Sight Singing is the ability to sing music by sight, rather than imitating what you hear. So far you have only sang melodies that are in major. In the next exercise you will be singing in natural minor. If you have been following the recommended order of exercises, you have already played, dictated and identified these melodies, so they should be somewhat familiar to you.
To review natural minor go to The Natural Minor Scale.
When sight singing, it is common to use the Solfeg system for identifying pitches. Each note of a scale is sung using a specific solfeg syllable. Below is an example of how the solfeg syllables apply to the C minor scale.
If you use the solfeg system regularly, you will become accustomed to the "feel" of each note in the scale.
Notice that three of the syllables are different from what we used in major. These syllables are changed to remind you that they are a ½ step lower than the same scale degrees in major.
This level will limit the pitches to the first four notes of the natural minor scale so that you can become familiar with the sound of the first four notes of the scale and how they relate to each other. The only note that will be different from major will be scale degree 3 - Me. It will be a ½ step lower than in major.