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.