FRIDAY NIGHT MUSICIANS FORUM: INTRODUCTION TO SIGHT-READING | A DISCUSSION THREAD BY PERFECT MCSNUP.

INTRODUCTION TO SIGHT-READING:

Welcome to Tonight's Musicians Forum with Mcsnup, presented by ReHearsal House on the RH blog.

Typical of our Friday Night Forums, this is intended to be a discussion— so, leave comments, read notes, ask questions, let's Thread Musicology!

Tonight's Session is an Introduction to Sight-reading! For Vocal Students it will be called Introduction to Sight-singing.

Now, essentially sight reading/singing suggests, to play or sing; by reading a score— mostly a score sheet! This is what sight-singing/sight-singing entails: singing a piece, from the score sheet.

Of course this immediately requires us to answer the next question which should be on our minds already— what is a score sheet!

ReHearsal House holds a principle of "the apt way to learn music is to be able to engage with it PRACTICALLY! So, we would describe a score sheet best by presenting one:

Score sheet of Holy Holy Holy 

Everyone of us at some point have most likely seen something like the above; that is a Musical Score sheet! It contains information regarding a musical piece (or song); and when a professional who understands the LANGUAGE OF MUSIC is given the score sheet; they will be able to perform the Music exactly as the original composer intended! This is what we call a score sheet.

In principle, it "records" Music! And informs even those who had never heard the song played or sung before on the exact notes to sing and in the time to sing them, etc.

I certainly do not want to go away from the practical understanding of the lesson, so, I would leave out some matters of little importance. 

Now to Understanding Sight-singing or Sight-reading, we must begin from the concept of Sound! Music is essentially arrangements of sound towards a purpose. Sounds which are thus arranged are called Musical Notes! Every Musical note is first characterized by PITCH: Meaning how High or Low the note (sound) is! Whenever, Musicians use the term note; they are referring to sounds— only just specifying that the sounds are of definite pitch (frequency). 

Frequency in Music, means; how many vibrations there are in one second— take note that, whenever sound is initiated; the object of contact vibrates— for instance, when you strike a talking Drum or pluck the string of a Guitar, the vessel/string vibrates; this is the reason, why a guitar string for instance is knot at both ends! So that vibrations travel to and fro the string! The Faster this vibrations The higher the pitch! The same thing happens during singing. The notes you sing; your vocal cords actually vibrates; the faster the vibration The higher the notes (pitch) the slower the vibration the lower The notes (depth)!

So, the first important step in sight reading will be to understand; what is representing the idea of pitch! What are we using to represent the various pitch in Music?

The Idea of Lines And Spaces:

Look at the Holy Holy Holy score sheet again, the first thing, we want to observe is the lines and spaces:

The Lines and spaces are counted from bottom to the top! There are FIVE lines and Four Spaces. Each of these lines and spaces represent a musical note of a definite pitch (frequency). 
Now, it is important to consider an important idea known as the CLEF. We Already know that there are Low notes and High notes! The Low notes are grouped under an umbrella called BASS And the High notes are grouped under an umbrella called TREBLE. This helps us to immediately divide into two kinds of notes, the notes which fall under high notes and the ones which fall under low notes. The high notes are called TREBLE notes and the Low notes are called BASS notes! Since there are Low notes and High notes there will also be the transition from low to high; this transition is called the middle C.