Here are the ANSWERS to the Pop Quiz:

1. Jesus Loves Me This I Know
2. Mary Had A Little Lamb
3. What Can Wash Away My Sin?

I understand solfege, but I prefer to use numbers to teach non-music readers scales and intervals. I find that it's easier for them (non-music readers) to hear intervals by using 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. For example, doing a warmup of Do Mi Sol Do Sol Mi Do, I use 1-3-5-8-5-3-1. I also use another fun vocal exercise of numbers in rounds (1, 1-2-1, 1-2-3-2-1, 1-2-3-4-3-2-1, etc. all the way up to 8 and then back down again).

But it sure is a lot tougher to fit "seven" into one note than "ti"... hehe.

I can speak solfege, but I hate it with a passion. I also have to think about it too hard, most of the time. Give me note names and key signatures any day of the week! There's no good substitute for real music education.

For people with perfect pitch or who carry around a piano with them all the time, yours may be an option. The pitches A, B, C, D, E, F & G with their associated chromatic pitches are called "absolute" pitches, because their actual pitches are set by International convention. A has been set to 440Hz. The same is NOT true with Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La & Ti, which are relative pitches. All the other pitches of the scale are relative to Do. Once Do is sounded, the rest of the pitches can be heard, no matter what pitch you set for Do. That is why this works so well for a cappella churches.

Try it yourself. Sing any tone and using that tone for a Do, you can sing a major scale based on that note. But if I asked you to sing a B major scale, you will need some pitch reference to assure your starting on B. Now, assuming you get that pitch, sing the scale a few times. Jump around a little between tones of the scale. Sing a song in that key. Now, reference your pitch again. You will probably be off pitch a little. Most churches will flatten a song 1/2 to a whole step by the time they get through singing the song. So, when you got through singing, you were no longer singing in the key of B. My point is this, we sing relative pitches - not absolute pitches. The names of the relative pitches are Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La & Ti – not A, B, C, D, E, F & G.

So why do you hate them? I realize that there are some who associate them with low culture or Sacred Harp singing. But they are as natural as you starting a song and singing. They are the pitches you hear, not the pitches you play on an instrument. For a person playing a piano, they are useless. For a person singing a cappella, they are the music we hear. Therefore they are more than names, they are relationships - relationships between tones. If you learned to sing without them, more power to you. But you could have been taught to sing quicker using them.

I got a heavy dose of this in my teen years attending the Foundation School of Church Music near Austin, TX. I remember Holland Boring Sr. being up there and making us sing whole songs this way. He also was the first person to teach me the hand signals for all the notes. Little did I know that all I had to do was watch the movie Close Encounters to see those hand signals in action when they first communicate with the alien space ship.

How about this one:
do re mi mi mi mi re do mi sol la do ti la sol mi do mi re

hmm... that brought back memories of elementary school and a horrible music teacher! That was how she taught us to read music...Had a big shock when I started to learn how to play clarinet, and had to learn how to read music "correctly" with names of notes and stuff! ;-)

I'm with Jonathan. If you can read music then read music. The first thing I remember reading as a child was my parents posterboard drawing of the shaped notes and the do re mi's. But then learned to read music in school choir and band. I could read solfege, but hated it in college when we had to sing it. It made no sense when I could already read the notes and rhythms and sing them.

Singing the solfege was like trying to read sdrow taht era nettirw sdrawkcab. Ti dluoc eb enod tub ti tsuj dewols em nwod dna I t'ndluoc daer cisum yna retteb nehw ti saw revo.

mi mi mi do--------------re re re ti------------------ no wait....

la la la fa---------------sol sol sol mi----------------

I absolutely LOVE solfege, but I must say, I hated it as a music student. It's a wonderful tool to me now, especially when something comes to me and I have no staff paper handy. I just write it in solfege, and when I get home I put it into Finale. Wonderful tool for teaching as well.

Let's see if I can still remember w/out cheating...

sol la sol fa mi fa
sol fa mi re mi
fa mi re do re ti ti
do re mi fa mi re do do.

Whew, I got them right!

Keith, you mentioned a few (ok, a lot of) posts ago about learning the hand signals for solfege recently. I remember my Jr. High chorus teacher endlessly forcing us to sing the notes as she would jump all over the scale using those hand signals.

Alas, they didn't stick with me. I only remember a few of them today.

I'm happy with people learning in whatever way makes the most sense to them. If it's shaped notes, fine. If it's solfege, fine. Let's not be music snobs.

Amen!

I know solfege, but definitley not a fan of it. It's just gross. I have always used numbers, learn the circle of 5ths, know your key signatures, and know the intervals by numbers, that was my method. It's worked pretty well, although it can get tricky when using intervals that aren't so simple... Flaws! Flaws everywhere. Oh well, I'll just remember to read more music on a regular basis, because I sure don't sight read often enough anymore.

This is what I love about shape notes - I can easily and quickly identify what degree of the scale any note is with rapid speed. (I don't have to think, "Is 'C' the 6th degree of the key of Eb?" - when I see the shape for "La", I automatically know.

I agree with this 100%. Along these lines-- Does anyone have a good musical "mnemonic device (do-mi = Marine's Hymn; do-fa = Here Comes The Bride; do-so = Twinkle Twinkle,etc.)" for the do-ti (ascending) interval?

Bali Hai. (M7)
m7 is 'Somewhere' [there's a place for us...] from West Side Story

http://www.musicalintervalstutor.info/

I think you can listen to intervals on that site, too :-)

I have a love-hate relationship with solfege ~ if I'm sightreading and not getting an interval and don't have a pitch pipe or piano, I resort to solfege and it usually gets me there. And with anything, the more I use it, the better I get with it ... *sigh!*

I prefer shaped notes because I am lazy. I can visually identify changes in pitch and to what degree based on the shape. If I get music with all of the notes the same shape, I have to work harder to read it. So there, I am lazy.

I love shape notes, but i could do without the solfege. I do, however, refer to do, mi, sol, and ti very often. Just to give names to the shapes that I recognize. Crazy huh?

It's so much easier to sight read (for me) when I've got the shapes. Notes not only move, but change shape.