have any suggestions?
I have a suggestion. Change your teaching philosophy.
I never sang once in the 10 years I have had piano lessons, I'm doing just fine.
Serious musicians need to get to the point that they can look at a score, no matter how complicated, and understand nearly exactly how it sounds For most people, it takes a bit of training to do this skill, and sight-singing/solfege is one of the tools used to learn how to do this.
It is the rare person who can sing more than one melody line at a time. (outside of anna-marie: ) It is the rare piece of music after beginner level that doesn't have more than one line at a time. Sightsinging is useful to me, as most of my time is spent on a monotonic brass instrument, where thinking the pitch before playing is essential. But that ability doesn't transfer easily to looking at a 4 part hymn and hearing what it would sound like - that's a separate mental process.
Anemnesis, I agree with what is presented in your link. But I don't think that it involves what Tim was saying, which is simply that if singing is for the purpose of hearing the music before you play it - you can't really sing what you hear in piano music. At best, if there is a single melody with an accompaniment, you can sing that melody .... assuming that you have that range in your voice, and hopefully won't strain your vocal chords.Your link makes some very important points. Theory tends to be taught as this dry subject, divorced from music during "music theory study time", and it is often taught totally in the context of Roman Numeral chords. What Dr. Laitz is saying is very important. I wouldn't want to mix it together with whether one can sing piano music, which is a different issue.
Actually, one of my biggest complaints about the traditional music curriculum is that it doesn’t start at the beginning. Almost immediately after learning clefs, key signatures, and the like, a student is expected to manipulate four-voice counterpoint! Under these circumstances, is it any wonder that aural skills classes tend to be a nightmare?In fact, the main use of Roman numerals seems to be as a method of cheating on dictation exercises. We in effect say “Look, we know that at this stage in your training, you can’t possibly be expected to accurately parse these complicated textures by ear. So here are some common ‘formulae’ to memorize–chances are, the person at the piano is playing a version of one of these, so you can use this information to have a better chance of transcribing the passage accurately.” Why bother with such a roundabout way of ear training? Why not start with a single voice, and only after mastering that moving on to two, three, and so on? (Why are students virtually never asked to do “partwriting” in two voices? Shouldn’t that be a prerequisite to doing it in four?)https://mathemusicality.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/music-pedagogy-continued/
I believe that Tim was talking only about the physical impossibility of singing piano music, because the idea of singing piano music usually has the idea of a single melodic line with harmony. I understand with what you are saying and agree with it. I suspect it's a different topic, however.I am a natural singer and my first abilities are around audiating as a singer. That includes hearing four part harmony, following the four voices simultaneously along their individual melodic lines. In fact, that's what I thought everybody did until I learned differently. My own quest has gone toward hearing chord qualities, progressions, the shimmering colours as one moves into the other - and I'd like to stress that this is not along Roman numeral systems though I have studied that in the past. I have that quest personally because of my own areas of strength and weakness - which are probably the opposite of most people who primarily work with piano.
But that ability doesn't transfer easily to looking at a 4 part hymn and hearing what it would sound like - that's a separate mental process.
Topic: Piano student with impaired vocal chords (cannot sing) 