Do-Re-Mi
The Importance of Solfege
Solfege, Solfeggio, or Sol-fa, is the system of naming and singing notes with Do-Re-Mi rather than the English letters. It is my preferred language of teaching. I whole-heartedly believe it helps to develop “perfect pitch” – the ability to recognize notes without looking at the music or piano keyboard, especially in young students. I have perfect pitch, and while some believe it is a talent you are born with, I believe it can be trained, and have indeed successfully trained many young children.
All music sounds have names. The ability to connect those names to music pitches is the base of music literacy. This means that you can easily read music, “hear” any music in your mind by looking at a music score, and reproduce it by singing or playing, or you can catch any melody by ear, and write it down using music notation. I believe that the easiest way to acquire this skill is to use a learning method called Solfege – a very important part of any serious music education. Solfege, or Solfeggio, is based on the singing of a melody by using specific vowels, NOT English letters (C, D, E, F, G, A and B), but names Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti (Si), specially designed for singing, and accepted worldwide for music notation. The singing of note names helps any beginner to form the crucial skill of connecting a pitch of a note with its name, and tying his or her ear together with the voice and brain. The neglect to Solfege by most teachers may be attributed to the ignorance of the fact that our music perception involves our vocal apparatus as well as the auditory one – whenever we hear or play a melody, we also sing along with it inside of our mind.
When I attended the Dalcroze Institute at Juilliard School of Music in the summer of 2008, I was further convinced that Solfege is the most natural and musical way to learn and teach music. It is the heart of not only Dalcroze, but also the well-known Kodaly and Orff methodology. The problem with letters is that they come with their “speech” sounds, not actual note pitches. When one refers to a note as “C”, it is pronounced just as letter C, but when a student who is trained in Solfege sees the same note, he or she will naturally think of, if not sing, the exact musical pitch of that note.
Of course it is also important to learn the music letter names (just as the English language is the international universal langauge), and I do introduce them to students after they have mastered their “Do-Re-Mi”. In my opinion, even if a student never learns the letter names but has Solfege firmly engraved into their sense of pitch, he or she will not be disadvantaged at all in the learning and performance of music. The letter names are more convenient for Music Theory, as each note only requires one letter to write instead of two. My approach to Music Theory is that yes it is important, just as are reading and writing when learning a new language, but my first goal is always to teach students how to play and make music; I compare this to how they learn their mother tongue – they speak first before they read, write, and learn the grammar.
So do I use the letter names at all myself? The short answer is I only use the letter names when I need to communicate with others that are not fluent in Solfege. Whenever I see, sing (aloud or in my head) and play a note, my instinct is always the Solfege name.
For older students who learned their letter names instead of Solfege before they came to me, if they have not developed perfect pitch by age 7, do not worry – they can still become wonderful musicians! It is still important for them to “sing” the notes (with whatever name they are most comfortable with), at least inside of their mind while they are playing, so they can still develop a good sense of “relative pitch”.
While I was on the editorial committee for Sound Ideas – Music Education Journal published by University of Canterbury School of Music, New Zealand, I wrote an extensive article about how Solfege benefited my own study of music; I did not learn the English letter names until I was 14! That article was published twice, once by the Journal, and again by the Institute of Registered Music Teachers of New Zealand. Someday, when I have time, I will type it out and post it on this website!
related video-blog: Singing and playing
I came across this site because I was researching ways to explain the importance of learning solfege. My partner and I make a handcrafted melodic hand drum out of old propane tanks called Tank Drums. We initially made them in all scales. My partner is a brilliant musician and while brainstorming one day we realized we could make a C Major scale tank drum and label it with solfege and we have an ideal instrument to introduce children(and anyone wanting to learn music) to solfege – the Tank Drum requires no technique/skill to produce a perfect note, it stays in tune, A=440, and it’s portable. I am writing some marketing pieces and your wonderful explanations have helped me to understand what I am trying to convey. Thank you for this post! Let me know what you think of my Solfege Tank Drum!
Tina,
Glad you found my post helpful! Your Solfege Tank Drum sounds like fun! I will have to check them out!
Dear lady,
I’ve always believed the “emotional makeup” of the vocal chords wwere (1) vibrato (pitch & distance) and (2) the vowels (a,e,i,o,& u). How do I know this? Your facial muscles will triple in strength. This is tremendous advantage in singing, avoiding fatigue, diction and pronounciation of words, phrases and chordal progressions. This is how to handle long pieces like mozart. This is how to pitch a song or piece. It closes a contract.
I would like to purchase your method book or any work you’ve written. You’re natural, gifted & talented but most of all sincere & ingenuous. Please reply since I’m in a certain field where I can use your great gift of communication each and every day. If possible also include your address so I may take some lessons. Thanks, Jamieson
Dear Jamieson,
Thank you for commenting on this post, and for your very kind compliments! I have not yet published a method book, but teaching, playing, singing and making music in solfege is what I do everyday, and I would love to share more with others. I need to really sit down and find the time to do this, especially now that I know there is support from people like yourself for such a project. Thank you for your input on the emotional qualities of vowels – so true – the vowel “om” is used in meditations to enhance focus and connection with ones inner self. Many vowel sounds also have common meanings in different languages – the primitive nature of our raw emotions are the same regardless of race. That is why I believe singing in solfege encourages more expressive playing in young children.
As to lessons, I currently live in Murrieta, CA. I notice your email address is Suffolk county New York, where I used to live two years ago! Oh well, may be when I set up lessons by Skype (another project I have been wanting to do).
Thanks again for your support!
Sincerely,
Yiyi
Hello,
I believe your analysis is EXACTLY correct and I would like to add another observation if I may.
In America the first song we learn is the “ABC” song. It has no relation to absolute pitches and can begin in any key. Ask five Americans to sing their ABC’s and you might hear it in five different keys! If someone were to get ‘lucky’ and begin the “ABC” song on the ‘A’ note, it wouldn’t matter because this “song” is characterized by letters that share “notes” (like the letters AB, CDG and EF) Beyond that, the third letter (C) is a full fifth away from the original note, A (the true interval is only a minor third). So the intervals between the notes that are sung have no basis in musicality either- thus skewing the student’s sense of relative pitch as well. No wonder why perfect pitch is so rare in America!
To prove it, try singing the “ABC” song using letters instead of solfeo and you will see what I mean. Sadly this is something that is ingrained into the memories of American children at a very tender age and probably leads to lifelong tonal deafness. I am an accomplished musician with a great ear since childhood and I am certain this is why I don’t have perfect pitch.
Great insights! You may have solved the “mystery” of perfect pitch acquisition. I would love to read the article you published if you ever have time to upload it.
Thanks much,
Brian
Dear Brian,
Thank you for your detailed comment! I appreciate your feedback and your added observation about how the song ABC really is not a good song for children to learn! I agree it is totally misleading.
I am thinking of writing a method book to help other music educators teach in Solfege, as currently there is none available. Thank you for letting me know that you believe in my theory!
Sincerely, Yiyi
Hello,
I believe your analysis is EXACTLY correct and I would like to add another observation if I may.
In America the first song we learn is the “ABC” song. It has no relation to absolute pitches and can begin in any key. Ask five Americans to sing their ABC’s and you might hear it in five different keys! It is not rooted in fixed pitches but, rather, letters.
If one were to get ‘lucky’ and begin the “ABC” song on the ‘A’ note, it wouldn’t matter because this “song” is characterized by letters that ‘share’ relative pitches (like the letters AB, CDG and EF in the song). Beyond that, the third letter (C) is a full fifth away from the original note, A ( while the true interval is only a minor third). So the intervals between the notes that are sung have no basis in musicality either- thus twisting one’s concept of relative pitch as well. No wonder why perfect pitch is so rare in America!
To prove it, try singing the “ABC” song using letters instead of solfeo and you will see what I mean. Sadly this is something that is ingrained into the memories of American children at a very tender age and probably leads to lifelong tonal deafness. I am an accomplished musician with a great ear since childhood. I have never accepted the answer “You’re just born with it.”
If it is a rare, elusive gift that you’re born with then why do so many of your young students have it while students in Hong Kong don’t. I think you have found the answer to this age-old question. I would love to read the artice you published if you are ever able to upload it.
Great insight and thanks much,
Brian
dear miss yiyiku,
i learned solfege at young age and developed what you call perfect pitch. but it only confuses me because there is not a 1-1 correspondence between the 12 notes (pianokeys of an octave) and the 7 words (do, re, etc). do you also teach your students to sing e.g. ‘mi’ for ‘e flat’? how can they make a distinction between e and e flat if both pitches are called ‘mi’?
kind regards,
a retarda
Dear Antonia,
Your question is a good one and certainly a seemingly valid concern. However, it is not necessary to ‘invent’ new names for the ‘black’ keys of the piano. The reason is simple: every black key is a small variation of a white key, so E flat is a little lower than E, but it is also the same key as D sharp, in fact, one could even call it F double flat. If you have true perfect pitch, you can identify in your minds ear the difference between E flat and E. When singing, we go with the key of the piece, so if the piece is in E major, we sing the black key between note D and E as ‘Re’, but if the piece is in E flat major, we sing that same note as ‘Mi’. Confusing? It really is not. The whole point of solfege is to always refer to every note in relation to one another, and by actively singing every note while we play, it is much easier for us to remember that note. As to sharps or flats, when we learn a new piece, we have a visual picture of the necessary sharps or flats in our mind, but when we sing, there is simply no time to sing ‘Re sharp’ or ‘mi’ flat’, especially if the piece is at a fast tempo. In this regard, the letter system is no better than Solfege, as there is not a new letter for the black keys either, but what the letter system does lack is the inherent pitch relationship between the letters, because the letters are inevitably ‘spoken’ instead of sung. Now, if one can insist on always referring to the letters in actual pitches, instead of the natural speech sound, than the letter system can almost be as good as solfege; I say almost as good, because the note ‘F’ still presents a problem – it is not a vowel, and takes longer than the others to sing. Notice every note in solfege is a one syllable vowel.
HI
I have a 9 year old girl, she started last year to take piano lessons, I am not that happy with the ABc method here in USA, because i learned from solfege many years ago. I am looking to find a good solfeggio piano method to share with my daughter, but don’t know where to start. Please help..
thanks
Amelia Barreda
Florida/usa
Hi Amelia,
A good place to start would be to go to MTNA’s website to find certified teachers in your area. Ask potential teachers if they teach Solfege. If you don’t have any luck, insist that your daughter sings note names in solfege while she plays. I will video a student doing that to demonstrate what I mean. If it is too difficult for your daughter to change to solfege since she was originally trained in letters, then have her sing the names in letters. Remember it is the actual singing in tune with note names that is the key, not ‘saying’ the names, but singing with actual pitch. Good luck!
I agree that perfect pitch can be learned by most people, if not everyone. However, it seems people who play
certain instruments with “non-fixed” pitch like wind or brass instruments or guitars tend to have more trouble getting the perfect pitch. These instruments require the players to constantly shift the scales up and down with relative pitch rather than absolute pitch.
It’s almost rare, for people who play “fixed pitch” instruments like piano or string instruments long enough, not to have perfect pitch. It may be a good evidence to suggest that perfect pitch can be trained.
That is exactly what I thought before; how can anyone not have perfect pitch, if they have been playing piano all their life?! Throughout my student and teaching life, I have been surprised to find that many musicians actually do not have perfect pitch; teachers and students alike. I will say that, having perfect pitch does not necessarily make you a better musician, but it certainly helps in terms of memory, aural skills, sight singing, and learning music theory. For me, I can not imagine how I would even go about playing or learning a piece if I didn’t have perfect pitch. But Matt, trust me, it really is more rare than you think! That is why I believe training with “Do-Re-Mi” is one of the keys, not how long someone has been playing their instrument.
Thanks Yiyi for sharing your insight. While on this subject, I’ve tried to find more information and came across the link below from a relatively impartial source Wikipedia below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch#Nature_vs._nurture
Thanks for sharing that link, Matt. I agree with most of the information, especially where it says “the prevalence of absolute pitch may be explained by exposure to pitches together with meaningful labels very early in life” – that is exactly why I believe Solfege is far more superior than the English letter names when it comes to naming notes, because C-D-E-F-G-A-B are not “meaningful lables” at all (they are not actual pitches, just speech sounds; one might as well call the notes apple-orange-banana etc), but Do-Re-Mi-FA-So-La-Si (Ti) have absolute pitch frequencies and inherit relationships – Re is always sung a note higher than Do and Fa is always referred to as a note lower than So. I am very passionate about this subject; I am not a scientist and I do not have the desire or resources to prove my theory, but I really do believe that if every child is trained in Solfege, they will all have perfect pitch!
Now, I disagree with the notion that Chinese or Asians are more likely to have perfect pitch. It may seem so, do you know why? In most Asian countries music is not taught in English letters, but in Solfege! You and I were both born in Taiwan and received our early musical training in Taiwan – we learned “Do-RE-Mi”, not ABC (well I can only speak for myself and please let me know if I am wrong about how you learned) – and it was indeed unthinkable for me at first that others could not tell the difference between the different notes – they are indeed as clear as the colors of the rainbow! I have proven my own little ‘theory’ whenever I go to music conferences/training workshops where I meet many colleagues and musicians – the interesting fact is that those from Hong Kong do not usually have perfect pitch, but those from Taiwan almost always do! Why? They teach music using ABC in Hong Kong!!! So the argument about tonal languages ends right there as Cantonese has even more pitch variations than Mandarin. Now, of course there are always exceptions, just as the Wiki article said that it is almost impossible, impractical, and even unethical to try and set up a controlled experiment to end this debate once and for all. Anyway, from my own teaching experience, I have trained Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Kiwi, American, Spanish, and children of mixed races with perfect pitch very successfully – the key is they have to start young (preferably between 3 and 5) and they have to sing and learn their notes in Solfege!