For ensemble directors
Sight reading made for ensembles
abcSightReading is built for singers, players and the people who teach them. Every exercise sounds like real choral music, with phrases that breathe and cadences that land, and every part is one your sections can sing.
Pick a level and press Generate, or set it exactly the way your group needs it. Then put the syllables on, start a drill, and keep a tuner right beside the music.
10 exercises a month with no account, 50 with a free one.
What your group gets
- It sounds like choral music Phrases that breathe and cadences that land, so reading practice feels like the music on your stands.
- Parts your singers can sing Every line sits where that section lives, and moves the way a choral part moves.
- Ready for contest UIL levels 1 to 5, a 24-step path from rhythm to four parts, and presets of your own.
- The syllables you teach Solfège under the notes and rhythm syllables over them, on when you want them and off when you don't.
- Practice that runs itself Drill hands your singers exercise after exercise, and abcTuner and the practice tools sit beside the music.
- Your whole program Print it, share it, assign it, and see who practiced.
Written for voices
Sight-reading that sounds like music
Your singers read best when what they practice looks and sounds like what they perform. Exercises here have a shape: a phrase that goes somewhere, an ending that feels like one, and parts that make sense to sing on their own and together. What your group learns in practice carries straight into the octavo.
Every exercise is new, so nobody memorizes the answer, and every one is singable, so nobody wastes a rehearsal on something that would never appear in real music.
Choral exercises in every common voicing, with parts that sing together or enter one at a time, plus single-line unison reading and rhythm-only drills on the Unison page, which works for instrumentalists too.
Presets
Pick a level and press Generate
You don't need to set anything up. When you do want control, keys, meters, rhythms, chords, ranges and length are all yours to choose.
UIL levels 1 to 5
Each level follows UIL's choir sight-reading criteria, so the music on contest day feels familiar.
abcStepByStep
24 steps from rhythm alone to four parts, one new idea at a time. With an account, mark each step passed for each of your classes.
Your own presets
Save the settings you like under a name you'll recognize, and find them on any device when you're signed in.
Solfège and rhythm syllables
The syllables your group already uses
Read it clean, then turn the help on to check. Solfège prints under every part in movable do, fixed do or note names, and switching changes the exercise you're looking at, not a new one.
On a single line, rhythm syllables print over the notes: Kodály, counting, or your own set with Pro.
Drill, abcTuner and practice tools
Practice that keeps going without you
Start a Drill and step back: it brings up the next exercise, repeats each one, gives reading time first and raises the tempo as it goes. Keep the first pass clean and show the syllables only on the repeats.
Every exercise plays back with a count-in and a cursor that follows the music, and any part can be muted so a section hears itself against the rest. With Pro, a Tools button opens a tuner, metronome, drone and each part's starting pitch, already set to the exercise, and abcTuner adds voice analysis and a scale challenge that grades how in tune each note was.
- Tuner
- Metronome
- Drone
- Starting pitches
- Voice analysis
- Timer
For band, orchestra and studio teachers
Unison reading for your instrumentalists too
The Unison page writes single-line reading in treble, bass, alto or tenor clef, within the range you set, so a viola reads in alto clef and a trombone or cello can work in tenor clef.
Playback transpose leaves the page in the key it was written in and moves only the sound, up to an octave either way. Set it to −2 and a B♭ clarinet or trumpet player hears the line at concert pitch, right where their instrument sounds; −7 does the same for horn in F and −9 for alto sax.
Rhythm-only lines, Drill and abcTuner work the same for a section or a private student, with piano, strings or clarinet on playback.
- Treble clef
- Bass clef
- Alto clef
- Tenor clef
- Transpose ±12
- Rhythm only
Print it, share it, assign it
Print a clean copy for the stands, send a link that opens the same exercise, or export MusicXML, MIDI or ABC for your notation software. Coming soon with Educator: class join codes, student accounts, and assigned practice with the minutes each student put in.
Hear it in one exercise
Choose your voicing and a UIL level, press Generate, and turn solfège on. No account needed.