I’ve had this booklet by Ida Carroll (dating from the 1950s) on my shelves for a long time. ‘Intended for the use of those studying for class-teaching diplomas… an invaluable aid to anyone wishing to improve their sense of pitch’ So a bit advanced for me, and my concession is to sing them slightly more slowly than marked, at which point I sometimes get them entirely correct.
There are ninety-nine exercise, getting longer and in harder key signatures as the book progresses. There are plenty of traps for the unwary – invariably an accidental is quickly followed by the same note in the next bar, to trick you into adding it again. A difficult key or time signature will be compensated for by the exercise being simpler in other ways, and here the exercises have dated slightly. She regards 5/4 as a particular difficulty, and there are no changes of time signature mid-exercise, which would have been a poor training for singing music from at least the previous half century when these were published. There are a few, not necessarily obvious, dynamics, beginning a few bars into the exercise. There is a tempo or expression marking to be attended to at the beginning, though I wouldn’t like to march to some of the tunes she marks alla Marcia.
Try marching to this!
I’m getting better at these, though this may not be because my sight-singing or sense of pitch is improving. Rather, like anyone who writes music Ida Carroll had her favourite turns of phrase (she likes sequences, for example) and once you know them singing her melodies becomes easier.
Why improve your sight-singing? I don’t think of it as an end in itself, but rather a way of getting to the point where memory takes over (being blessed myself with a retentive musical memory). It will get you out of a tight spot, but can’t produce great performances.