In a previous post I showed that singing from sight will be best if you relate all notes to the key of the music. You will be making less mistakes, you will be able to sing big jumps faster, and your tendency to be flat will be less.
Yet, there are moments at which you just need to pinpoint the right note, apart from the context of the key. For example, the key might be unclear, or there might be a lot of accidentals.
For such moments, you have to be able to sing the individual intervals as well. For practicing this, I wrote down some exercises for the fourth, the fifth, the minor and major second and finally for the minor and major third.
Fourths
This first melody is for ascending fourths:
You might reverse the melody to train descending fourths:
Fifths
Here is a melody for ascending fifths:
And the reversed version for descending fifths:
Abstract exercises
The exercises above differ from regular warm-up exercises. These are no melodies you know by heart just by singing them a couple of times. They are challenging and stay that way. If you have sung a melody very often, it might too easy. In that case you can make it challenging again by raising a minor second on the double bar line instead of a major second.
Seconds
The next melody is for training seconds. The structure of the exercises is clear, but singing is quite difficult. The whole tones don’t match our tonal tendencies:
Singing a sequence of minor seconds is easier, especially when it’s descending:
Thirds
Thirds can be stacked up to the octave as well. Both the minor and the major third result in a very touch exercise. First the minor thirds;
And here are the major thirds;
