Traditional methods: solfeggio, intervals, piano.
- Solfeggio: Sing your part with solfeggio! For those who have learned this skill, solfeggio is the refiner’s fire. Your conductors use it to learn their scores.
- Intervals: Sing your part with an understanding of intervals! Good readers use intervalic intelligence, key relationships.
- Piano: Play your part on the piano! For those who have this skills, playing your part on the piano quickly produces pitches/rhythms/harmonies. Note that the pianist may not hear perceptively if the piano is used merely as a memory device. Playing while considering intervals, key relationships, and solfeggio will be most effective.
20th & 21st-century innovations: recordings, choral tracks.
- Recordings: Listening to recordings is a great way to grasp the whole work. Apple’s Music, Spotify and other apps bring the entire musical world to your ears. But be warned, recordings often display poor tempi, wrong pitches, bad intonation and other errors against which you must guard.
- Choral Tracks: Using choral tracks can be beneficial but should be used in conjunction with traditional methods. Well-designed tracks provide numerous options:
- Part predominant: Your voice part played louder than other parts provides easy identification
- Part muted: Your voice part played softer than other parts provides a greater challenge
- Parts balance: Your voice part played equally balanced provides a general choral context
- Accompaniment: Piano or orchestral accompaniment provides instrumental context
- Pronunciation: Parts sung in the language of the composition provides a pronunciation guide
Ivo Antognini: Jubilate Deo Choral Tracks
Carus-Verlag provides choral tracks for its vast holding of choral masterworks! Go directly to the App, then select “here.”