sight singing for grade 6

[Suki2]

DS has ABRSM grade 6 piano coming up, and he needs help with sight singing! I don't have clue how to teach him. His piano teacher is a fantastic instrumental teacher, but isn't as good on aurals. In fact, he's just said DS should have started training years ago, as it take time to build up expertise. I'm happy to spend time at home but don't know how to go about it.

I've looked on Amazon but don't know which is the best method/books. Are there any singers out there who can help?

Try e-musicmaestro.com they have online practice. They look quite good.

I can't advise on books but here are some ways you can help improve sight singing. Apologies if these are completely obvious/his teacher has already tried them with him!

If you have more time:
-practice singing notes of the scale with numbers, so 1, 1 2 1, 1 2 3 2 1. etc. right up to 8, then try missing out numbers, e.g 3 and replace with a clap so 1, 1 2 1, 1 2 clap 2 1, 1 2 clap 4 clap 2 1. Miss out more numbers as he gets more confident.
-look at simple sight singing and try to assign 'numbers' to the various notes, can you see that you have got a '1' a '3' and a '5'?

If less time/he finds it really hard:

Look at the general pattern of notes, if one is higher than the last, sing something higher, if lower, sing something lower, can you remember your starting note and try and go back to it?
-Practice clapping rhythms of sight singing pieces.

• Always look at and follow dynamics and any articulation marks/musical directions.

If he finds getting the notes really hard, you get a lot of points by (even making up a tune) singing the rhythm to the words and taking into account the articulation etc. It is not a huge part of the exam and if he is on top of the rest of it he can get enough points by doing this. Much better to sing something than freeze up and do nothing.

Forgot to say, good luck to him!

I've just looked at e-muisc maestro, and I couldn't get the practise tests for grade 6 B to work! These are the main tests I'm concerned about; the ones where DS has to sight singing. Very frustrating; I don't want to pay to subscribe as i"m not sure if the real examples will work. Is it just my computer I wonder?

AndIFeedEm Gunpowder thanks for the advice re assigning a number to a note; I had been thinking along the lines of this sort of practice, good for confirmation that it may be the right thing to do!

AndIFeedEmGunpowder, Can you please suggest me How can I keep DS on track since beginning on sight reading, solfedge , aural etc. He had learned for a year now and I guess its right time for him to be start focusing on all these aspects.

The free test worked for me so maybe give it another go.

A tip that helps some people is to think of songs that have the intervals in them eg a fifth is the first notes of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - you have to be able to quickly identify intervals from sheet music for that to work though.

I taught myself to sight-sing years ago by singing along while playing a melody. Then I started missing out playing one note and just singing it (then checking it was the right one). I would then leave out two notes, then three, etc. It's not nearly as difficult as it looks!

Suki2 It's your computer! To watch the Grade 6 videos you need to have installed Adobe Flash Player onto your computer. Flash is free and safe to download. You can download and install the latest version of Flash Player here:
get.adobe.com/flashplayer
E-MusicMaestro is a reputable company and if you have any problems they will reply to your email quickly and make sure everything works for you.