Music help

Sight singing is taught with a system called solfege where you sing a different sylable for different pitches. A common system is “moveable do” where you sing the syllable “do” (pronouced doe) for the first note of the scale. Many people’s first experience with solfege is the song “Do Re Me” from The Sound of Music. “Do, a deer, a female deer, Re, a drop of golden Sun, Me, a name I call myself…” Through singing increasingly difficult songs with the same syllables singers learn to sight sing on pitch. An alternative is “fixed do” where “do” instead of being the first note of the scale is always the note c, “re” is always d, etc. In this case accidentals C# becoms “di”, D# becomes “ri”, etc. Moveable Do is often difficult for musicians with perfect pitch to perform but then again someone with perfect pitch usually can sing on key (though oddly singers with perfect pitch often sing slightly flat).

Most American music schools simplify solfege by singing scale degree numbers instead of solfege sylables. Instead of singing an assending major scale “do re me fa so la ti do” the simply sing “one two three four five six seven one”

After musicians learn sight singing they can sing other lyrics on pitch by mentally noting the apropriate syllables as they sing.