Sight-Singing Exercises - Learning the Intervals

Cliff Lamere   6 Mar 2010

YouTube has a free course of ear-training and sight-singing exercises.  It consists of 12 short exercises each on a separate video.  The course is provided by David Liviano who was graduated in 1982 from the Julliard School of Music in New York City.  "By listening and singing along you will be able in a short period of time to start distinguishing between the various notes and also the distances between the notes."

For singers who don't feel comfortable singing the various intervals (thirds, fourths, etc.), these are helpful exercises.  Sing along with the first exercise which is simple, then move on to exercise 2.  The lessons get gradually more complex as you proceed to higher numbers.  When you have mastered an exercise, which may require a few repititions to do so, you can go to the next one.  Each exercise uses a repeating pattern which helps a person to learn the various intervals.

The course recommends that you sing using Do, Re, Mi, etc. or the letters of the notes like A, B, C, etc.  Using the latter will allow you to learn the letter which represents each line and space on the musical staff.

As you sing along, don't wait for the note to play before you sing it.  Sing right on the beat or slightly ahead of the beat so that when you sing a note wrong you will recognize the mistake.  

Exercise	Link	Length
1		1:53
2		1:28
3		1:23
4		1:33
5		1:33
6		1:33
7		1:30
8		1:31
9		1:36
10		1:36
11		1:36
12		1:36

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