Image by Tiago Daniel via FlickrSomeone recently asked me how do I effectively assess my students’ ability to sight sing?
Well I must confess I don’t do any formal assessments but I definitely try to do in class assessments of my students abilities regularly. We have a sight singing book and some single line exercises from past regional auditions. Everyday we try to do a few examples before we get to the “meat” of the rehearsal.
The problem with the tests in my opinion is it takes too much time. After we have done an example as a class I try to have different students do the examples either by themselves in front of the class or if they are really struggling then with another student. So all the while I am assessing my students but not in any official way.
So I am asking for suggestions on a better way to do this and yet still not spend a ton of time on it either. All ideas are welcome 
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I understand the situation you are in. I'm a college student and had no recollection of sight singing until I got to college. It's a good thing that you are doing this! Also, being a piano major, I feel that using a piano is a key source as well. Maybe you could try taking certain lines from the pieces you are doing and give them a starting pitch so that you aren't losing all of the rehersal using something you wont have to your benifit. You could try to teach them key signatures. This would make it a whole lot easier when you have a variety of songs. When we learned sight singing, we always did an exercise in that key (Do, Mi, So, Mi, Do, Sol, Ti, Re, Fa, Re, Ti, So, Do). That could also give them their starting pitch, and help along the way. Intervals in little sections would help as well. Show them the tricks that we learned such as jaws, here comes the bride, etc. Once they learn them, relate them to the pieces you are learning or start them on small sight singing excerpts. I hope this helps you in some way. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI am also a college student getting my undergrad in Music Education. Part of our requirements to complete our degree is to have passed 4 levels of Aural Skills (aka sight singing boot camp). Starting college, I hadn’t really had any intensive ear training. So being thrown into the whirlwind of aural skills was definitely a challenge to say the least. Yes, it was a slowwwwww process and it was very very time consuming. I was quickly trying to come up with little cheats to help me find intervals both ascending and descending. To do this, I would come up with familiar tunes that had that particular interval to help me identify certain intervals (ex: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow is the octave interval and “Here Comes the Bride is the perfect 4th etc). This started to expedite the process and I was starting to pick up on things quicker and my pace of the class began to speed up. If you are looking for ways to assess your students without taking up too much time, try making fun little games up to assess your students. One thing my professor did was play an interval and go around the room and each person had to identify what interval he was playing (he obviously switched the interval for each student). He would do this ascending and descending. Another exercise he would do is go around the room and give us a pitch and tell us to sing a given interval above that pitch (ex: he played a ‘C’ and told us to sing a P5 above that). Simple things like that are quick and easy and can even be fun if you make some kind of game out of it for your students. No, it is not as lengthy as singing full passages but maybe you could save the passages for like 2 times a semester or something. You could also try musictheory.net. This is a website that has exercises in all areas of music theory and aural skills and ear training that might make learning fun AND they can do it at home too! Check it out! I hope this helps! Best of luck to you!
ReplyDelete-Benjamin