Sight Singing Made Simple Vce Book/Cd [Paperback]

As a sight singing teacher and author of the Sight Singers Resource web site ..., I was using a variety of methods to teach people to sight sing, until discovering Mr. Bauguess' Sight Singing Made Simple course. Now by just using his materials I can impart this skill in the easiest and most enjoyable way to my students. It's a straight-forward approach dealing with one thing at a time and slowly adding the layers of skills of this multi-sensory art only as necessary. I strongly recommend the Sight Singing Made Simple course for learning this skill which is, through Mr. Baugess' creative efforts now available to anyone interested in acquiring it. He has virtually democratized the fundamentals of the art of sight-singing.
Since I posted this review originally in October of 2000, many others have also now been posted reviews and the array of different reactions is interesting and helpful. They point out just how tricky this skill is to learn and how often frustrating. It is very true that if one finds matching, or mimicking pitches (as is required when used the CD) difficult or impossible, prior ear-training is essential. There is a wide range of ability in this facet of "musical intelligence" (see Howard Gardner's work on Multiple Intelligences). Some people, on the other hand find rhythm and "keeping a steady beat" more problematic than re-producing sounds accurately. This has more to do with "kinesthetic intelligence". Everyone is different. Vocalizing music notation (sight-singing) is a multi-layered activity/skill and all these separate skills must be coordinated in order to sight-sing. It is also true that Sight Singing Made Simple teaches just the very basic fundamentals. This means step-wise intervals within the major diatonic scale (do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do), skips (or intervals) within the major tonic (beginning on 'do') chord, and a blending of these two types of intervals. Rhymtically, one learns to sing whole, half, quarter, eighth, and dotted half notes with these intervals. A more advanced set of exercises (which comes with manuals that explain how to use the exercises, either for use by a teacher or student who has successfully used this introductory course) can be bought through music stores. It's called the Jenson Sight Singing Course. It's basically a two year course and goes into reading in minor keys as well as chromatic tones. It takes one through intermediate sight-singing. I use other texts after this.
But the important thing, in a basic course, is not how advanced one gets but rather that a good and firm foundation in the approach to the skill is established. This, more than any other such method, is accomplished in this first course.
The reason for teaching the entire scale (all seven tones) at once, from my perspective is that it forms an integrated organic whole which if cut up into parts does not convey the true structural foundation upon which most music we in the United States listen to, is based. Most people intuitively know how this scale sounds and Mr. Bauguess capitalizes on that fact by presenting it in its entirety and showing the student how the sounds that make it up move in an up and down, step-wise fashion from one note to a contiguous note. Again, if one cannot by oneself mimick these sounds as heard on the CD then preparatory work must be done with the aid of a teacher. There may be some kind of feedback software out there to help one do this on one's own, but I have never come across it and would recommend, in any case, the personal touch here that is so important of an experienced teacher. Just one secret in this process: Very few people DO NOT actually hear the correct pitch in their minds. It's just that some find it difficult to translate accurately the sound they hear mentally into physical sound through the vocal mechanism. Why? Because they don't take enough time to assimilate the sound they hear by actually hearing that sound in silence for 5-10 seconds before they sing it. This gives for the brain/body system to coordinate the message and render it properly in sound. It can be a very tedious process but I've seen someone who actually teaches people who were thought to be 'tone deaf' and this is the approach he uses and makes it not so tedious because of the creative interaction between himself and the student. It was quite an eye opener for me to watch him work.

This is a great *introductory* book for someone who knows how to sing but is intimidated by sight singing. It is very basic--just a start--and you will need to supplement it with subsequent books or lessons. But it doesn't cost much and will get the student going. Here's a true story:

My wife has an excellent voice, but did not know how to sight sing and was convinced that she could never learn. I bought her this book and she went through it in one weekend. That Tuesday she auditioned for a chorus and was asked to sight sing a simple piece. She did, she passed, and now she sings in the chorus. I have her going through another book and she is progressing well.

I bought this book, hoping that I could study its CD and gradually learn to recognize pitches and intervals. Instead, I found an introductory primer on musical notation apparently intended for talented singers (e.g., choir members) who could easily match pitches with their voices but who couldn't read a note.

The exercises are mostly of the "sing after me" type. I just felt, "Thanks a lot! If I could sing the right notes just by hearing them once I wouldn't need your book!"

The notation primer is well done, proceeding sensibly from rhythm notation (the hardest part in sight-reading) to pitch and solfege, in for-the-most-part digestible lesson units. One quibble I have is that the author introduces the notes and solfege symbols for the entire major scale in one lesson, where a more gradual approach would have made more sense: say, first the keynote (DO) and its octave, then the upper and lower dominants (SO), then the notes of the major triad (DO-MI-SO), the major pentatonic scale (DO-RE-MI-SO-LA), and finally the remaining tones (FA, SI).

But readers like myself who desire a systematic ear-training tutorial, presenting tones and intervals gradually and teaching the student to discriminate among them and reproduce them, like a good phonetics course in a foreign language, will have to look elsewhere (just where, I wish I knew!).