And again!

I hope you practiced Mary had a little lamb (see previous post) and are ready to progress. Firstly you need to know, or may already understand, a simple scale, or range of pitches. This is usually written and spelled out as doh, ray, me fa, so, la, tee, doh. And the second doh sounds similar to the first doh, only at a higher pitch.

So let’s start by saying the sounds from doh1 to doh2. Repeat this a few times if you are not familiar with the sounds. Now chant them as if they were a spell or a religious response, and try to keep all the sounds at the same pitch – or in other words, so that doh2 sounds the same as doh1.

No problem? Moving forward, try this. Chant a few times just the first three sounds: doh, ray, me. Then, put more emphasis on the middle one: doh, RAY, me as if you are asking for someone to pay attention to that sound. You will find that the RAY goes up in pitch, while the me returns to the original pitch. Congratulations! You have sung the first part of the scale.

Now add another sound and put even more emphasis on the third one: doh, RAY, ME, RAY, doh. The ME will be at a higher pitch than the two RAYs and you should still return to the original pitch for the doh. Well done!

Using the same approach – adding another sound in the scale each time, emphasizing the middle sound at a higher pitch, the top of each pyramid of sounds, you should be able to work your way up the scale to doh2.

If you are feeling especially clever, you could try working backwards from the top doh:

Doh2, doh, TEE, doh, doh, TEE, LA, TEE, doh Of course, this means using a lower pitch for TEE and a lower one still for LA.

That should be enough for this time. When you can sing up and down a scale you are well on the way to singing. If you have access to a piano or keyboard then you can play the pitches as you sing them. Starting on the white key to the left of two black keys in the middle of the keyboard (pitch C), play and sing the white keys to the right. Using all eight keys you will move from doh1 to doh2.

To reiterate, if you can speak and add emphasis to your speech by changing the pitch and volume, you can sing. Go for it!