Children love to sing. Listen to a group of schoolchildren at the playground, and you will hear a mix of imagined songs, favorite nursery rhymes, and popular tunes intermingled with giggles and laughter. Making music seems hardwired to our DNA since childhood. Even as adults, we sing loudly in the shower or car when we think no one can hear. Music is an expression of life.

Singing gives children the freedom to express themselves in unique ways[1]. A child can immerse herself in a made-up song about rainbows, or a young boy can remember his mother by singing a favorite nighttime lullaby. Children socialize through songs and dance, learning how to interact with others through silly nonsensical song play. While you might not understand why your child wants to sing “B-I-N-G-O” or “Baby Beluga” fifty times in a row, at least you know that your child’s singing will increase her communication and vocabulary[2][3].

Singing to your child helps you pass down an important part of your own childhood and history to a new generation. Singing not only benefits your child but helps relieve stress and allows you to express emotions deep within[4].

Don’t forget to check out Music & Life: Rockin’ Baby Lullabies for great information about singing lullabies to young children and babies.

10 ways to enliven your days with song

Try some of these practical ways to add singing to your life and your child’s everyday experiences:

1. Sing your favorite childhood songs

Share fun songs from your childhood. Whether you sing Kermit’s “It’s Not Easy Being Green” or The ABC Song, your child will learn about singing in tune while sharing some of your favorite tunes.

2. Clap your hands!

As you sing, add fun gestures like stomping, clapping, waving your arms, and dancing.

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Now that we can sing and identify different scales, and have developed some familiarity with solfege, we can start to study intervals. Remember that a musical interval measures the distance between any two pitches, identifying both its size and quality. We will be working with intervals up to the fifth, and introduce the remaining ones.

We will begin with major thirds. As you discovered at the end of the previous article, you can already produce a major third if you can sing a major scale. To review, the first and third scale degree of a major scale produces a major third. If you use solfege, the syllables are do and mi.

First, give yourself a starting pitch and sing: do re mi, the first three scale degrees of a major scale. Now sing the re silently: do (re) mi. Now just the major third: do mi. You can now sing the interval of a major third, and have a pretty good idea as to its sound quality.

The following exercise has five melodic major thirds. Play the whole example, first listening to the interval then singing in back in time. There will be a pause after each interval:

Major Thirds - do (re) mi

1: Major Thirds - Sing as 'do mi'

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In the following articles, we will explore individual topics in ear training in a little more depth. We will develop our study with what I hope is a clear system where each topic builds on the previous one.

With ear training, as with any discipline, it is useful to have a basic methodology or approach in building our skills. We are developing our relative pitch, the ability to discern the distance between notes. We can develop this skill to such a high degree, that we can accurately hear the quality of two or more notes as a kind of color: a major third, is not only bigger than a minor second, it has a different sound quality. Larger collections of notes also have their own sound qualities: a major triad sounds different than a minor one.

In order to discern different types of musical elements like intervals and chords, we need to be able to produce those elements. The first skill we should develop is simply that of matching pitch with our voice. Play the following example and sing back each pitch as you hear it. Its alright if you have to fish around a bit. Now when we are singing, its important for our egos to remember that we are developing our inner ear. The relative goodness or badness of our singing voice is not important. It is more important to simply learn how to match pitch:

Can you sing back each note?

Listen and Sing: Note by Note

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