... was to sing the whole scale. It's irresistible and there is no point in resisting.
And I noticed an odd thing. It was very hard to get to the point where I could play a note and sing the same one back but singing the scale once I had that starting point was easy. There are some days even now when I start off and I just don't have it and I have to work at focusing my ear and brain to do it. But once I've got that starting point I can usually sing a scale relatively easily.
It wasn't right on at first. I was often a half tone off by the end. I would start on G and end up on G flat or G sharp. But I quickly figured out that if I really concentrated I could do it. And I suggest that anyone who really wants to get the basics of singing and playing down do the same thing.
While doing it over and over again, I recommend doing a couple of things. The first is to start thinking about range. Some scales will be a real strain when you get to the top note and some will actually be painful. We don't want to sing those.
Related to that is the question of which Do do we want to start on? When I first started talking about the octave I mentioned that each and every octave starts and ends on a note that is the same only different. There is the low-Do we start on and the high-Do we finish on. The thing is that the low-Do we start on is also the end of another octave that is below the one we just sang. Likewise, the high-Do at the end can be used to start a new octave above.
So let's go ahead and do it for a while. And let's follow Ms. Frizzle's advice for now and "Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!" The only rule is: Stop any time it hurts to sing a note. Well, one more important rule: Actually do it. Find some place we can be alone with the computer and make noise.
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