Solfege--Fixed or Movable Do?

[Chuck(G)]

At the Pat Sheridan/Steven Mead master class this past weekend in Eugene, Mr. Sheridan recommended that fixed-do solfege was far more valuable than the movable sort, even for those who have been using movable do. His argument was that not all music is tonal and knowing the absolute pitches is far more preferable.

I've always thought of fixed-do as an alternative to simply singing the letters of the notes as A, B, C, etc. and the movable do had more value for knowing the sounds of intervals. It certainly seems very strange to be singing a D major scale as re mi fi sol la ti di re.

So whaddya think? Is learning fixed-do worthwhile for us movable-do-ers?

BTW, the master class was one of the best I've attended in a long time; Messrs. Mead and Sheridan work very well together.

[CrappyEuph]

I've always thought of fixed-do as an alternative to simply singing the letters of the notes as A, B, C, etc.

Isn't it true that in some languages, the solfege syllables are the names of the notes? Perhaps I'm mistaken.

Mr. Sheridan recommended that fixed-do solfege was far more valuable than the movable sort, even for those who have been using movable do. His argument was that not all music is tonal and knowing the absolute pitches is far more preferable.

While not all music is tonal, most of it is. And certainly all music contains intervals, so it's not as if it can't be sung with movable-do solfege.

IMHO, anything musical is worth learning, but I wouldn't say that fixed-do is "far more valuable" than movable-do. They are each important tools which compliment one another. Being able to use both systems is tantamount to being able to identify a note in a piece by both its name and its scale degree.

Feel free to disagree,
Jamie Lipton

[Roger Lewis]

My background included 4 years of fixed Do solfege. You only have the seven syllables (Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si then the Do repeats) you sing the sharps and flats but you do not have a separate syllable for them as moveable Do does (I had 2 years of moveable Do in high school and it took a while to get used to the simplicity of the fixed Do system). Solfege is not the names of the notes but the starting syllables for the words from an Anthem from the Renaissance days that was very popular. In France substitute Ut for Do; so Tuba en Ut is C tuba.

Just my rather warped view of the world.

[Chuck(G)]

My background included 4 years of fixed Do solfege. You only have the seven syllables (Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si then the Do repeats) you sing the sharps and flats but you do not have a separate syllable for them as moveable Do does.

You're absolutely correct of course. I just looked at the beginning of my copy of Dannhauser and indeed there is no alteration of the syllables in FD.

So the scale in re majeur would be sung: re mi fa sol la si do re, with the fa and do/ut augmented by a semitone.

[Chuck(G)]

Ut queant laxis
ResonÄ

[JB]

By the way, do you have the words to the anthem you mentioned?

The hymn: Ut quent laxis
Ut quent laxis
resonare fibris
Mira gestrorum
famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti
Labrii reatum, Sancte Joannes.



The work from which these syllables are derived is called Ut quent laxis

For teaching sight singing, the eleventh-century monk Guido of Arezzo proposed a set of syllables (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la) to help singers remember the pattern of whole tones and semitones in the six steps that begin on G or C. In this pattern (for example, C-D-E-F-G-A), a semitone falls between the third and fourth steps, and all other steps are whole tone.

The syllables were derived from a hymn text (dating from at least the year 800) that Guido may have set to music to illustrate the pattern: Ut quent laxis. Each of the six phrases of the hymn begins with one of the notes of the pattern in regular ascending order – the first phrase on C, the second on D, and so on. The initial syllables of these six phrases became the names of the steps. These solmization syllables (so-called from sol-mi) are still employed in teaching, except that we say do for ut and add a ti above la.

You may also want to further check into "The Guidonian Hand" which was an application used for locating and teaching the pitches of the diatonic scale.

[Z-Tuba Dude]

I think the issue of fixed Do/moveable Do is that people on either side of the discussion seem to cling to the system that they know, and don't look too closely at the values of the other system that they don't know.

I would be very interested in hearing the opinions of anyone who is equally fluent in both, as to which system they prefer!

[TubaRay]

I am unable to give the perspective of someone who is proficient in both fixed and movable do. I believe either system has its merits. I believe I have heard of the arguments for learning solfege. I consider them valid to a degree. I often question why it is necessary to learn, in effect, a completely new language in order to grasp and understand scale degrees, etc. Initially I resisted working on my sightsinging abilities. It was only when I was forced to do so that I got serious about it. For me, having to learn the solfege "language" just extended the learning process.

Now, in my old age, I am able to sightread things in our church choir of about 120 members. In fact, I may be better at this than any other choir member. The choir includes some people with music degrees and many whose voices are far superior to my own. To the choir director, I am a valuable member because I will usually get it right the first time. I say all this not to boast, but to point out that my sightsinging abilities are strong. My solfege abilities are very weak or non-existent.

Anyway, from a personal standpoint, I prefer the fixed do system because it is easier to learn quickly(for me, anyway). Actually, I prefer "la" as in "la, la, la, la, la."

[Leland]

Movable Do does nothing for pitch memory.

What I got from it was that it helped with pitch relationships, in that the interval from, say, Re up to Si (or "Ti" at my college) always has a certain sensation regardless of key.

I'm usually a pretty good sight-singer, though, so my view may be a bit skewed.

I see the benefits of both, so none of this really matters to me anyway...

[Chuck(G)]

OK guys, I'll have to remind you again.
There are ignorant truck drivers who are trying to follow this topic and can't.

Let me take a stab at it.

Remember "The Sound of Music"? "Julie Andrews"(from that movie, not "Bedazzled")?

So, she sings "Do a deer, a female deer", etc.

Now in the movable Do system, Do is the tonic of whatever key you're in, so if Julie sang the song in tkey of F, she'd still start out out "Do a deer, etc.".

In fixed Do, Do is C. Period. Doesn't matter what key you're in. So Julie'd have to start out the song "Fa, a long long way to run..." if she were singing fixed Do.

BTW, does anyone recall what key that song is played in on the original film sound track?

Movable do is probably most commonly used in the US. One advantage is that it teaches you the sound of the basic intervals, regardless of key. Singing a song like "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" or "Fly Me to the Moon" in solfege (no written music please, just use your ears) can be really instructive.

On the other hand, movable Do requires that you identify the key that a piece is written in and call it Do. Fixed Do is more concerned with absolute pitch rather than the relationship between pitches.

Movable Do has a convention for diminishing and augmenting pitches by changing the syllable ( e.g. fa sharp is fi). Fixed Do says that it doesn't matter if the note is G flat or G sharp, its name is still sol.

To make matters a bit more complicated, a friend of mine sings in an old American Shape Note group. There, the scale goes fa sol la fa sol la mi fa and is the same regardless of key. I'm told by my friend that in a shape note group, the rule is if you can hear your neighbor, you're not singing loud enough. Hearing a shape note group singing is an interesting experience.

Does this help, Wayne?

[tjonp]

BTW, does anyone recall what key that song is played in on the original film sound track?

My mother is an elementary music teacher, she has sheet music of the song in C major. Of course, it may just be this particular arrangement.
I guess this would make sense, since it would please movable and fixed do advocates.

[Chuck(G)]

[And in Japanese she sings

Did Andrews do the singing on the Japanese soundtrack?

Origato.

[Roger Lewis]

I did the sound of music some 30 years ago and I believe that it Was in C major. I remember the horn I was using very well - a little 3/4 CC 5 valve Cerveny the ripped! I just remember going C,G,C,G a lot.

Have a great one.

[Chuck(G)]

Found the complete Japanese text of the song:

http://www.eva.hi-ho.ne.jp/tmichko/doremi.html

And here's a 1985 Kurosawa movie called "Do-re-mi-fa-musume no chi wa sawagu" (The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl"):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0214636/

Sorry for the off-topic detour, but this was too good not to post.

[Chuck(G)]

Chuck - Interesting - in your link to the Japanese words, the author has apparenltly tripped over the L and R problem herself.

She notes that for Japanese, there's no real difference between L and R, so she writes with L.

I once borrowed a book of computer terms from a friend who worked for IBM Japan. The surprise was that the vast majority of the terms were borrowings from English (made obvious by words being spelled out in katakana). If you could adopt a Japanese "ear", you couild understand most of the terms right off the bat.

Korean is another language that's extremely rhythmic. There are little clusters of syllables that occur that remid me of little drum rolls.

[Jeff Miller]

I studied movable Do for 4 years when I did my undergrad degree - when I went to grad school (at a European-influenced Conservatory) they used Fixed Do and were quite disparaging about the other system.

Interestingly, the 3 top students in my Graduate ear training/dictation class were the 3 students who had studied movable Do during their Bachelors educations.

Personally, I don't see the point of fixed Do. I've always prefered movable Do because it shows the harmonic relationships between the notes and passages in the music. As for its applications to non-tonal music, I have always found learning such music in movable do (with modulations) an excellant tool for analysing such pieces.

Also, if you are proficient in movable do, you can perform almost any piece with "Do" centered around any note - this is an excellant way of learning about borrowed harmonic structures and "mini-modulations". In this sense, movable Do performs like fixed Do, but with the addition of accidentals.

I suppose fixed Do is like a computer program that is hard-coded, so it's inherently limited to its initial function. Movable Do is like a generalised form of the software, that can be modified for use in other applications.

Of course, you could always use the system suggested by my good frined Dr Frank Gazda - "Self-rising Do".

Jeff