Solfege Systems with David Newman, Leah Sheldon and Greg Ristow

Solfege systems: why we use them, what their particular strengths are, and why you might pick one system over another. We even touch on that hot-button topic of perfect pitch. If you’ve got strong feelings on the Moveable Do vs Fixed Do debate, this is the episode for you! Join David Newman, Leah Sheldon and Greg Ristow for this lively conversation.   Show Notes 00:20 - Introductions and what is Notes from the Staff?

• Greg: Notes from the Staff as a place to share ideas about how to teach music, music theory and ear training.
• David: How we can leverage technology to give really practical advice for those of us teaching music who may have really pressing questions.
• Leah: A music education degree comes with lots of coursework, but there's not usually a dedicated course in, say, "How do you teach intervals?" so this is just a great place for that.

02:30 - Topic of the day: Solfege Systems   02:50 - Favorite solfege method?

• David: I don't initially use one for my own sight singing, but I use moveable Do with Do-based minor for my teaching
• Leah: Scale degrees and moveable Do.
• Greg: Scale degrees and fixed Do.

04:00 Why use a solfege system?

• David: These provide a framework for hearing the music you're studying.
• Leah: Without a system, you're relying on pure memorization and rote teaching, and that's very time consuming.
• Greg: One goal of musical study is that students can move between sound and the page, and solfege systems are the best tools for helping us gain these skills.

06:30 "Six Stages of Solfege Mastery"

1. System gets in my way
2. Oh, yeah, the system sort of helps me, maybe there's something to this
3. Ok, I've got to go way slower when I use solfege, but I can get things right if I do.
4. I get it! I never want to sing on anything but solfege again!
5. Ack! I can't stop hearing the solfege in everything I listen to!
6. Ahhh, I know the solfege, it's there when I need it, but it doesn't dominate how I think about music.

10:00 Breaking down the systems

• Scale degrees
• Moveable Do, both Do Minor and La Minor variants
• Fixed Do or Letter Names

10:30 Scale Degrees

• Numbering the pitches of a scale from 1 to 7.
• In minor, the names don't change, so we sing 3 lower, but not without a different name.
• Scale degrees presuppose the environment you're living in, be that a Major scale, minor scale, etc...
• It's about establishing a heirarchy of where we are in a scale, how everything relates to a central tonic. So that even if we're singing a truly modal tune, we still call the first note of the mode one.
• This can even be extended to some of the more colorful modes, phrygian major, octatonic, etc...
• The words you sing don't change, this really forces the understanding of the relationship between each of the notes of the scale.

14:00 Moveable Do, and its two versions of minor

• Same idea as scale degrees, but we're using the solfege syllables to name the degrees of the scale.
• But they also have chromatic inflections
• In Major, Do is always the tonic.
• 15:40 Chromatic scale in moveable Do
• 16:18 The two ways of doing minor. Do minor, or La minor.
• 18:00 The method we use will be more or useful depending on the repertoire you're looking at
• 19:00 David improvises a Hozier tune. Is it in Major or minor?
• 20:00 La minor works especially well for folk tunes that move freely between relative major and minor.
• 21:00 Do minor is helpful for recognizing similar harmonic patterns across Major and minor. For example: when using Do based minor, So-Ti-Re-Fa is always a dominant seventh. (If we use La minor, we have to learn Mi-Si-Ti-Re as well as Sol-Ti-Re-Fa.)

21:40 Reasons you might choose La minor or Do minor: Is your focus on melodic reading or harmonic understanding? If on melodic reading, you might prefer La minor. If on harmonic function, might prefer scale degrees or Do minor.

 

23:30 Fixed Do & Letter Names

• Fixed Do are the letter names for most non-English speaking countries. For instance, in Spanish, the word for the note G is Sol, regardless of what key you're in.
• In this way, it's sort of a non-system, it doesn't tell us anything about the function of the note, but it does tell us where we are in pitch space.
• 25:25 Greg sings "Do a Dear" (or "Re a Drop") in D Major, fixed Do.
• Pedagogies of fixed Do tend to have one of two goals:
  • To build perfect pitch (especially pedagogies of fixed do that are designed to be started with very young children, i.e., ages 3-6), or
  • To gradually acquaint students with singing in different keys, so that they know instantly what the notes are associated with each scale degree in each key.