This post is one of a 2-part series of free basic music theory lessons on my blog, musictheoryde-mystified.com. You can see the complete list here. Please feel welcome to make a comment or ask a question.
…If you can already sing a major scale you can skip this lesson…
If you’re panicking at the thought of doing this lesson, relax… When I say “sing”, I don’t mean “sound like a real singer”! Don’t worry about tone, voice quality, breathing etc. You don’t even have to hold a note for very long. All we’re trying to do is pitch a few moderate-length notes in a comfortable part of the voice range.
The ability to sing a scale is one of the fundamental skills of musicianship. It helps develop our sense of tonality, which in turn helps us to understand and remember melodies and riffs. We also use scales to recognise, count and name intervals.
The easiest scale to sing, at least in Western culture, is the major scale. You may even know the major scale already, in solfege, as a simple melody: do, re, mi etc.
If you’re not used to singing, start on a fairly low note, so you can sing upwards from there. The exercise below starts on C, which most people can sing as a low-ish note.
A note about voices and octaves
The range of female voices and children’s voices can be represented on the treble clef. Middle C or C4 is a comfortably low note. The octave from C4 to C5 is typically a comfortable range to sing in, even for untrained voices.
In general terms, a male voice typically sounds an octave lower than a female voice. The male voice’s actual pitch range fits on the tenor (guitar) clef.
Many songbooks don’t distinguish between male and female voices. Melodies are written in the treble clef by default. When a male voice reads middle C and sings a comfortably low note, we hear C3, not C4.
This is such a natural phenomenon that we interpret this difference more as tone than as pitch. We expect male voices to sound lower than female voices.
We all “reach up” to sing a high note and “reach down” to sing a low note. These ranges within the voice range are called registers. High notes are in a high register, low notes in a low register. As humans, we can hear the effort of reaching for high or low notes as a change in register.
When female and male voices sing together, we listen more for which register they sing in (reaching up or reaching down) rather than which actual octave.
The examples and exercises in this post are in the treble clef, at the actual pitch of a typical female or children’s voice. Male voices should have no trouble singing along an octave lower as long as middle C is thought of as a low-ish note.
What Words Shall I Sing?
For beginners, start with a consonant such as “L”, “T” or “D” followed by an open mouth vowel sound such as “aah”, “oh”or “ooh”. These are the easiest sounds to control and produce a clear and stable pitch.
Examples: La la la la, Da da da da, Ta ta ta ta , Doo doo doo doo etc.
If you’re confident that you can hold a note on different syllables, you could sing the note numbers as you go, “one, two, three, four “ etc.
How To Sing A Major Scale
The following video is the scale of C major at a slow tempo, one note per bar.
- In each bar, you hear the scale note first.
- During the rest that follows, answer by singing the same note (indicated on the stave by a slash).
- Each bar is repeated so you can check that you’re singing the right note.
Here’s the same exercise without the repeats.
Now repeat the exercise at a faster tempo.
- Feel how far you need to move from one note to the next; close for 1 semitone, a little more for 2 semitones. Remember the pattern of 2- and 1-semitone intervals that make up the major scale.
- As you get used to the notes, you can sing along with the video as well as singing the answers.
Here’s the whole scale without rests.
- Listen to the scale of C major, then sing along with it. Repeat several times.
- When it feels comfortable, listen again, then sing the scale by yourself.
- You can monitor your progress by singing along to the video again.
- Once you can sing it by yourself, try speeding up the tempo or singing in quavers rather than crotchets.
Here it is at a faster tempo…
Other modes
As a follow-up, you can teach yourself to sing the scale of any other modes that are used in genres that interest you, be it the natural minor, melodic and harmonic minor (coming in Part 2 of this course), other traditional modes, the blues scale etc. Look at the pattern of intervals that make up the mode as you play and sing along.
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NEXT LESSON: 18. Listen & Sing: Learn Major And Perfect Intervals By Singing
PART 1 CONTENTS: Basic Music Theory Course Contents