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A number of books teach music reading. In my judgment, most have one or two significant shortcomings: (1) they may have much to say ABOUT reading music but the reader does not HEAR the sounds they are reading about; and (2) too much attention is given to explanations of music theory that are not immediately relevant or applicable to the learners current skill level.
As an introduction of limited scope, two goals shaped the content and sequence of this book and address these shortcomings:
1) An emphasis on learning to actually read music by the inclusion of an audio component. Hearing the sounds notes represent is an essential requisite to reading them. Also, given the books limited length, it was deemed better to adequately practice core skills, such as the basic intervals, than to cursorily touch on a variety of greater difficulties.
2) Delaying or excluding aspects of music theory that are not relevant or supportive of the skills being taught. Key signatures, for example, are not introduced immediately because they are not necessary for learning to sight sing, including some melodies that might be considered "challenging." When they are introduced, it is to show how they can be used to determine the name of the starting pitch. To explain how key signatures are derived from constructing scales would be of little or no practical usefulness at the time one is beginning to learn to sight sing. At a later stage of study, this understanding is essential.
The "simplicity" of Sight Singing Made Simple is its focus on establishing fundamental understanding and skills and on building confidence.
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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!).
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