Human ears have an unconscious favorite type of musical motion.
Spoiler alert: it’s parallel motion.
Of the four basic types of motion, there is one that instinct pulls a lot of young singers towards, and it’s parallel. Whether they are meant to be singing oblique, similar, or contrary lines, a good percentage of singers will sight read in strictly parallel motion with the melody. (That’s once you’ve got them recognizing that they shouldn’t sing the melody itself.)
That’s why I taught about the 4 types of motion to my students tonight. The five-minute lesson in motion will hopefully understand the unconscious tendencies of their own musical brains, and then more successfully sing what’s on the page rather than what they think is on the page.