Customer Reviews

The Jenson Sight Singing Course (Methodology Chorals Singer)

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After teaching musicianship for many years at a major conservatory, I have recently done a lot of searching for a good sight-singing/musicianship method book for my high school choir, and have settled on The Jensen Method as the best of the bunch. There are a lot of innovative features to this book, though it is firmly rooted in the Kodaly tradition that has proven so universally successful in music education.

One of the most persistent problems in the teaching of sight-singing is the tendency to try to teach too much too soon. The inexperienced teacher will try to teach the whole ball of wax before the student is ready to start singing, or at least a certain "critical mass" of information they think students need regarding the music notation system. Teachers will typically try to teach about staves, middle C, time signatures, key signatures, clefs, dotted rhythms, compound meter, the whole nine yards, all before the student is allowed to start singing! This is precisely the wrong approach, inevitably based on what an experienced musician thinks is important and necessary information. It doesn't reflect how a *beginner* in fact learns to sight-sing. To the contrary, this habit of teaching "too much information" is precisely why so many people don't bother taking on the task of learning music to begin with.

The Jensen Method, on the other hand, starts out with just the right kind of information at the right time. Appropriately, the student is introduced to the movable do solfege system, and musical notes are introduced without rhythms, clefs or key signatures, just tones on a staff in relation to a movable note "do." First in stepwise motion, then gradually in small leaps and in greater variety. From the start, the student learns to start reading notes and intervals in their tonal context. Similarly, rhythms are introduced without reference to pitches, or even bar lines or time signatures. Once the student masters the basic skills of tone and rhythm in isolation, other aspects of sight singing and music notation are introduced incrementally through a series of graded exercises.

The Jensen Method (levels I and II) includes a generous amount and variety of exercises that any school, amateur, or church choir would find useful and beneficial. For all but advanced college and professional choirs, regular work on sight-singing needs to be a part of every rehearsal schedule, if only for five or ten minutes after warm-ups. The Jensen Method is definitely one of the best method books out there, and for such a low price no choir can afford not to have a full set of them in their library.

I usually have my students start with Level 2 of this book. Level 2 starts students reading stepwise. Level 3 adds key signatures and jumps between do-mi-sol. Level 4 adds clefs and 3rds between any notes. Students who get about half way through this book are ready to sight-read real music. This book moves at just the right pace for just about anyone. You will need the help of an instructor, however. This is not a good book to learn how to sight-read on your own. I also really like that part reading examples are included. This is a real challenge and eye opener to most people who have never sung parts before.

I don't care much for this book, for two reasons: (1) The interval exercises are very confusing, because there are no clefs nor key signatures. Therefore, it is unfamiliar to my students who are adults. (2) It does not fulfill the needs of my particular students.
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