms the constancy of every relationship between intervals, no matter what the key, must specify accidentals. The standard procedure for doing this is to change the syllable to an "ee" sound for sharps, and to an "ay" sound for flats (utilizing the sound of European vowels in the spelling, of course). Since Re already has the sound of an "ay," it is changed to "rah." Below is the chromatic scale, both ascending and descending:

Do Di Re Ri Mi Fa Fi Sol Si La Li Ti Do Ti Te La Le Sol Se Fa Mi Me Re Ra Do

The concept is simple, but it takes much practice to master the chromatics in Movable Do--remember, this is a method for sight singing. Those who have mastered this system, however, proclaim its effectiveness.

LA-BASED MINOR

La-Based Minor is a subcategory of Movable Do. The premise is that the major key always prevails and all minor keys should be sung in terms of the relative major. Studies have proven that this system is clearly advantageous during the early stages of learning to sing in minor keys. On the one hand, the fundamental rule of Movable Do is maintained: relationships between syllables always represent the same intervals. Sol to Do will always be a perfect fifth. The problem occurs in minor, when Sol to Do now represents the relationship between the natural seventh of the scale and the third. Some Movable Do advocates are troubled by this, arguing that scale-degree relationships, as well as harmonic implications, also are part of the Movable Do system and should not be tampered with. This line of thinking reasons that the resolution of the leading tone, for example, must be rendered by Ti to Do; Si to La, as occurs in La-Based Minor, simply will not do.

WHICH SYSTEM?

To be sure, there are those who advocate sight singing without the use of any system at all, where one simply progresses from note to note based on the size and quality of the interval presumably singing "la" to every note. But there are drawbacks to this approach. For one thing, music reading is facilitated by the use of words or syllables. When notes are distinguished by something other than pitch alone, the mind has another tool available to make sense of the music. Moreover, a sight-singing system is more than just a mechanism for generating the correct pitches. The larger goal is to make musical sense of the passage being sting.

A musician who has mastered Fixed Do and acquired nearly absolute pitch is able to grasp an entire musical phrase at once. Notes not perceived as isolated entities, but rather as parts of a larger whole, can be grasped in a musically logical sense. Those who have mastered Movable Do, including La-Based Minor, are likewise able to hear pitches in their musical context--to hear where notes are headed and what purpose they serve. For example, the sight-singing student who depends upon intervallic content alone in rendering pitches will view the passage C-D-E-F as two whole steps followed by a half step. The pitches will be accurate, but the musical logic will be missing. The student using a solfege method must first make sense of the passage. Are these the first four notes of a C scale? The last four notes of an F scale? Could it consist of-scale degrees 7, 1, 2 and 3 in natural minor? As all musicians know, all the possibilities require a different treatment when rendering the passage. It seems only logical to adopt a sight-singing system that puts the same demands on instrumentalists that they will face with actual music.

The question of which solfege system to adopt should not be traumatic. The conventional wisdom of "pick one and stick with it" has merit, and I advocated it for a long time. Recently, however, it occurred to me that most of my students end up teaching themselves. Some find their way into school systems where a solfege system is already in place, and then they must urgently learn a new system well enough so they can teach it. I have come to believe that, ultimately, one should have some familiarity with all the common systems. Which one is attempted first is not a crucial question--the important thing is to get started.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adler, Samuel. Sight Singing: Pitch, Interval, Rhythm. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Benjamin, Thomas, Michael Horvit and Robert Nelson. Music for Sight Singing. Florence, KY: Wadsworth, 1994.

Benward, Bruce, Maureen A. Carr and J. Timothy Kolosick. Introduction to Sightsinging and Ear Training. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 1992.

Berkowitz, Sol, Gabriel Fontrier and Leo Kraft. A New Approach to Sight Singing. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Bland, Leland D. Sight Singing Through Melodic Analysis. Chicago: Burnham Inc. Publishing, 1984.

Fish, Arnold and Norman Lloyd. Fundamentals of Sight Singing and Ear Training. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1993.

Hindemith, Paul. Elementary Training for Musicians. 2nd ed. Germany: Schott; Associated Music Publishers, 1949.

Levin, Robert D. Sight Singing and Ear Training Through Literature. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988.

Ottman, Robert W. Music for Sight Singing. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001.

Yasui, Byron K. and Allen R. Trubitt. Basic Sight Singing. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 1989.

Robert Rawlins, department chair and coordinator of music theory at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, earned a Ph.D. in musicology and an M.A. degree in music history and theory from Rutgers University. He also has master's degrees in humanities and public relations. He performs regularly on saxophone, flute and clarinet.