Well, I believe that if you can sing it....you can play it. So this first lesson should be in aural skills. (aural skills is another word for vocal...or singing lesson as you would call it...) I think this because unlike most Europeans, Americans like myself, happen to learn how to play before we can sing. Actually sort of a bad thing, we Americans look stupid when we get to college and we cannot sing a perfect C. (kind of embarrassing huh?)

First of all, at the college I attend we do not use the "fixed do" system. That means that the "do re mi fa sol la ti", is not fixated on the C major scale; C major being the scale without sharps or flats. Most European countries use the fixed form, meaning no matter what key you are in, “do” is always C, and “ti” is always B, and so on. Here’s an example:

“Fixed do” system—(for all sharp keys)

C D E F G A B
do re mi fa sol la ti

G A B C D E F#
sol la ti do re mi fa

D E F# G A B C#
re mi fa sol la ti do

A B C# D E F# G#
la ti do re mi fa sol

E F# G# A B C# D#
mi fa sol la ti do re

B C# D# E F# G# A#
sol la ti do re mi fa

F# G# A# B C# D# E#
fa sol la ti do re mi

C# D# E# F# G# A# B#
do re mi fa sol la ti



and this is the system I use, which is not fixed…

C D E F G A B
do re mi fa sol la ti

G A B C D E F#
do re mi fa sol la ti

D E F# G A B C#
do re mi fa sol la ti

A B C# D E F# G#
do re mi fa sol la ti

E F# G# A B C# D#
do re mi fa sol la ti

B C# D# E F# G# A#
do re mi fa sol la ti

F# G# A# B C# D# E#
do re mi fa sol la ti

C# D# E# F# G# A# B#
do re mi fa sol la ti

so that is that.

Here are some of my warm-ups you should be familiarized with, all in C major. The best way to practice this is to sing along with a piano, or perhaps even with your guitar(make sure it is in tune first!). Those of you that do not have a piano, like myself, could use Cakewalk to sing along with.

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I use guitar for this and I'll tab it out.

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Well, use both. That way they can still learn notes. But cool, tab it out.

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I don't know what the fuck this means cause I can't read music...Kinda sucks

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It's not even up there, and you have never tried, don't tell me that.



The note C is the A string 3rd fret. You know that. And now you know that "do" stands for the note C, in the C major scale. Now, as soon as the warm-ups are attached (Darko will put them up shortly), I have that in there. It's easy. On the staff, there are 5 lines. Every warm-up starts with the note C, so there is no way that you can tell me that you can't read where C is. Moving from C to the next note in the scale, D, means that on the staff, you go up from the line to the space. And now you are on the note D, which is located on the space below the staff, Next is E, which is the bottom line. You just moved from a space to the very next line. So on and so forth. Oh, and about the first note...yes, it is below the staff, but there is a line through it. That is called a leisure(sp?) line. In other words, the starting C is on a line.
You should get the hang of it after a while. Don't worry about rhythms, they're not that important.
Darko will put up a tab of it, so compare the two of them. Look at the tab, and see if you can find the corrisponding note.


oh, and forgive me for the crudiness of the file. I did it in Photoshop, in a version where I can't makes straight lines, so I used that pencil tool to write in the notes. But I think it's good enough to read. As soon as I get a hold of a scanner, maybe I can put up the actual page that had all this!!

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i don't quite understand
you want me to sing all those notes?
not to sound negative, but what will that accomplish?

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If you can sing it, you can play it. And it's always cool to be learning new things. Maybe when you're trying to write an original song, and when you're singing the tune in your head, but you can't put it to guitar. And god damnit, I have that problem. So then you sing it out loud, and match the pitch with your guitar.

...eehhhh, you didn't quite grasp what this was for. When some guy tells you to sing right now, how're you going to do it? Hmmmm, maybe put words to it? Are you going to sing, aaahhhh hhaaahha doo ahh diiii miii? Or are you going to sing those sylables and make it sound like you know what you're doing. That's the point of this lesson.

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this is another exersize to help you get perfect pitch, basically. when you have that, if you hear a melody in your head, you know exactly which notes to play on the guitar, instead of guessing and checking to see if you can find what they are on the guitar. it's also helpful for tabbing stuff out, because you automatically know which note is being played, instead of, once again, guess and check.

i find even more useful is just.. try to hum an open e. then hit the 6th string and check it. if you're off, try to hum it based on what you just heard, then try to check it again. keep doin that til you get it right. then move on to another note. don't try too many at once, it takes a while.

McTriple, you took the words right out of my mouth!

I haven't endeavoured to develop this particular skill myself as I always seem to find the notes I hum very quickly on the guitar anyway.

But for the tunes I can't hum, perfect pitch, I imagine, would be a very useful technique to have mastered. To be honest I never really thought about it until reading this thread.

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You just made my day.

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fuck I thought you just spelled oral wrong

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by the way i just want to correct the fact that "B" is "si" not "ti".

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Well, here in America, it's "ti." Wanna duke it out.....

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Haha, common mistake, we don't sit in class to suck dick, we sing.

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i don't use that C mode, of what%$(/%$ever
I use this:

you have a major scale, right?
example: C, D, E, F, G, A and B

another: D, E, F#, G, A, B and C#

so the thing is, do you give a fuck of what scale is, how many sharps or whatever? not, the important thing is to recognize the intervals auditorily... (ie, a 3rd major interval, etc)

in my class, we sing LA LA LA LA LA for every note changing the pitch, obviously.

Besides, is a little disturbing to sing a scale with sharps and flats ( reflat, dosharp, etc...)

If you can do this, you can sing a melody written in a pentagram, like i do in my class.
You have to tune the first note!!

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If you don't care what scale you're playing, how are you going to know what notes your singing? If you don't know what the note C sounds like or is, then you're just singing the same major scale 14 times.

And by the way everyone, if you want to flat a note, you give it an "a" sound, and to sharp it, an "e" sound. for ex., singing the natural minor scale would be:

C D E F G A B
do re me fa sol le te

notice how "mi" becomes "me," "la" becomes "le," and "ti" becomes "te." The excption, "re," if flattened, would be "ra."

harmonic minor:
do re me fa sol le ti

melodic minor:
do re me fa sol la ti do te le sol fa me re do

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or you could just take the easy way out and do it euro-death style and just have cookie monster sing and tune drop d and just go DDD" E DDD" E

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by the intervals, all is about intervals.
Why you need to sing do re mi me etc??
I repeat, the important thing is to know the intervals in the scale. If you know everyone, you can sing anything. You sing lalalalala and that's it.
Why you have to learn another language?? fa fe fi fo nu tu &%/$& whatever

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It's almost impossible to learn the exact frequency of a note. And it isn't useful...

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Could you write out the phonetic ways (or words they rhyme with) of saying the notes that end in a vowel? I've noticed that when I say or sing mi and me, for example, that they both sound the same the way I pronounce it (ie, rhyming with "tea").

By the way, I think that the tonic system is much better than just singing every note as La. We used to sing every scale using just la in school and it got very boring, not to mention we didn't know which scale we were singing. Also, when you sing la and then le you can definitely tell that you've flattened the note, whereas you can't tell at all by singing just la all the time.

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You just don't get it do you.

And yes, it's VERY possible to be able to sing a good C off the top of your head. And it's called perfect pitch, which most of my teachers have.

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And it's quite useful. Stupid example: Some guy is playing a song you know on a guitar. You hum quietly to find out what key he's in, and whips out the lead part in the correct key.
1. It spares everyone the horrible sound of out of key leads.
2. It gives you respect.

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Glad you like to learn the way I sing...

do, as in doe
re, as in ray
mi, as in take "me" to the ball game
fa, as in fallen
sol, as in soul
la, as in french when you say "la maison"
ti, as in tea

minors...
me, as in the month of May
le, as in lay down
te, as in tay...


...as I said before, add an "aye" sound to minors and "eeee" to Major sounds...with the exceptions that I said ealier.

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You guys must have a high IQ to understand this thread!!


I'll skip this one

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Thanks, mate!

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146 is good enough.

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just make sure you say "soul" instead of "so".
I know it's hard, because "la" comes right after it, and it's hard even for me to say, "soul la."

If you want to get reeeal indepth, every syllable has its own pronuctiation, so that is when this comes to be important.

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