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...