A Beginner's Guide to Sight Reading

Abby Mae Rogers
Jul 28
5 min read

Welcome singers! You're here because you're ready to take the next step in your musicianship skills: learning to sight read! If you are in lessons with me, you are probably a pro at singing the major scale on solfege, and are very comfortable singing the major scale in any order: up, down, and all sorts of jumbled up! That is, at the end of the day, what (major key) melodies are: different orders and patterns of the scale. Now is the time to connect the dots, and learn how to apply our solfege knowledge to sheet music.

Let's start at the very beginning: DO

In music class at school, we may learn that middle C = DO. This is not necessarily true! While, at first, this sounds very confusing, it actually makes sight reading so much easier. Trust me on this! DO is what we call "movable", which means any note on the piano can be DO. Take a second and try it out: choose any note and sing a major scale... did you do it? Did it sound like a major scale each time? That's the power of movable DO!

Once we come to terms with the fact that DO can be any note, it becomes clear that this is our first step when sight reading a piece of music. We must always ask the question:

WHAT NOTE IS DO?

or, in other words...

WHAT KEY IS THIS SONG IN?

In order to answer this crucial first question, we need to reference a very special tool called the Circle of Fifths. The Circle of Fifths helps us translate which key is which by showing us how many sharps or flats are in each key (and, of course, which note is DO).

Before I show you the Circle of Fifths, it's important to know why different keys even need sharps and flats. If you have access to a piano in your home, take a seat at the bench and find middle C. If you play up the scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C), you will be able to hear a major scale. Notice that you're only using the white keys, no black keys! That's because the KEY of C doesn't need the help of any sharps or flats (black keys) to sound like a major scale. C is DO, we're singing in the KEY of C, and the KEY SIGNATURE will have no sharps or flats. If you were sight reading a song in the key of C, you would see no sharps or flats next to the treble clef at the beginning of the song, because when we start on C as DO, we don't need any sharps or flats to make it sound like a major scale.

Now let's use a different key as our example. Find the D on your piano (the white key to the right of middle C). Now play a scale using only white keys (D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D)... uhh.. what was that?? I'm guessing that did not sound like a major scale. Something isn't quite right. What we need to make this D scale sound major is its key signature. If D is DO, certain notes in the scale need to be changed to make it sound major. Let's find out which ones by consulting the circle of fifths:

Start by finding the yellow D box on the colorful outer circle (the inner gray circle is for minor keys, let's ignore that for now). Notice how next to the D box, there is a treble clef with two sharps next to it. THIS is what a key signature looks like (specifically, a D MAJOR key signature). It looks like F and C need to be sharp in order for a D scale to sound major! Try playing a scale starting on D again, but this time, play F# and C# (the black notes to the right of F and C) instead of F and C... SUCCESS! Now, my scale sounds major.

This is all to help us understand what the key signature does, and why it's so important. The key signature shows us what note is DO, and also helps to make sure that the scale sounds how it's supposed to!

So now we know how to begin to sightread a piece of music:

STEP ONE: FIND OUT THE KEY (OR, FIND OUT WHICH NOTE IS DO)

by looking at the key signature.

STEP TWO: Identify which note in your melody is DO, and work from there.

Let's remind ourselves about the musical staff, and which notes are which...

Now, all that's left is to connect the dots. Let's use the very popular song, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz as our first example:

Take a look at the excerpt above. In order to sight read this music, I just need to follow my steps. First, I looked for the key signature. I looked next to the treble clef, and saw that there are no sharps or flats. I compared that to the circle of fifths, and saw that this means I'm in the KEY of C MAJOR, which means that C is DO. Next, I found the note C in the melody. It's the first note! Then, I used my scale as reference, and matched each pitch to the solfege.

TIP!

Labeling our melody with solfege is a great way to begin the sight reading process!

If singing the melody on solfege seems too challenging, that is totally normal!

Sight reading with ease takes time, don't forget to enjoy the process.

Let's look at another excerpt. This song is "The Girl I Mean to Be" from The Secret Garden. We're going to take the exact same steps to sight read this song (or, to prepare it to sight read... remember, we don't have to actually sing it yet if we aren't ready). I'm going to give less information this time. You will have to figure out what key we're in. I will label DO every time it appears in the melody (this will help you check your work on finding out the key), but you will have to fill in the rest of the solfege. To help you fill in the solfege, I will use blue marker to show the notes that the melody skips (it does this in 3 circled spots, but the rest is in order of the scale: up one note, down one note, or a repeat of the same note):

Congrats! You have probably deduced that this song is in the key of E flat Major (so, the note E flat is DO). Check with Miss Abby to see if you labeled your solfege correctly! If you're looking for a challenge, try to sing the melody on solfege. I bet for sure you can sing the part that goes "...a place to spend the day, where no one says to go or stay, where I can take my pen and draw..."

TIP!

I love the exercise of "filling in the gaps" to help sight read the skips in the melody. It's easy when the melody goes up one, down one, or stays on the same note, but it gets harder to sight read when the melody skips all around. In order to check your work and make sure you're singing the skip correctly, "fill in the gaps" and sing the solfege in between! As you practice more, you'll be able to very lightly sing or hum the in-between notes, and soon you'll be able to audiate (sing inside your own head) the notes!

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CONGRATULATIONS!

You are well on your way to being able to sight read.

If you're feeling particularly motivated, take a look at the pitch patterns below, and put those skills to the test!