G Major has Fa-Sharp.
F Major has Ti-Flat etc…
I had a new interview student from Y*M*H*school, he learn everything in Do-Re-Mi. He has been playing for two years. However, this is what he told me when I ask him about the key signature as above. Is this normal? I thought that school teach literary everything in Do Re Mi, so,
Sol Major has Fa Sharp
Fa Major has Ti-Sharp etc…..
What is the norm of learning in Do Re Mi instead of ABC?

He is mixing the two systems. Not good...

Hey, join the club!

Most (semi-intelligent) students make the transition to ABC with no problem. But there are students who never cease to amaze me how many things they've been taught wrong. Solfege is a useful system in many ways, if taught correctly in the first place. If.

Give that student a few months, then you may be in a world of shock how far back you'd have to reach in order to make everything right. I'm still reaching with some of these kids.

Sounds like he learned fixed DO instead of moveable DO. (Why I don't know! Moveable DO has advantages but for fixed DO you might as well use the alphabet)

Let him know you call DO "C" etc and go from there.

Me neither! Moveable DO makes more sense to me simply for the purpose of understanding transposition.

You have to understand that giving the notes letter-names (which we do in English) is not universal. In French, the names are:do (C), ré, mi, fa sol, la si do.

Spanish, Italian, and many other languages also use the same terminology.

I teach in English or French, and insist that students use the correct names for the notes in the language we are using. For example, if they speak in English, they use A B C, but if they speak in French, they must use do ré mi. This is the only way to be able to work with anglophones or francophones anywhere in the world.

It sounds like this student is mixed up between English and French.

Where I live (on the boundary between Ontario and Québec), we change languages and provinces many times in the day!

Hope this helps.

Laurie -- you beat me to it. I was going to say that I teach students from the Eastern Hemisphere (and many Latin Countries in the Western Hemisphere) and most of those students learn in fixed Do. When I teach those students, I have to teach in fixed Do also but I try to get them to move to the movable Do system since that is what most Universities teach in here (should they go to Univ)

Fixed do is the way many students learn their notes in East Asia and Europe. It's not worse than movable.

We learn fixed do because it's a lot better to sing do re mi than ABC. Those syllables were crafted for singing first and foremost and unlike awful letters that end in long E sounds, treat the vocal mechanism much better. Imagine trying to sing a high G untrained with a long E! Horrid! Sol is far better.

My undergraduate university taught in fixed do for European market accessibility. My graduate university used movable do. My high school used movable. YMMV. I would personally rather teach fixed do than letters, because the letters are so awful for singing.

This thread is not about debating over the merits of which solfege system to teach. Fixed do and movable do are both equally valid. It is unfortunate that these systems somehow use the same set of syllables, which adds to the confusion that already exists, especially for kids! Using the letter-name system is useful for keyboard students who are not going to sing; in fact, it is simpler and FAR easier to teach without the distraction of solfege.

The problem the OP experiences is unique to this particular situation, and it has plagued many teachers (myself included) who are trying to undo the confusion. For most kids switching to ABC is not a problem. Most kids. But some kids' brains are not wired to be flexible, and the more confusion we present to these kids, the more they will struggle.

Well, in solfege many syllables end in a long E. mi, ti, and if you go to the chromatic notes, si, fi and whatever people use in their unique solfege system. The problem singing letter names is with the sharps and flats.

Mi and si have long Es on purpose - thirds and sevenths need to be kept high naturally, and the long E is easier to sing sharper than other vowels. Personally, I don't make any distinction between sharps or flats in fixed do. I just know. Do di re ri mi etc. are more for movable do.

Edit: Original ut re mi didn't have the accidental syllables either.

mi and ti will always be 3rd and 7th in movable do, but only 1 out of 12 times in fixed do.

I'm not sure it's about solfege at all.

It's not about solfege. It's about students being confused by multiple ways of naming pitches.

And until fake books start coming out with mi m7 chords, written, I'll stick to letters...

I don't see what the problem is. He's let you know he knows the key signature for 2 scales. That's all.

He says Fa Sharp, You say F#. You say "potaaa-to", I say "potah-to" type issue. You might say that you refer to notes using the music alphabet and ask if he is familiar with it. Or ask him to play all the G's and see what he does.

The two of you will simply need to use the same language.

It appears to me that you are missing something.

I interpret the Fa-Sharp as meaning the 4th tone of the major scale - sharped, not F-sharped.

I interpret the Ti-Flat as the 7th tone of the major scale - Flatted.

And with that interpretation it follows that the statement G Major has Fa-Sharp is incorrect. I believe what it should be is G Major has Ti-Sharp (the 7th tone sharped, in this case F).

Also, the other statement ... F Major has Ti-Flat should be F Major has Fa-Flat (the 4th tone of the major scale).

If I am misreading this please enlighten me.

The student would be using fixed Do, in which case Fa is F, and Fa sharp is F#. If he were thinking in movable do, then he wouldn't be "sharping" anything, because Ti is the 7th degree note of a major scale which already has the right intervals because that is what movable Do reflects.


Again, if the student is using fixed Do, the Ti is B, so Ti Flat is Bb. In movable Do Fa is the fourth degree note of the major scale and it would not need to be flatted as before.

The student is mixing two systems for naming pitches.

I said this, second post:

But that was inaccurate, because now we are up to three systems. And there are more.

Some people learn moveable do with altered vowels, which is what I saw taught but did not use.

Thus C D E F G would be do re mi fa so(l).

But C D Eb F G Ab B C would be something like this: do re *ma* fa so *le* ti do.

ALL the systems have advantages and disadvantages. As for this one, with the altered vowels, it appeals to me THEORETICALLY, since it more closely approaches what happens with Roman numerals.

I teach fixed DO solfege for all of my beginning students. I've used it for nearly 30 years now and I love the results. I love the fact that my students sing the notes of every song they play while playing that song (even 4 year olds). Solfege is the key to why training the ear is so easy.

I teach similarly to what the OP posted: students learn that the Key of C is DO thru DO, no sharps/flats; G has a fa-sharp, F has a ti-flat, etc.... Around the 3rd-4th year of the program they will easily translate DO to being the note C, and so on.... There's nothing strange or confusing about it (unless they are learning an additional instrument and taught letter names at the same time).

I think the point of confusion is the mixing of names. Why not "Sol major has Fa sharp"? Why are notes (pitches) called both Sol and G?

Yes. This is the same thing that bothers me, the total inconsistency. And by the way, IF I used solfege syllables, I would use "so", not "sol". The consonant on the end is inconsistent.

Not sure if this was addressed to me, but in my studio here is no confusion. I tell kids that the Key of G starts on 'sol', Key of C on 'do', and so on. When I teach chords I tell them that a C chord is 'do-mi-sol'. Kids will accept what you tell them. I don't call the pitches by letter names. Later, when we incorporate letter names for the staff notes, it's easy for them to see the connection between the solfege and letter names.

The word 'sol' has a silent L; it's pronounced SO but spelled SOL.

I was not talking about the pronunciation. I was saying that the "written" form has the consonant, which is of no importance for people who are only SAYING the syllable but is a possible "gotcha" for people who see it.


In my teaching I always aim for less confusion. If there were NO confusion, ever, I would be a perfect teacher.

Do you use this method with all your students, or just the very young ones?

I start immediately with the grand staff, but I start teaching reading from the very beginning and do not work with people who are unable to process that information, with the help of a parent in the room. I sounds to me that you do a lot of work with children much younger than my students. Usually about five is as young as I start them.

Maybe you did a good job making the connection for the students. We need more teachers like you.

Unfortunately, there are many students who are lost in the transition. My local colleagues and I have them in our studios.

If they can sing "Do, re, mi, fa, so" why can't they sing "C, D, E, F, G"? Then they won't have to make any transition. One set of syllables, another set of syllables. Why be complicated?

Wow, I must admit ... I have never heard of any of this ... thank heaven.

Ezpiano.org doesn't seem to be saying that the student is in any way confused, just that he (ezpiano.org) is a surprised.

That is right. The student did not seem to be confused. I am surprised and confused. I wonder if the student will start to be confuse if he has to take CM test, let's say Level 2 with no Do Re Mi at all.
If the purpose to teach in fixed Do to young beginner is to encourage singing, will the first year students play in G Major position? Will they sing in Sol La Ti Do Re? Or Do Re Mi Fa So in the G Major position?

For G Major:

Fixed Do = sol la ti re do

Moveable Do = do re mi fa sol

If you sing 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' in letter names, your ear only hears the long E sound in every note. Solfege works so much better. It's complicated only for the teacher who isn't familiar with teaching solfege. Students have no problem with it.

I specialize in early childhood music and begin students as young as 4 in group piano classes. My beginning students range from age 4-10.

I do a lot of ear training with my students. I have a group of 6 year olds and we do melodic dictation using 5 notes in the Keys of C, G, or our new key this week (F). I can play a song on the piano and they can tell me if it's in one of those keys. Because we sing every song that we will eventually play, they learn to sing musically, which in turn, helps them to playing musically. They internalize the notes, the rhythm...

But yours is a mixture. There are two kinds of Solfege: movable Do which represents the degrees in the common major and natural minor scale and gives some feel for functions, and fixed Do which uses the syllables as names for pitches in lieu of letter names.

When you say "key of G", that G refers to a pitch. It means music built on a major scale where the tonic is the pitch of G and the other notes relate to that G. When the children then sing "so la ti do ..." they are also naming pitches. But now the pitch which a second ago was called G is now called So. The same when you refer to the G major chord and then sing so ti re. G chord refers to the pitch of the root of this chord, and major refers to its quality. The pitch is being called both G and So.

It's a kind of bilingualism, like calling the object we use to write "pen" and "plume". Lots of kids grow up bilingual and are richer for it.

Did you say that they start by naming the pitches So La Ti and then transition later to naming them G A B under this system?

Yes, I use fixed DO solfege. This is their musical language. And yes, we start by learning solfege the first 3 years or so, then we transition to letter names and actually do both. True, it's like learning a language. Students will learn to move between solfege and letter names. I have students who by this time are learning a 2nd instrument. They go to piano and read in solfege, then to clarinet lesson and read in letter names.

I'm reading that clarinet is a transposing instrument.

Not sure what you mean.... whatever. My point is that most instrumental teachers use letter names for staff notes. My students eventually become fluent in both.

I'm still struggling to understand the advantage of your teaching in solfege? You've mentioned one DISADVANTAGE - having to rapidly become bi-lingual when taking up another, more social, instrument.

What disadvantage? They are the same thing, fixed do and letters. Fixed do is easier and better for the vocal mechanism. I don't understand the fuss over this. They are the same. Learning them at the same time is not difficult. Let's just say that they'll be prepared for learning music anywhere.

Singing and sightsinging in solfege is easier than letters. Full stop. Kids learn a system of absolute pitches this way and can develop excellent pitch as a result. I switched from letters to fixed do in college and it was like a like a lightbulb went off. Suddenly notes were sounds, not letters or keys on the keyboard. Do was always do. It made everything easier for me.

Maybe piano teachers need to sing more...?

Not following. Are you saying that you don't know what I mean by transposing instrument is, or how it is pertinent?

Instrumental teachers in many countries use fixed do solfege names for instruments. That includes French Canada.

That is very interesting! To me notes were always sounds (pitches). Those sounds were also located on the piano. The note C on the page is the sound C in the ear which is also the sound C produced by the piano (or any other instrument). If it is not so, are there holes in how piano is often taught?

Yes, but why teach two systems at once? I want one system in place, solidly, before possibly mucking everything up.

Sightsinging without ANY letters OR syallables is easier. Full stop. Why?

Because then you pick whatever syllables or sounds or vowels that are most easy for you. This not only helps non-singers, it is also potentially easier for singers. So the reason for using syllables is that it is a crutch. Those of you who need this crutch will never ever understand why those of us who do not need it find it nothing more than a useless pain in the ***.

This is a singers' bias. The assumption is that if we do not sing, we can't hear, we don't have an accurate pitch sense. No other method will do. We have to become quasi-singers.

You were given a crutch, and the crutch worked. Notes were just letters or keys? Well, they have to linked to SOMETHING. Why is a "sound" more of a"sound" because a syllable OR a letter OR a key???

When I read notes, I hear them. I also seem the keys, but why NOT? I'm a pianist. I also see fingerings, for brass, and positions for trombone. These are very powerful links. Am I the only person in the world who does not need "syallables" to hear?

Maybe piano teachers need to learn to hear better, REGARDLESS of the method they use.

My point: I have no objections to syllables. But I am fed up with the propaganda that they are the one and only effective way to learn to hear.

I was asking what you were saying, therefore I didn't know what you meant, which is why I asked.

The reason I asked about transposing instruments is as follows:

The purpose of the fixed do solfege singing, as I understand it, is in order to hear actual pitches. You use solfege because it is easier on the singing apparatus, and then letter names for those same pitches - you transition. So the students are getting two names for pitch: solfege (fixed) and letters. Lots of people are bilingual with two names for the same thing so that's not a problem (unless they eventually get to movable do as well for some reason).

The mention of clarinet was interesting in this context. Since it's a transposing instrument, the student sees "C" on the page, plays "C" on the clarinet, but the pitch he produces is Bb.

Since what you do involves pitches, I was curious about this side of it, because it adds still another aspect to the puzzle. I hope my question is more clear.

They were for me also, but something clicked when I learned fixed do. I'd been used to movable do in high school. Do was a sound I could attach to and sing instead of having various Cs scattered around. It's an issue of absolute pitch being related to timbre, I think. I always had excellent, near-absolute pitch for the piano. Solfege was a way to get it in my voice, so to speak. When I sing, I don't think letters, I think solfege. When I play, I think letters.

Gary, you might as well say any system is a crutch. Letters are just a bunch of syllables, so just give up teaching letters and say everything is ba ba ba. Why not?

As for internal pitch, how on earth to you check your aural image if not by singing? Solfege just gives us the same thing as letters, you just don't have to sing Ab Db Bb Eb C F Eb Db C. La re si mi do fa mi re do is easier.

Give them a level-2 sight reading test and see how they do. Like I said before, smart kids will pick up on letter names with no problem. But there are certainly kids who are extremely confused by the transition process.

Maybe that's why all the major keyboard method series avoid solfege completely?

Transposing instruments introduce a "fight" between absolute pitch and relative pitch.

Therefore there needs to be some way of reconciling the fact that C is A on Eb sax, D on Bb clarinet, Eb on A clarinet, etc.

Without at least some feeling for absolute pitch, this is a non-issue in SOME situations. Simply slide pitches up and down relatively.

But if you are teaching clarinet while accompanying, and you need to play to play the part for a student, without moving away from the piano, you have to mentally transpose down a step. Being able to do that, playing the solo part AND the accompaniment, at least part of it, is a good first step to learning to read a full orchestral score.

Have you ever worked with solfege singers who are hopelessly confused when they start singing chromatic passages and/or music that modulate frequently (or atonal music)? There are several systems of solfege, and they are not all built the same, i.e., they each have their own advantages and disadvantages.

You can do ear training without teaching solfege. It can be done.

No, but in the case of atonal music it may help or hinder. There are chromatic syllables as well.

I don't use solfege all the time and I don't think it's the answer to everything. I think we should all be well-schooled in the different systems available. I just don't believe in this angry reaction to the usage of fixed do solfege. It's a tool. Some people don't know how to use it, but that is their problem should they get a student who does use it.

It's our job to be well-versed and keep our minds open.

As for me, I learned my ear training without solfege, just singing open syllables. My pitch accuracy improved quite a bit when I added solfege. Before, perhaps I was a few cents sharp or flat. After, I was right on, with or without a piano or pitch pipe.

The confusion for students is to have both a solfege system and letter name system for learning the staff notes. But referring to do-mi-sol as a C chord and ti-fa-sol as a G7 chord isn't confusing at all. Kids memorize it. Adults will try to dissect it and figure it out.

I'm not sure why the major US piano methods avoid solfege. My understanding is that most of the world uses solfege for musical language, not letter names. The only group piano methods that are solfege-based are Yamaha and Harmony Road.

My students do CM. By the time they take the level 2 theory test, they have transitioned to letter names and can respond in either musical language.

Does anyone remember ITA - the Initial Training Alphabet? I don't know if it escaped Great Britain to a wider audience.

It was a "simplified" spelling system.
http://www.theweeweb.co.uk/ladybird/ita_ladybird.php

It required 45 "letters", but each consistently meant just one sound. There was some evidence that it got English-speaking children started on reading more efficiently. Trouble was - they eventually had to change over. The bright ones managed fine, of course. The plodders didn't do so well. English spelling isn't intuitive, but, if you read a lot, you can tell when a word "looks wrong". The kids brought up on ITA couldn't.

A form of solfege was VERY popular in British schools and choral groups in recent historical times. It seemed to be a pretty effective training method for singing. The masses were enabled to perform "The Messiah" without properly learning notation, but then hit a dead end. The musically talented, of course, easily transcended it. So, I suppose, no harm done :-) But I sometimes wonder if instead of daily practice in Tonic sol-fa (as it was called) children had been similarly schooled in proper notation, results could have been just as good and more open-ended.

First of all, you are using the same syllable for A, Ab and so on. Your key set is: Db, Eb, F ?, Ab, Bb, C. Without the missing note, we don't know if we are missing a G or a Gb. Without that info, we can't use moveable do.

I don't have to SING. I hear the notes without singing. I always have been able to. Singing makes me LESS accurate, because I can't "tune" my voice within the range of a couple cents.

If I am reading a vocal line, I mentally hear a great singer, in my head. Why use my own un-trained voice when I can just stick a superb voice in my mind and have this "voice" sing the notes?

I have a visual connection to the piano keys, and that is instant, but it is so subliminal that I don't think about it. It's just there, always.

I'm not saying that NO connection is necessary. Furthermore, I would say that any method of connecting one thing with another could be called a "crutch". There are harmful, limiting crutches, and there are crutches that are extremely useful and that never need to be thrown away. Your syllables are a crutch. My visualization of the keys is a crutch. But my crutch works in my head. Audiation. Yours may work superbly, therefore it is 100% valid for you.

I was exempted from sight-singing classes. I passed the final test BEFORE the class started. I know others who have done the same. As I sang, just using la, la, la, la--or da da da da, I simply pictured the piano keys that went with the notation and I simply did not miss. But to me doing ANY sight-singing of this kind is kindergarten, since it is totally useless for audiating full scores.

The point I keep trying to make is that if you are always right, even the people who TEST don't care.

Your answer was not to me, but I'm going to answer it any way.

YES!

In every case where people work with moveable do, I have run into horrendous problems/limitations.

As for fixed do, that makes sense to me IF sharps and flats are not ignored. But then, for me, it becomes an alternate system, and the only objection I have, in so called "classical" music, is that I want letters to be instant so that modern notation is understood immediately. Do mi so(l) and C E G are both equally logical, for a C chord. But Do maj7/sol is not used, at least so far as I have seen. I teach major and minor chords from the beginning. For this, for notating them as chords, letters are what they will eventually need. Why not start with it? Why use sol ti re fa = G7?

And this does not even touch upon the idea that "flat" and "sharp" are different in different languages. If you do not know that bi bemol = Bb, you can't even order music from another country. I'm only arguing for one PRIMARY system. Other systems are interesting and perhaps useful, and my reason for using letters is practical. I don't know any pop or jazz musicians who refer to chords with syllables. Only letters and Roman numerals. And I don't want my students growing up in a "classical-music-ghetto".

I not only agree, I simply think that there are two many problems with solfege to use it. Again, I am talking about MOVEABLE do. I have no problem with fixed do. It's a bit slower for me, but I can use it.

Well, movable do has limitations. It does what it's designed to do, and no more. It's all about scale degrees, and I don't use it when dealing with overly chromatic, frequently modulating or atonal music. It gives you a sense of how the major/minor key works, in general. I've only run into horrendous problems here on PW, when trying to explain to fixed-do people what is the point of movable. I'd agree with that. I didn't realise they were ignored until reading explanations here from solfege advocates.I've heard conflicting explanations and I'm still not sure exactly what happens with chromatic music, so perhaps "ignore" isn't the right term and comes from my ignorance. What I have problems with, as I've said a number of times before, is using both fixed and movable. Now that's confusing.
I have used movable as an aid to understanding relationships between notes. It has mainly an illustrative purpose in my teaching, especially as I no longer teach small children. I have done lots of work with young children and Kodaly-type movable do. Taught with understanding it really really works in developing musical literacy and relating sound to symbol. And transposition. But you don't sing Wagner operas in movable do. You just don't.

I don't think I've ever run across the problem the OP described, because I haven't taught anyone who's learnt fixed-do instead of letter names.

That makes complete sense. But I also run into problems with moveable do habits when trying to get people to break OUT of purely diatonic music, and we hardly need to get to Bartok to run into that problem.

If I were teaching people to sing notes with only one syllable per pitch, I would like to teach something like the German system, which goes like this:

A (pronounced ah)
A# ais
Ab as

Here you even have room for double sharps and flats:

Ax aisis
Abb ases

Granted, some of these sound a bit "rude" in English.

The only irregularity is for B, which is always H for anything but Bb, which is B.

This gives the famous BACH theme, which is Bb A C B...

B = ha
B# = his
Bx = haisis
Bbb = hesses

A disadvantage, of course, is that some vowel sounds would not be good vocally.

An advantage would be that something like "B double sharp" is quicker to say the German way.
Another advantage would be that the actual letters are preserved except for "H". H for B and B for Bb would cause problems in letter chords: H7(b5) is unlikely to become a standard chord name.

Some people have stated, clearly, that they sing only the syllable names but do not add either flat/sharp OR alter the vowel. The system I was shown did alter vowels for sharps and flats. That made more sense to me.

I THINK I understand, intellectually, how the sound of syllables might relate to whole steps vs. half steps. In other words, if people totally relate mi-fa and ti-do to half steps, and they have no other way to do that, it would be helpful. I am still doing a great deal of experimentation with students, and I probably have about 20 students who are 10 or younger. Perhaps a factor we do not pay enough attention to is the tendency of our students to relate to music as we do, if we explain it logically and make it practical. My way of hearing is internal, linked to the color of keys, their relationship to each other and the sounds they make. I perceive intervals as horizontal distance, linked to black and white patterns, and I am doing intense investigation right now of how completely I can transmit that what of perceiving to young children. So far my hunches have been correct, but that may change in a week, month or year.

I have. We have a huge Hispanic population here, and Spanish uses do re mi fa sol la si do for the white keys. Flat is bemol, which strangely is the same in French and Italian (minus minor spelling differences). Sharp is sostenido in Spanish but dièse in French and diesis in Italian. So I would say this in Spanish, for the C natural minor scale:

do re mi-bemol fa sol la-bemol si-bemol do.

However, since I am flexible enough to call out notes in Spanish, if necessary, I expect my Spanish students to make an equal effort to learn letters. Then we have a choice when communicating, and the letters give them a way into the kind of chords we have in fake books.

I have been curious about one thing. The RCM recently changed the harmony exams and also the supporting material. One of the major changes is that in addition to Roman numeral degree names, they also include chord letter names (G7/B), figured bass, AND movable do solfege (for tendency tone-voice leading). Ok - RCM is in Canada, Canada is bilingual, and so are the exams. So if they are using movable Do solfege to show tendency tones, and if in the French part of the exam they use fixed Do syllables, how does that pan out?

I think it's important that what you do is within a broad context where many different things come into play.

Can you teach us how to make the transition less painfully? Apparently your school is a good example of success to convert from DoReMi to CDE, do you mind give me and many other teachers here on PW that claim the transition is "EXTREMELY" hard some useful tips?

Also, if your student who is learning DoReMi as their first language, then later convert to CDE, I like to ask usually at what year they are taking CM test Level 2?

When you're looking at music for brass, do you hear it with proper intonation? Does piano music sound tempered? What about orchestral scores?

I can't remember ever being taught anything other than "look and sing" directly from notation. I do remember an early music teacher chanting "Ta-a-fa-te" or something to teach rhythms. I also remember wondering what on earth she was on about, when simply reading the "quaver-semiquaver-quaver" pattern in 6/8 was so much easier.

Precocious little brat, wasn't I :-)

But, even when teaching less talented kids, I've never seen much point in anything other than recognising patterns in "real" notation.

First, we have to define proper intonation. And for that we need a standard. I can tell you how piano (equal-temperament) differs from trumpet, or how trumpet differs from piano. But for people playing music that is tonal but also chromatic, which covers most of the 1800s through to today, the AVERAGE of all people playing together tends to approach equal-temperament. The reason is simple. In an orchestra you have so many different instruments, each with their own peculiar pitch tendencies, that they all end up compromising in order to tune unisons or form simple chords. For brass, here is just one typical example:

For concert D (the pitch), Bb instruments all use no valves in the second octave. 12 is an alternate, but it is usually not used. That D is naturally more than 10 cents flat to equal-temperament. The reason is that it is part of the harmonic series, which of course is not "tempered". That same note is usually played on F horn, though it can be played on Bb horn too (because double horns are the norm in orchestra), so 1,2 is usually picked. 1,2 on that note (Ab for horn) is sharp. That means that an octave between trumpets and horns there would be nasty IF brass players did not constantly adjust. But they do. When the trumpet player lips that note up, and the horn lips it down, they will approach the same pitch as we would expect in equal-temperament.

In other situations, diatonic and fixed, a lower third may be chosen, including one that is untempered and has no beats. This has to be agreed upon in practice.

That's just a couple of elementary examples. In real life it is MUCH more complicated...

I was taught nothing except how to read. I mimicked what I heard, famous players, with incredible problems stemming from lack of guidance. Fingering? Scales. Other than that, try to pick things up from scores that had better-than-average suggestions. I had to play major, minor, augmented and diminished chords, arpeggiated and in inversions. End.

I never had a brass lesson until my freshman year in college, where I finally got "theory": it was the usual formal but impractical Roman numeral analysis. I think I learned almost everything really important to me from jazz musicians, although I am not one myself.

No one asked me to sing until my freshman year. I took the sight-singing final, for the second year, and exempted it because I could just look at the notes, hear them in my head, and hum them.

I was in 6th grade when I had to endure this:

http://www.songsforteaching.com/orchestrainstrumentsong.htm

The teacher thought I was a moron and sent home a check on my report card saying:

"Gary needs help in listening to and appreciating music."

I thought SHE was a moron, the kids sounded horrendous, the music was stupid, etc. My parents had to explain to her that I played piano and was bored, that I listened to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, etc., etc. She probably would have still assumed I was a moron, but I was asked to play. After that she liked me.

If I could not mimick a rhythm, I worked it out mathematically. I never understood musical nonsense syllables!

Ditto. With the ones who are "musically challenged" and who simply do no work, I will try anything to keep myself sane...

This is a bit old, and perhaps only marginally on topic, but I believe it to be incorrect.

First of all, of the seven names, two have long Es. 2/7 doesn't seem all that efficient, does it? I wonder how they got their names, guess I'll google it some time.

But more important, 3rds and 7ths sung sharp? Certainly not in a chord, at least I hope not.

As a brass player, I was taught to lower the third and raise the fifth of a chord. When you have time to do this accurately, say in a chorale movement with some skilled players, you can hear the effect when you get it right. For me it is almost like a 2D picture becoming 3D.

According to google, the syllables do not have long Es "on purpose," but are the syllables in a hymn:

The names were taken from the first verse of the Latin hymn Ut queant laxis, where the syllables fall on their corresponding scale degree.
Sheet Music for Ut Queant Laxis

Ut queant laxis resonāre fibris
Mira gestorum famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti labii reatum,
Sancte Iohannes.

Mi has a long E.

Well, true.

But the claim is that the syllables were chosen for ease of singing, and this is especially true for long Es, which are extra easy to sing sharp.

I have shown that syllables were not chosen for ease of singing, but simply by accident of usage in a particular hymn.

Further, there are only two Es, mi and ti (or si in some countries), as opposed to 5 non Es, do re fa sol and la.

I do not know if an E makes it easier to sing the 3rd or the 7th high, I don't teach singing. I do know that the advice to sing the 3rd or 7th high in a chord is considered wrong in my world.

Sounds like they are headed for a slippery slope!

If you raise the 5th, in a chord, it creates beats. More important: Any high 5th will turn out to be the 3rd in another chord, and then you have an even higher 3rd than a tempered 3rd.

Lowering the 3rd is a special case. Let's say, for example that you are playing something in Bb major (picking a very natural scale for brass). So long as the D remains the third, and you have a droning sound, not moving chromatically, that low 3rd (D) may be effective because it eliminates beats. This is used orchestrally especially when no vibrato is used. It is a very stark but pure sound.

If you play that same D low, which by the way can be done easily on low D, trombone, by edging 4th position out, if baritone/euphonium has a unison with you, it will be almost impossible for the other player to lip that same note down. And your high 5th is probably about 2 cents high, measuring to a tempered 5th. Very small. In the effort to sharp it, you will probably pull in too far.

In addition, the way a vocal line or an instrumental line shapes, in solo playing, causes people to tune differently. Because an E, in the key of C, is pushing towards a IV chord, melodicaly there is a tendency to sharp it a bit. Same with B, thus mi and si (ti). Vibrato also totally changes the rules, since vibrato tends to hide beats.

It's complicated...

Gotcha. I have also never had the impression that the syllables were chosen for singability, but rather it was chance. At that time the words of the chants had been set out and they were not allowed to deviate. D'Arezzi used what he had in order to get out of a sticky problem, that of getting boys to learn a huge number of sings by memory which took years. It was a pragmatic matter.

I work with a group of singers who never learned to read notation; they can only read some shorthand for movable do. When they sing simple songs that don't modulate, they are fine. But when the music gets slightly more difficult (secondary dominants, chromaticism, modulations), it becomes unbearable.

Their "system" of movable do also "ignores" sharps and flats by using the same syllables to sing pitches that are half step sharp or half step flat. As you can imagine, chaos ensues.

Theoretically true, but in practice not a problem.

I don't actually lower or raise anything. I listen and tune, and I know from theory that I'm lowering a third and raising a fifth, but it's not a deliberate or set amount.

As far as valved instruments not cooperating - well, the amateurs don't. But they don't play close enough in tune to be able to pull this off anyway. This is advanced stuff. The pros on euph or any valve instrument do. I don't know whether they lip or move valve slides, I assume the latter if they have time.

Guido's original system may not have been written with the vocal mechanism in mind, but the Italians certainly used it for that effect during the Renaissance. They changed ut to do, and added si.

Remember that ut re mi lacked a seventh syllable and that the 8 standard authentic and plagal modes did not include Ionian as we know it, though music historians are probably going to argue about when Ionian and Hypoionian came about, their usage, etc.

In choral singing (and a capella too) if your thirds and sevenths are flat it's going to be pretty bad, especially in C major as C is generally an awful key for the voice (a minor too).

I too like to fantasize on the origin of the names of notes. Only I see it differently.

I don't imagine Guido's choice as pragmatic but rather mystic. As much as Keystring is convinced that the choice of syllables was hazard, I am equally convinced that they were not.

When I began to study French solfège I realized that the note called "so" in English is not "so" at all. It is not "sew, a needle pulling thread". It is "sol", which means the sun. That the dominant is called the sun ... to me it is unthinkable that it is a simple coincidence.

Some believe that Guido's choice hides a cryptogram. For example, imagine a cross. The vertical represents RE-SOL-UT-IO. The horizontal AL (SOL) FA, alpha, and the "O" in SOL, the center of the sun, represents omega ...

If I am not mistaken, Rostropovitch makes passing reference to ideas of this sort on his video of the Bach suites.

I imagine that the success of solfège as a pedagogic method was considered a proof of the power of the mystical or religious ideas that inspired it.

It is also said that the substitution of DO for UT is linked to the word dominus, or god.



That the syllables UT RE MI FA SOL LA contain the principal latin vowel sounds O I A E U, there too I tend to suppose that it is not an accident but rather a very astute choice.

Perhaps there is some confusion over vertical versus horizontal tuning.

I am talking vertical tuning. In a major chord the fine adjustment away from ET is to lower the 3rd and raise the 5th. This gives a beatless pure chord, sometimes called just (though I don't prefer that terminology.) The ear finds this type chord surprisingly pleasing; it is often not practical to do this in real time, and certainly not on piano or other ET instruments. Brass and strings can do it on chorale movements that are slow enough. Amateurs can rarely play (or maybe hear) precisely enough to do it. I personally do not think the singing pitch is narrow enough to pull this off, but I could be wrong. I mostly play trombone in amateur wind ensembles and have only rarely had the chance to play with musicians good enough to tune this way consistently.

If you are talking horizontal tuning, with a monotonic melodic line, maybe you have a different answer.

AZNpiano, it sounds to me that the problem with movable do and your chorus lies with the chorus, not with movable do. On the discussion forums of the American Choral Directors' Association, there is much praise for, and use of, movable do (with la-based minor). This is the system Zoltan Kodaly used in Hungary, to great effect. (Some conductors do prefer either fixed do, or do-based minor.) Their choirs are able to modulate correctly. Perhaps there is something different about instrumentalists, but I take the ACDA discussions as witness that movable do can be highly effective for singers.

Tim, yes and no. It depends on where you're coming from with the chord. Sevenths always need to be high as they're the leading tone and I know from experience if the leading tone is flat then the harmonics of the chord will have beats. Thirds need to be high especially when descending (so there's your horizontal tuning).

Having long E sounds on those two scale degrees most likely to go flat is an immense help for singers singing diatonic music. Try it for yourself - sing a note on ah, then on ee. You'll feel the resonance change and maybe even the pitch will rise by a hair... works great in moveable do, yeah?

I'm trying my best not to have this thread turn into vocal pedagogy (of which I am definitely not qualified to talk about) so I'll end it with solfege is a very useful tool, especially for singers, or pianists who wish they could sing (but sing all the time in lesson anyway).

It could be an artifact of the instrumentalists I happen to associate with, I suppose. But we've never had this discussion. All of my peers see movable do as useful and relevant. Fixed do is redundant, we always know what note we're on. (and in some genre's we also know what chord we're within). We find it a bit of a mystery why anyone would want another name for a note as in fixed do. We can sightread by note, as in letter name; we can sightread by interval, moving from the last note; but we prefer to sightread by pattern using scale degrees.

The choirs I sing with are not all that professional, but movable do definitely helps.

Borrowing from Tim:

Perhaps, as you stated, you fantasized. I did not. It is part of a chant. At the time church musicians were locked into liturgy that was not allowed to be changed.

The Latin word "sol" may be part of the word "solve", but the word is "solve" not "sol". You might as well argue that "butter" is rude because of the first syllable.

You can state your pragmatic point of view as a fact, but ...

it ain't nessa
ain't nessa
ain't nessa
ain't nessa
ain't nessasarily sol !

But then, my little story above also ain't necessarily so.




That is true as can be. Can't deny it. But, in my opinion, that is of no importance, words can be embedded in words. Words, even graved in stone, can be used in all sorts of ways, and if you stop at the most literal meaning you often miss the most interesting.




Well, if you've ever seen "The Last Tango in Paris" ... !

This is documented fact. The liturgy was set at that time. The chant was the chant that Tim quoted.

If the text came from that chant, I don't see a point of view. I see a clear fact.

And a very stubborn person who refused to acknowledge that any point beside his own is valid...

Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing...

1) Just tuning means using mathematical ratios, which make no beats. It's far easier to simply listen than to compute it. Just stop the beats.

2) Pythagorean tuning uses all "just" 5ths. And example: 440*3/2=660, so E should be exactly 660.

Just is what most people perceive as pure, an exactly ratio.

Tuning in all just 5ths does this: 440*((3/2)^12]/64=892.006073. In other words, people who tune pianos, without training, and do not know to temper the 5ths tune them "just", tune octaves just. Then when they have completed the whole process find out, to their horror that the last 5th, completing the circle, is off a horendous 24 cents. This is referred to as the musical "comma".

I am talking from personal experience. I tried to tune as a teenager, got about half way through the temperament, then found out to my horror that the 3rds were screaming. I got quite a lecture from my tuner when he returned and fixed my mess. But he also told me he did EXACTLY the same thing when he was a teen.

Equal temperament fixes this by lowering each 5th by 2 cents (rounding off)--24/12.
440*(3/2)*11/16.

The just 5th for E, using A 440, is 660. Lowering by 2 cents is:

659.25511383

The important thing to remember is that 2 cents is 1/50th of a SEMI-TONE. When people talk about the "flat 5ths" on piano, usually they have no idea how close to just piano 5ths are, when a first rate tech does the job.

I never said movable do is not effective. When used correctly, movable do has its benefits. But movable do has its limitations.

Movable do (or solfege, for that matter) becomes problematic when singers use it in place of actual note-reading. I actually have local voice teachers who refer their voice students to me for piano lessons because they realize the importance of theory for vocalists.

You also have to realize that Kodaly is just one system. There are other ways to teach people to sing.

And example of this will be a fine choral conductor warming up a choir. "Ni, ni, ni, ni, ni" is used in 5-note patterns (C D E F G F E D C), then up 1/2 step. The syllable is used to get the sound ultra-focused, and that tends to lift the pitch and counters the woofy, heavy, weighted down effect that many choirs get. Different vowels are used, of course, alternatively, to round out the sound.

There are two completely different ideas here. One is vocal quality, the sound of the voice, and different syllables obviously produce different effects. I spent years accompanying, in vocal lessons, so I know what vocal teachers/coaches do.

But the second idea is that solfege will produce singing pitch accuracy for non-singers. I can only say that it is utterly NOT true for me.

Yes. That's what I was trying to say. Just listen and tune. It's more than just beats stopping, though, the chord character changes a bit to my ears.

Of course, not all instruments yield beats anyway. Winds mostly do, bowed strings mostly not. Singers? Ah, I'd be tempted to throw the BS flag on that one.

Your point about the fifth not having to be raised that much is a good one. But by comparison with the 3rd, which has to be lowered a bit more, it seems to sound high.

There is some research that says skilled musicians when told they are out of tune tend to lower the note by the amount predicted by the ET to just gap. Some of my colleagues aren't in that skilled band, so we have a saying: if you don't know whether you're sharp or flat, you're sharp.

I can't figure out what you mean by that. ??? Would singing do to sol in key of Eb Major ever land you on the wrong note, e.g.?

I added the math to show how little a piano 5th is "off". If you listen to a very well-tuned piano, not so easy to find, and play 5ths RIGHT AFTER it has been TUNED, the beats you will hear in the range of the trombone will be very slow. Most people hear overtones ringing and mistake them for beats. If you play Bb and another t-bone plays F, after tuning so that you can hear no beats, what you play will be SO close the piano that if you even twitch, if you drink too much coffee, your pitch will waver + and -.

I'm not talking about amateurs.

I was the lead player in the FSU Wind Ensemble, and I taught brass for years. Yes, theoretically any note can be "lipped", but 2nd, valve (for example) has no "slide" for adustment, even on trumpet, which has a slide-adjustement for 1st and 3rd valve.

More important. No slide-adjustments raise pitch, because the default position is all the way in. Only the lip can be.

Most important: if the natural harmonics on two instruments are off in opposite directions, even with intense "lipping" a huge amount of tone quality is sacrificed...

Regardless, my point remains that solfege is a crutch. A very useful one, for SOME people, but with severe limitations in the long run. AZN has repeated explained why, as I have.

You are missing the point. As music becomes more and more complex, it is no longer IN keys.

Hopefully by the time you reach that music, you're a good enough musician that you won't need solfege (you can just holler note names at yourself during practice, like I do).

First off, we tune by listening to beats. We also play doublestops. There is another aspect to single notes that I don't know how to explain.

Ah.

Yes, I agree completely, and that makes it REALLY hard to sightsing.

Even church modes tend to throw our choir, including me until I recognize it.

Some valve instruments, particularly baritones and euphs, have a springloaded selfcentering main tuning slide. These are more common in British brass bands, but they seem like a really good idea.

Not that I've ever heard a euph play flat - painfully sharp is a bit more cnormal.

I hope you're kidding. Singing note by note, out of context, seems about the worst approach to sightsinging imaginable.

Yes, they do. ALL of them. And the human voice. There are ALWAYS beats when two pitches are not just...

It is VIBRATO that OBSCURES beats.

Well, no.

There are some bowed string instruments known to not produce beats useful for tuning, because the bowing action is so asymmetrical. I'll try to find a reference.

The voice is pretty wide around a central frequency - it is that problem that obscures beats, not the vibrato. Er, not just the vibrato.

(the vibrato is why I'm not an opera fan. just too much)

Ah, just... nevermind.

Please do find the reference. I am seriously interested.

I did NOT say useful for tuning. That's another matter entirely. For beat-tuning you need at least two pitches that are very consistent.

Intervals work unless the music is totally atonal, and even there they work for melodies. My point has only been that even when singing a chromatic scale, or a whole tone scale, or an octatonic scale, solfege is either not very useful or stops working.

But the need to sing these more complex patterns in tune does not lessen. And my point remains that IF you get good enough to hear complex patterns, accurately, anything that you can use solfege for becomes so elementary, you don't NEED it to find, sing or hear pitches.

Well, that's the problem. These singers know only solfege and no letter names. They also know nothing about theory. It's a joke to keep using movable do when the music's demands far exceed the scope of movable do.

That is exactly the point I have tried to make, unsuccessfully.

I think maybe one bottom line is to have more than one way to "hear" music, because it has more than one aspect. In its time, m.d. solfege was very useful in getting a feel for degrees in the "common" types of scales and keys, and similar. Chords have another role. Pure intervals another, and pitch names (notes) still another. When we are involved in music, we are drawing on more than one at once, and it keeps shifting. They also interrelate: chords have something to do with melodies, and melodies have something to do with chords. Music is movement, and these things help us predict that movement. Too broad and philosophical?

Can your students sight sing a piece in C# major as fluently as they can sing a piece in C major using fixed DO?

Unless they have perfect pitch, I highly doubt this would be the case.

Movable DO (major) and movable LA (minor) is far more useful for regular folk, it instills a solid sense of relative pitch and creates an ear-keyboard link much better than fixed DO can.

In my opinions, Moveable DO is more useful than Fixed Do and Fixed Do is just a way to name the keys and it could be done in ABC with a better result.....

What do you mean by fixed do? We have already established that other countries use syllables instead of numbers, and these countries have names for all standard accidentals.

Or do you mean fixed do with ONLY: do re mi fa sol la ti do?

Fixed do is fixed do. There should be no ambiguity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solf%C3%A8ge#Fixed_do_solf.C3.A8ge

i.e. C=do, C#=di, D=re, D#=ri, E=mi, F=fa, F#=fi, G=so, G#=si, A=la, A#=li, B=ti.

You have it backwards.

I prefer high 7ths and 3rds, melodically, but those who argue for low 3rds and 7ths are on totally solid ground when there is no modulation.

A V chord in C major, DGB, needs a LOW 7th to get a just 3rd (GB). And in mean-tone temperaments, the E is low, to form a just 3rd with C.

B has to form a pure 5th to be beatless. Which is why the 3rd and 7th are both low to eliminate beats.

You didn't read your own source, and you have not read all of this thread. Solfege - Wiki

Your syllabes for sharps are chromatic variants...

1) 'In the fixed do system, shown above, accidentals do not affect the syllables used. For example, C, C#, and Cb (as well as Cx and Cbb, not shown above) are all sung with the syllable "do".'

2) 'Several chromatic Fixed-Do Systems that have also been devised to account for chromatic notes (and even for double-sharp and double-flat variants) are as follows:'

And in addition, I already linked to an explanation of how notes are named in various European countries, all using do re me fa sol la si do BUT with their own names for sharp, flat, double sharp, double flat.

Also, using Wikipedia for proof that anything is correct is often highly unreliable.

Yes. I always say beats are good, you're getting close.

TimR, I was hoping to hear about the "asymmetrical bowing" idea. I can't make head or tails of it, and no other strings player I talked to knew what this was about either. In fact, what is "symmetrical bowing"? Do you mean speed, angle to the string, angle of the hair? All of these are in constant variation by any musician. The bow sets the string into vibration, but tuning by beats has to do with listening to two different pitches. That has nothing to do with what the bow is doing. It involves playing two strings at the same time.

I really do not understand your objection. I'm not trying to be argumentative, but it does not seem to apply to the musical world I live in. Maybe you could explain it further.

I understand that solfege of any kind is not particularly useful for sightreading on keyboards. The instrument gives you the pitch.

In the vocal world, and the brass world (trombone is my primary instrument) having the pitch in your brain is essential to producing the right note.

Vocally I see a progression of methods to sing a part. (I like singing SATB in small groups) I'm an engineer, so this understanding may be wrong or incomplete, but this is how I see it.

The first is just rote learning. I would guess 90% of singers have no access to any other method, and it doesn't prevent them from doing outstanding musical performances. Times have changed, and apparently reading music is no longer emphasized.

The second is singing intervals. I'm on a Bb, the next note is an Eb, I've memorized how far a fourth is by doing it 10,000 times, I sing the next note. There are usually some few in a choir who can do this and lead the rest.

The next is what I call movable do solfege, though I may be misusing the term. I'm on a Bb, the next note is an F, I'm about to sing from the root of a Bb major chord to the fifth, which is also moving from the 1st degree of the scale to the fifth. Do Sol. This method of retrieval is faster and more precise than singing the interval of a fifth, so to me it is a progression of method. It is impossible for me not to be unaware that I've also sung a Bb and an F, but as far as I know that contributed little to my finding the F. As I've transitioned my own sightreading away from simple intervals into more contextual reading I've improved. This method is very reliable in major keys with predictable harmony. As we move away from that it breaks down and I fall back on recognizing intervals. In church music it is rare to get too far away.

The next step is to retrieve a prememorized pattern. We can all sing O When the Saints in any key, it's a prememorized fragment. If we recognize that fragment in the alto or tenor line, it pops out without mental processing overhead. This is the fastest and most precise, and is not limited by key, etc., but is dependent on a large repertoire of memorized fragments.

As I don't have perfect pitch, these are all the methods I currently own.

But obviously I'm missing something; I'm still at the joke stage of movable do and don't know what the next stage is for the complex music. Tell me what it is, and I'll start working on it. In the choir I sing with most, I'm one of two people with reading skills, and I'll do anything I can to improve.

Hope this wasn't too long. Feel free to point me at a resource if there's something out there.

I looked for Benade this morning but I've misshelved him.

When a string is bowed, friction exerts a force on the string perpendicular to the string, and determined by the "force normal" (vertical to the string) and the coefficient of friction.

The string resists with the components of string tension in the opposite direction to the frictional force. Trigonometry. As the string is pulled, this force increases.

When the string is pulled far enough, tension exceeds friction and the string slips back. Now friction exceeds tension and the string moves again. This cycle repeats at the frequency of the note.

However, the cycle is NOT sinusoidal. It looks more like a sawtooth wave if you graph it. This is because (I think) static friction and slipping friction obey different equations. It slides back much faster than it is pulled forward, unlike a pendulum, etc. I've seen it called asymmetrical and that's why I used the word, but that might not be one that string players use.

In my brain the jerky pattern of slip-slide is linked to the beat problem, and is very unlike the smoother process by which lip reeds or actual reeds works. But until I can find my reference I can't be sure I'm remembering properly.

I don't own a violin or viola. Can you hear beats, if you have one handy?

I think I understand what you are saying. For sound to be produced something has to vibrate. For wind instruments and voice it is the friction of air that causes a vibration. The pitch is caused by a combination of the speed of the vibrating object, such as a reed, and the shape and size of the cavity through which the resulting vibrating air moves. In the case of a bowed string instrument, it is the friction of the rosined ribbon of horse hair pulling and releasing the string which causes the string to vibrate. Horse hair in particular because its texture is a bit like Velcro. This doesn't happen machine-like, though. The musician controls the amount of pressure, speed, tilt of ribbon to yield more or less surface and other factors.

I don't know whether the type of altered vibrations you are talking about have anything to do with beat. I understand beat to refer to what happens when two pitches interact with each other, rather than what happens in the sounding of a single pitch. That's beyond my knowledge.

If you look at a textbook on acoustics, beats will always be illustrated by pictures of sine waves. (SOrry - a Wikipedia article came to hand first. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics))

Beats are easier to see on a waveform (and easier to hear) the closer that wave is to a simple sine wave. The sustained tone of a piano isn't THAT far from one. The sound of a bowed instrument is WAY more complex.

Real-life instruments don't have nice tidy symmetrical waveforms either. In fact, the piano's waveform isn't always THAT symmetrical!
http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/asymmetry/asym.html

I'm now interested, and am looking for better sources than Wikipedia! But I don't suppose it's COMPLETELY making it all up :-)

Though beats jump out at you more from simple waveforms, don't assume bowed instruments, can't produce them. Further down the same Wikipedia article we learn of composers who have exploited beats in works for solo violin, among other instruments.

In the brass world, for top players, it is necessary to develop some kind of reference pitch that is at least very VERY close to what it should be. If you begin on a pitch, no reference, and you mis-hear it, it causes a "clam". If you attempt to sing a low Bb, you may get much closer to it than you think. Most likely you always do some kind of warm-up that involves playing the harmonic series in first position.

The majority of singers have always been very weak in sight-reading. This is nothing new. The exceptions have almost always been the ones who also play an instrument well. Two excellent examples: Harry Connick Jr., Nat King Cole--both pianists. And add Placido Domingo to that list.

There are singers who don't read at all who have "weak ears", and so they have frequent pitch problems. But there are also singers who don't read music at all but who do have very good pitch.

The obvious snag is the ability to recognize a 4th in notation. In other words, even if you know what a 4th sounds like, you have to know you are looking at a 4th, in music.

I don't see why it is faster and more precise.

Why do you not link the sound of this 5th to the first two pitches you play on trombone in 1st position, Bb and F? (I'm not counting the pedal tone.) Why not link the 5th to the same thing with all your positions, 1-7, which gives you 7 out of the possible 10 5ths? Once you have the sound of a 5th in your head, why do you need some other link to re-remember it? Are you slow in recognizing 5ths when you read?

You need another musician for this, but if you have a keyboard around, start with a very comfortable note. It could be the low Bb you know on trombone. Always using that Bb, have someone play intervals from that note to any other note, but keep it in the range of an octave at first. See if you can identify all intervals from unison to octave. If you do very well at this, have someone move those intervals around, more or less at random.

If you have no one to help you, you can still play the bottom note and try to sing the upper note, see how accurate you are. If movable do works for you for this, great. The links you use don't matter so long as they work. But when intervals are outside the context of tonality, you may find that you start to hear "distance". For instance, I perceive a major 7th as a very dissonant sound that is as close as possible to an octave but just below it in our musical system (12 tones per octave). I don't need to put it into any kind of context. And so on...

Also, you may be very surprised to find out that you eventually instantly identify very dissonant intervals the fastest, not counting octaves. For my students m2, tritone and M7 are the ones they get fastest, followed by M2 and m7.

It's a difference way of processing sound and makes the intervals independent of songs. But you can also hear solid intervals, then sing them in either direction, up or down, if that step helps you. Melodic intervals are more likely to throw you back into a solfege world if that is strong for you.

IF you can train yourself to hear intervals out of context, singing something as challenging as a tone row should eventually become rather easy.

There is also this:

http://perfectpitchtest.com/

This is NOT really a test for perfect pitch. If you get the first tone right, the rest is relative. All intervals. So the relative pitch test is the same, but there you always get a C to click on, in case you get lost. You can click on middle C each time, then judge the pitch from that.

I THINK it will throw you totally out of solfege and into the world of intervals. If you consistently get 12 out of 12, you are hearing intervals much better than most people, and the test is REALLY quick and short, so lots of repetitions are possible.

In my mind, what solfege gives is a sense of degrees and function in certain common types of music. It gives some relationship between harmony and melody from the melody side, and when trying to get at things like "tendency tones". I don't think that it is a means for getting at intervals, but we can sort of accidentally slip into using it. The thing that comes closer to doing what solfege does might actually be chord progressions.

I am trying to strengthen my sense of intervals. When I first learned of interval names I did relate them to "so do" or "do fa" simply in the sense of recognizing them. But if in singing I see Bb F in the context of F major, then for So Do I am in degrees, not in intervals. The problem with thinking of Bb F "solfegically" is that it is that you could also be in the key of Bb and hearing 1 4 and not 5 1. That is why, personally, I don't want to use solfege for intervals.

There are different tools for relating to music: chords, intervals, solfege, Roman numerals, letter names, and whatnot. Rather than "replacing" one with the other, it makes sense to me to use all of them, and try to stay with whatever works best. (and discard what doesn't work as well)

I agree, but I don't even think we can consciously control all these factors. I can't. I just subconsciously "grab" whatever works. I only think about it when I mess something up.

It is easier for me to sing a fifth in context than in isolation.

Take a random and therefore unknown pitch and sing a fifth up.

Not superhard.

But sing Bb to F in the key of Bb. It's still a fifth but I have far more information making it more secure. I know it's the 1st to 5th degree of the scale, I know where it is in the chord. (and yes, I've played it on trombone ten thousand times, and that pitch memory does assist. To some extent I can think trombone and pick a pitch out of the air. Doug Yeo, principal bass trombonist with Boston Symphony, said with the horn in his hand he could sightsing perfectly.) Doesn't work as well in key of B, I just don't do it as much.

I will admit a tritone throws me every time.

I would like it to be known that intervals are in fact a part of the teaching of solfège in Europe. A solfège exam typically includes a dictation of intervals with no tonal reference.

That is not what I was talking about.

I think Keystring was talking about movable do. Tell me how they teach people to sing tone rows that way. I'd love to be enlightened.

If I hear Bb-F, in isolation, my mind will automatically orient myself somehow, then if another 5th appears, I will either link it to the first or my mind is reoriented if there is no connection. A single note following an interval will often snap me into a key.

If, for instance, an Eb follows the Bb-F, my mind will snap into Eb or Eb minor. If the next pitch is G, I am in Eb. If Gb, then I am in Eb minor. If the Bb-F is folled by A-F, then I snap to F. In the world of movable do, what follows an interval that is strong will define the previous interval, if there is an obvious tonal context. Bb F Eb probably works as it does for people who use movable do, but if I try to figure out syllables or number, I actually get lost. If I think V to I, in Eb, I'm there. Bb-F to A-F is IV I, in F for me.

What if you think of it as the interval that is bigger than a 4th and smaller than a 5th? What if you simply think "half octave difference"? Some of my youngest students identify tritones more easily than almost any other intervals, and I think it is because the tritone is "unflippable". 4ths and 5ths, on the other hand, can easily be confused because they are the same thing, flipped.

Have you ever tried to hear intervals as distance only? This is working so well for some of my young students that they are nailing intervals without knowing what they are called. For instance, if I stick to middle C and hit any interval above it, up to an octave, some of them find them all, simply by how big or small they sound. Maybe for a brass player this is crazy. I don't know. But pianists have a freaky ability to just "reach for keys". When that is linked, later, with the names and logic behind everything it can be very powerful.
[/quote]

oooo, keystring! I see a little birthday cake! Happy Birthday!

so so la so do ti .... etc

Do do re do sol fa! Happy birthday to you!

As for singing intervals without a key reference or pitch reference, if you give me a pitch then I'll know what it is, especially if you play it on the piano. If you give it to me on a different instrument it may take me a little longer to process the pitch. If I know what the first pitch is, I will know what the second pitch should be. If you give me a note and it happens to be G (sol), then tell me to sing a minor sixth, then I'll sing mi (but flat it). Or everything could be moveable do and it'd be do le.

I am not a piano teacher or a music teacher in any way, but I'd like to say that in countries like France where fixed-do solfège is a dominant pedagogic approach, the answer to your question is yes, a student learns to sight-sing in any key.

But it has to be realized that fixed-do solfège in Europe is a pedagogic approach to reading music. It is not meant as a sight-singing technique. It is wanted that if, for example, you are reading (singing) in Do-major and it modulates to Sol-major, that you recognize clearly that the same note Sol which was the dominant has now become the tonic. When I work at home with my little girl, with modulations we often dwell on certain notes to feel their role as tonic or dominant or leading-tone (which here is called the sensible or sensitive), we may say (sing) "soooooooooool toniiiiiiiiic" before reading further. To be able to sing the piece is not enough, I want her to be aware of exactly what is occuring.

Here, students of all instruments study solfège, in most cases not as a part of their "piano lesson" but rather in a class with students of various instruments. Comparable perhaps to an English class that groups students who will study medecine or history or who will become a cook. When a med student goes to an anatomy class it is expected that he knows how to read well enough. Here, an instrumental teacher will typically refer a student to solfège for reading questions not directly related to the instrument. If a brass student doesn't know how to produce a certain rhythm on his instrument the teacher will adresse this, but if the student simply can't read the rhythm the teacher will often say "you've got to work on your solfège."

Whereas it appears to me that while some teachers in the US use mixed-do solfège as a means to develop general reading competence for playing an instrument, in general it is a sight-singing technique for choral singers.

I see, I misunderstood.




That's easy, they just sing "Do" 12 times !

No just kidding, just a friendly poke at the moveable-Do folks.

Is that fixed-do or moveable-do ?

Me too, happy birthday Keystring.

In Europe, we pronounce the word "sol" except in situations where there is a question of vocal technique, and in these situations we may also eliminate all consonance and pronounce only the vowel sound.

I decided to to take it as a modal rendering, and it sounds really cool that way. And thanks.

(Minaku, I know the sharped sol was implied. Goodness, just how many forms of solfege are there?)

I thought it was fixed do, giving the second line, where the first line was given in movable do.

Here's the third line:

Da da da da da DA daaaaaaa

Fixed do, ladies and gents, we are in the very vanilla key of... Fa major. :P But if I kept going with currawong's moveable do, I'd say "sol sol la sol re do! Sol sol SOL MI DO TI LA..."

In fixed do, will the last line be "ti ti la fa sol fa" or "te te la fa sol fa"? That is, is a chromatic syllable used for the Bb?

Hm, not quite awake. Teachers always tell us not to work on a piece from beginning to the end, so I should have known to consider the second line - after all, I've "moved on" a year.

It is interesting how strong the audiation is if you have heard things only in movable do for decades. You have to build a toggle to switch off degrees so that Fa is not automatically the subdominant, etc.

Nope, we'll just sing "si si la fa sol fa" with the understanding that si is really si-flat.

It is a cool, brisk Canadian morning near the border between Quebec and Ontario. From high on the tallest mountain comes the sustained, plaintive tone of a sackbut, settling over the valley below .

** [The town scientist] Wow, that thing is really oscillating -- nearly 26,500 cycles per minute!

** [The mathematician] Let’s see, I can simplify that. That noise is vibrating at 440 beats per second - uh, rounded down, of course.

** [Church cantor] I hear the 5th degree of the D dorian. Oh well, back to lighting these silly candles . . . . .

** [Guido, the musician} What “la” is it that awakens me at this hour?

** [Music theoretician] Now that is the primary tone to determine a major key built on F. No, no, I can’t call it “the primary” tone because, well, F would be the “primary” tone in F major. I know, I’ll call it the perfect pitch to determine F major. No, that won’t work because “perfect pitch” has a different connotation, and “perfect” intervals are different still. Ok, it is the “major” tone to determine F major -- it is the 3rd major tone to determine that key. No, no, wait, I can't say "key", because “key” is on a piano . . . . .

** [Pragmatist and musician] I recognize that pitch - it is an A.

** [American musician, just having moved himself, and his DO to Canada] Not necessarily. You might be right, but I think of it as RE in the key of G major.

** [Acoustician] I am rather, well, partial, to that sonority.

** [Jazz musician] Thank you! That is the exact extension I have been searching for on my G7.

** [Visiting English horn player] Definitely an E -- now back to my reed-making.

**[Village pharmacist] That sound reminds me, almost mystically, of A TONIC I once prescribed.

Over the years, in humankind’s efforts to make organized sounds accessible to everyone, just look at what we have done! It amazes me this stuff is thought accessible to anyone!

** [Young child] What a nice, clear sound: Huummmmmmmmmmmm. I’ll try to remember that . . . .

Ed