10 Beginner Sight Singing Exercises

Sight singing refers to the ability to be able to look at a melody for the first time and be able to sing it. The exercises in this article are aimed at singers that have little or no experience at sight singing. Each of these beginner sight singing exercises include a corresponding audio track.

To get the most of this article, your goal should be first to attempt to sing an exercise without the audio. Once you have done that, press play and sing along with the audio track to check if you have sung it correctly. The audio tracks are played on a piano. At the beginning of each track you will hear chord C to guide you to find the first note to sing. In addition, the audio tracks feature a metronome count to guide you to sing the melodies in the correct time. All the exercises are in 4/4 time and use semibreves, minims and crotchets. If you do not know the basics of reading music, I recommend you to read the article How to Read Sheet Music Quickly.

In the first five beginner sight singing exercises, all the notes move by step. That is, there are no jumps between the notes. Notice that for all the exercises in this article, we are using the Solfege method. This is a system where every note of a scale is given its own syllable. Therefore, in C major (which is the key all the exercises are written in) note C is do, note D is re, note E is mi, note F is fa, note G is sol, note A la, and note B is ti. Read more about solfege here.

Exercise 1

Exercise 2

Exercise 3

Exercise 4

Exercise 5

Now let’s try something a little harder. The next five beginner sight singing exercises introduce jumps from do to mi and to sol.

Exercise 6

Exercise 7

Exercise 8

Exercise 9

Exercise 10

Enjoyed this lesson? If you would like to learn more about singing or learn to play a music instrument, please check out what instruments we teach at Do Re Mi Studios.