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"2. Learn your intervals, and learn Solfege. If you're a musician, you already know these things in principal, even if you don't know the words or the terminolo

"2. Learn your intervals, and learn Solfege. If you're a musician, you already know these things in principal, even if you don't know the words or the terminology. In particular, you should be able to "hear" the distance between Do-Mi-Sol without too much difficulty, because you hear those distances in music a lot." I believe the Solfege named intervals (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do) are only taught as a historical oddity these days (or maybe used more in classical training?). All of my musical instruction, at the high school and college level, used numeric interval names (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8). Most of the serious musicians I've played with also used the numeric scale rather than Do-Re-Mi. We learned how to sing Do-Re-Mi, "Just in case", but we never used it. Were you taught in the US, or somewhere else? Maybe it is a regional thing.

coreyp_1 10y ago
Solfege is definitely still in strong use, especially in public school choirs. They are convinced that it helps in sight-reading competitions (yes, sight reading is one of several areas in which a choir can compete). Having said that, I absolutely hate solfege. But my bachelor's was in piano performance, not vocal. Interesting note: quite a few countries use a "fixed Do" system rather than "A-B-C". It is quite confusing (and humorous to observe) when a solfege disciple tries to sing with a fixed Do native.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  Fixed Do sounds awful! I just spent some bit of time reading the wiki on Solfege, as I realized I have a limited view of it. Interestingly, there are additional syllables beyond the 7 I learned! There are also syllables for flattened and raised notes, which is really nice. I have always been bugged by saying "flat three" or "minor three" when singing intervals, and it's hard to make the voice actually make it minor (for me) because of the muscle memory for three being so firmly set. So, I may have to somewhat rethink my dismissal of the solfege, at least for singing intervals. Unless there's a secret system for singing with intervals by number that accommodates accidentals.
nicky0 10y ago
Doesn't everyone learn Do-Re-Mi from "The Sound Of Music"?
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  Well, sure, but what's that got to do with actual music instruction and how musicians talk about music? Movies aren't always entirely accurate representations of the world, particularly on highly technical topics. Knowing solfege because you heard it in a movie and using it on a daily basis in the process of teaching or making music are independent concepts. Anyway, conversation here has brought it to my attention that it is still pretty common, there are some areas where it is useful (maybe even better than numbers, as in the singing and vocal training area; I personally have recognized the limitation of numbers when singing minor notes, for example), and that my own experience was only partly representative of music pedagogy in the US and elsewhere. That said, when I'm teaching people about music, I still plan to only use numbers...the areas where solfege would be useful are pretty advanced, and require more than watching Sound of Music to understand.
lmm 10y ago
As a computery person, what bothers me the most is the 1-based indexing of intervals. I get that music theory predates zero, but it makes it incredibly frustrating to work with (e.g. add a third to a fourth and you get a... sixth).
- jacobolus 10y ago
  > (e.g. add a third to a fourth and you get a... sixth) Better: In equal temperament, log base two: add 4/12 to 5/12 and you get 9/12. In ratios (depending on tuning, these could be loose approximations): multiply 5/4 by 4/3 and you get 5/3.
  - lmm 10y ago
    Yes, I know. But having the log base 2^(1/7)-ish built in is useful. If we could just subtract 1 from all the numbers (i.e. what we call a fifth should be 4) then we would have a measure that actually made sense.
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      Eh. Calling it a “fifth” is making it clear that the label is an ordinal number: first second third fourth fifth ... You need to think of it as “if the bottom note was the first note of a scale, where in the scale would the top note be?” As with many questions of indexing, off by one errors are tricky. It’s a system that confuses names for notes in a scale with names for intervals between notes. You’d rather they called them by cardinal numbers representing some kind of “distance”, instead of a count starting at one. But that would be applying a later mathematical understanding on the earlier system. If that’s what you want, you should just use a log scale and count twelfth roots of two. Ideally we’d switch all our indexing to start at zero, and use half-open intervals everywhere. Start at 0 AD, call the ground floor of a building “0”, start spreadsheets with row 0, switch Matlab to index from 0, et cetera. This is pretty unlikely to happen though.
      - lmm 10y ago
        > If that’s what you want, you should just use a log scale and count twelfth roots of two. I don't want to count in twelfths, I want to count up the scale. > call the ground floor of a building “0” I'm a Brit, we do that here already.
fenomas 10y ago
Exact opposite for me. I learned do-re-me as a kid and then ever saw it again, until I started reading about music theory recently. Then I saw it a lot - e.g. voice leading rules saying that a voice must start from Do and end on a ti-do step, etc.
theOnliest 10y ago
Nearly all aural skills classes (learning to hear/sing music) for music majors use solfege or something like it. Some people use scale degree numbers instead (so a IV chord in a major key is "4-6-1" rather than "fa-la-do"), but the concept is still very useful.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  What I'm questioning is the popularity of Solfege vs numeric interval names. My music classes of ~20 years ago treated Solfege as being of historic interest, but not particularly common. While numeric intervals were used daily. It came up somewhat more in sight singing and vocal training than in any of the instrument or theory oriented classes. But, I think it was mostly students who were used to it using it rather than instructors teaching it. But, maybe I just so strongly preferred numbers that I immediately discarded any instruction involving Solfege as being silly and a waste of my time. Still, I can only recall seeing numbers (and Roman numerals) in writings on theory and such.
  - theOnliest 10y ago
    Fair enough. It's still pretty common...it's hard to pin down any numbers exactly, but I'd guess it's probably half and half for solfege vs. other systems. We teach solfege at my school (although I prefer numbers myself). And you're right that it's used mostly in sight-singing/aural-skills classes; I mention solfege much less often in my written theory classes.
eric_bullington 10y ago
Solfege/solfège is still used prominently in France, or at least it was ~25 years ago. I took music lessons when I lived in France as a teenager. My piano instructor was very confused by the fact that I spoke good French, was at a solid intermediate level at the piano, and yet I could not at all follow his solfège commands (like you say, I had only used numeric intervals back home, although teachers usually called the note by its alphabetic name, like most here I think). I tried reviewing in my head each week before class what I remembered from the Sound of Music, but made the mistake of thinking that Do-Re-Mi etc. was a static C-D-E instead of realizing that my music instructor was simply describing intervals depending on the key we were in. In the present day, I would just look it up online, but back in 1991, in a small city in northern France, I didn't have that privilege. It took me several months of twice-weekly instruction before I finally figured out that he was using solfège for intervals, I'm embarrassed to say (to my instructor's frustration and confusion). I'm wincing even now when I think of it. I asked around at the time and was told it was pretty universal to use solfège there. I do think using solfège to indicate notes is a much better system for students, since it emphasizes the importance of intervals and keys. It's probably harder at the beginning that just learning static A-B-etc., but worth it.
zeta0134 10y ago
I was taught in the US, and Solfege was used prominently in my voice classes, but rarely in my theory and piano classes. I think it's a system that works well when you don't have to think about the actual note name that you're singing, as it describes intervals very well, but relates somewhat poorly to pitch. I grew up attending a Church of Christ, which used full congregational singing with four part harmony. Our songbooks used a variation on music notation that used shape notes, and the shapes corresponded to Solfege. If you knew your musical intervals, you could completley ignore the key signature, because a Do was always drawn as a triangle, a Sol was a circle, a La was a square, etc etc. This was especially handy because the song leaders were always men, and could not always sing as high as the written music required. They picked whatever key they could sing comfortably, and the congregation adjusted to them. Drove the music majors in the audience nuts. :D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note Growing up with that system meant that Solfege was simply the easiest system I had to understand music. To this day, I struggle with pieces in unusual modes, and with passages that modulate their key and make use of unusual progressions, because it breaks down my innate understanding of music and requires me to think in a different way.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  Shape note seems really clever! But, I can also see where it would break down in many cases. I learned music predominantly in a Jazz context. That'd be very tricky to use for jazz...especially the various modal types of jazz.

coreyp_1 10y ago

Solfege is definitely still in strong use, especially in public school choirs. They are convinced that it helps in sight-reading competitions (yes, sight reading is one of several areas in which a choir can compete). Having said that, I absolutely hate solfege. But my bachelor's was in piano performance, not vocal. Interesting note: quite a few countries use a "fixed Do" system rather than "A-B-C". It is quite confusing (and humorous to observe) when a solfege disciple tries to sing with a fixed Do native.

SwellJoe 10y ago
Fixed Do sounds awful! I just spent some bit of time reading the wiki on Solfege, as I realized I have a limited view of it. Interestingly, there are additional syllables beyond the 7 I learned! There are also syllables for flattened and raised notes, which is really nice. I have always been bugged by saying "flat three" or "minor three" when singing intervals, and it's hard to make the voice actually make it minor (for me) because of the muscle memory for three being so firmly set. So, I may have to somewhat rethink my dismissal of the solfege, at least for singing intervals. Unless there's a secret system for singing with intervals by number that accommodates accidentals.

nicky0 10y ago

Doesn't everyone learn Do-Re-Mi from "The Sound Of Music"?

SwellJoe 10y ago
Well, sure, but what's that got to do with actual music instruction and how musicians talk about music? Movies aren't always entirely accurate representations of the world, particularly on highly technical topics. Knowing solfege because you heard it in a movie and using it on a daily basis in the process of teaching or making music are independent concepts. Anyway, conversation here has brought it to my attention that it is still pretty common, there are some areas where it is useful (maybe even better than numbers, as in the singing and vocal training area; I personally have recognized the limitation of numbers when singing minor notes, for example), and that my own experience was only partly representative of music pedagogy in the US and elsewhere. That said, when I'm teaching people about music, I still plan to only use numbers...the areas where solfege would be useful are pretty advanced, and require more than watching Sound of Music to understand.

lmm 10y ago

As a computery person, what bothers me the most is the 1-based indexing of intervals. I get that music theory predates zero, but it makes it incredibly frustrating to work with (e.g. add a third to a fourth and you get a... sixth).

jacobolus 10y ago
> (e.g. add a third to a fourth and you get a... sixth) Better: In equal temperament, log base two: add 4/12 to 5/12 and you get 9/12. In ratios (depending on tuning, these could be loose approximations): multiply 5/4 by 4/3 and you get 5/3.
- lmm 10y ago
  Yes, I know. But having the log base 2^(1/7)-ish built in is useful. If we could just subtract 1 from all the numbers (i.e. what we call a fifth should be 4) then we would have a measure that actually made sense.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Eh. Calling it a “fifth” is making it clear that the label is an ordinal number: first second third fourth fifth ... You need to think of it as “if the bottom note was the first note of a scale, where in the scale would the top note be?” As with many questions of indexing, off by one errors are tricky. It’s a system that confuses names for notes in a scale with names for intervals between notes. You’d rather they called them by cardinal numbers representing some kind of “distance”, instead of a count starting at one. But that would be applying a later mathematical understanding on the earlier system. If that’s what you want, you should just use a log scale and count twelfth roots of two. Ideally we’d switch all our indexing to start at zero, and use half-open intervals everywhere. Start at 0 AD, call the ground floor of a building “0”, start spreadsheets with row 0, switch Matlab to index from 0, et cetera. This is pretty unlikely to happen though.
    - lmm 10y ago
      > If that’s what you want, you should just use a log scale and count twelfth roots of two. I don't want to count in twelfths, I want to count up the scale. > call the ground floor of a building “0” I'm a Brit, we do that here already.

fenomas 10y ago

Exact opposite for me. I learned do-re-me as a kid and then ever saw it again, until I started reading about music theory recently. Then I saw it a lot - e.g. voice leading rules saying that a voice must start from Do and end on a ti-do step, etc.

theOnliest 10y ago

Nearly all aural skills classes (learning to hear/sing music) for music majors use solfege or something like it. Some people use scale degree numbers instead (so a IV chord in a major key is "4-6-1" rather than "fa-la-do"), but the concept is still very useful.

SwellJoe 10y ago
What I'm questioning is the popularity of Solfege vs numeric interval names. My music classes of ~20 years ago treated Solfege as being of historic interest, but not particularly common. While numeric intervals were used daily. It came up somewhat more in sight singing and vocal training than in any of the instrument or theory oriented classes. But, I think it was mostly students who were used to it using it rather than instructors teaching it. But, maybe I just so strongly preferred numbers that I immediately discarded any instruction involving Solfege as being silly and a waste of my time. Still, I can only recall seeing numbers (and Roman numerals) in writings on theory and such.
- theOnliest 10y ago
  Fair enough. It's still pretty common...it's hard to pin down any numbers exactly, but I'd guess it's probably half and half for solfege vs. other systems. We teach solfege at my school (although I prefer numbers myself). And you're right that it's used mostly in sight-singing/aural-skills classes; I mention solfege much less often in my written theory classes.

eric_bullington 10y ago

Solfege/solfège is still used prominently in France, or at least it was ~25 years ago. I took music lessons when I lived in France as a teenager. My piano instructor was very confused by the fact that I spoke good French, was at a solid intermediate level at the piano, and yet I could not at all follow his solfège commands (like you say, I had only used numeric intervals back home, although teachers usually called the note by its alphabetic name, like most here I think). I tried reviewing in my head each week before class what I remembered from the Sound of Music, but made the mistake of thinking that Do-Re-Mi etc. was a static C-D-E instead of realizing that my music instructor was simply describing intervals depending on the key we were in. In the present day, I would just look it up online, but back in 1991, in a small city in northern France, I didn't have that privilege. It took me several months of twice-weekly instruction before I finally figured out that he was using solfège for intervals, I'm embarrassed to say (to my instructor's frustration and confusion). I'm wincing even now when I think of it. I asked around at the time and was told it was pretty universal to use solfège there. I do think using solfège to indicate notes is a much better system for students, since it emphasizes the importance of intervals and keys. It's probably harder at the beginning that just learning static A-B-etc., but worth it.

zeta0134 10y ago

I was taught in the US, and Solfege was used prominently in my voice classes, but rarely in my theory and piano classes. I think it's a system that works well when you don't have to think about the actual note name that you're singing, as it describes intervals very well, but relates somewhat poorly to pitch. I grew up attending a Church of Christ, which used full congregational singing with four part harmony. Our songbooks used a variation on music notation that used shape notes, and the shapes corresponded to Solfege. If you knew your musical intervals, you could completley ignore the key signature, because a Do was always drawn as a triangle, a Sol was a circle, a La was a square, etc etc. This was especially handy because the song leaders were always men, and could not always sing as high as the written music required. They picked whatever key they could sing comfortably, and the congregation adjusted to them. Drove the music majors in the audience nuts. :D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note Growing up with that system meant that Solfege was simply the easiest system I had to understand music. To this day, I struggle with pieces in unusual modes, and with passages that modulate their key and make use of unusual progressions, because it breaks down my innate understanding of music and requires me to think in a different way.

SwellJoe 10y ago
Shape note seems really clever! But, I can also see where it would break down in many cases. I learned music predominantly in a Jazz context. That'd be very tricky to use for jazz...especially the various modal types of jazz.