Customer Reviews

Music for Sight Singing

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Typically, music students resist their music theory courses and enjoy the sight singing exercises associated with them even less. My experience as a student and as a teacher leads me to believe that this is usually because by the time the students first get around to learning this skill, they are already confident musicians on their instruments or have learned to sing some other way. To have to learn a new skill from scratch is disturbing and seems unnecessary to them. However, learning to sight sing brings many benefits.

Singing music helps one internalize the music more fully. One also develops a greater confidence with pitch than having it done in an instrument. It also helps one learn to sing through one's instrument - that is, to play even more musically. And by developing strategies to sing chromatic music, one has to think through the relationships within the piece. Once the skills are more fully developed, one can learn to come to terms with a new piece of music quite quickly. Therefore, one becomes not only more professional, the whole of one's musical experience deepens.

We used the second edition of Ottman's book when I was an undergrad in music in the late seventies and early eighties. This seventh edition is a much richer and more useable book. There are more than a thousand melodies, all nicely arranged to teach something specific. They are actual melodies from the literature rather than some abstract theoretical nothing. And there are lots of rhythmic exercises, so the student can gain skills in becoming more precise in rhythm and especially in rests (you know, letting the silence be silent). A new chapter with melodies from the 20th century is also a nice addition. The new edition also adds some exercises with structured improvisation for the student to experiment with his or her own melodies.

The spiral binding actually makes the book more durable and useable. It lays flat on your piano or music stand and the spine won't break and the pages won't be falling out. The print is crisp and clear which makes reading easy. This is important for a book you will be using in your theory courses for several terms.

Not only is this great for college students, I think high school and private music teachers would do well by their students to use this as part of their regular music lessons. Their students might fight it a bit (they always seem to), but they will become better musicians and more musical students if they develop the skill to sight sing.

While this is an excellent book for sight singing examples. It is probably the worst example I know where the publisher and author are really just interested in maximizing their profits. This book is on its 8th edition. It seems to get revised about every three years. They add a few number examples, switch the text around a little and call it a new edition. This edition is 99% the same as the 7th edition. But know, all the students have to go out and pay for a new book because because there is a "new" edition. I wish some professor would just say - hey we are going to use the 7th or 6th edition. There are plenty of used copies floating around out there. Most the the "song" numbers are identical. unless you have to have this edition, save yourself some money and buy an older edition.

This is a wonderful compilation of singable melodies from the folk and art music repertoires. Singing these melodies is far more appealing than just reading through purely made up solfege excercises. Each chapter contains melodies which are progressively harder and will help you, with practice and patience, to become a good sight reader, a skill any choral singer, composer, and musician in general should have.

A straightforward approach to learning sight singing and solfege. The book's approach is to instruct the student on the task of each chapter and then pound the student with exercises, which make up the bulk of the book.

This book has a new edition coming out an average of every three years. When this happens, previous editions are no longer in print. If teaching a class that continues for more than one year, you end up with a mess when the book goes out of print and newly-entering students are stuck trying to find it. You have either that or everyone else spending a small fortune to buy the newest edition.

Don't even think about trying to have newer students working from one edition while students from previous years continue to use another. The editors of this book make it impossible to use both editions concurrently; they go to great lengths to jumble up the exercises (the vast majority of the exercises remain the same) so that you cannot possibly use two editions at once.

The original author, Robert Ottman, actually died two editions ago, but still new people are creating the new editions, and they have made no improvements over Ottman's whatsoever. It seems like nothing more than a ploy to get students continuously buying this book. I would never make my students spend another $80+ on this book when they already have the same book, minus a bit of rearranging.

As much as I liked using these books up until the fifth editions, I'd have to sadly recommend at this time that any teacher looking for a good ear training/sight singing book look elsewhere, as I am now doing after decades of using these editions. (I stopped at 6th edition). This one is expensive, and it will be useless in three years or less.

The product shipped quickly and was exactly what I ordered. I needed this book for school. The exercises in it are pretty neat.

This is a great book and I would've given it 5 stars if it had cost $20 or $30. But charging this amount for a flimsy paperback is just piracy. Don't get me wrong - I prefer spiral bound music books because they're easier to keep open. But this book is sure to get severely bent in any book bag, and most likely pages will be torn out as well. If you're not required to buy this for a class, figure out a different way to learn sight singing because this is just too expensive.

This is a good book but too bad no CD coming with the book. It would be nicer to listen to a CD to practice each exercise.

A great book for learning to sight read music. It also helps to increase your skills if you already have some knowledge in this area.

The book arrived in time for class in great condition. It's a required book for ear training 1 course this semester