What is Solfege?

Maybe you have tried to sing a melody to that you simply didn’t know the language, or that had no words? You almost certainly used a syllable like “la,” “da,” or “ma” for every pitch; we call these “neutral syllables,” and while they may be useful, they are able to also ensure it is pretty tricky to sing melodies correctly. Many musicians make use of a system called “solfege” to make the task of singing and understanding melodic lines a little bit easier. Solfege is found in conservatories and schools throughout the world to teach music students to sing and hear effectively.

Solfege, also called “solfeggio” or “solfa,” is really a system where every note of a scale is given its unique syllable, that will be used to sing that note each time it appears. A major or even a minor scale (the most typical scale in Western classical music) has seven notes, and so the solfege system has seven basic syllables: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti.

Let’s look at solfege in practice. A-C Major scale, for example, is comprised of these seven notes: C, D, E, F, G, A, and B (often continuing to a C an octave above the very first one). If we were to sing this major scale on solfege, the C would always be sung as do, the D would always be sung as re, and so on. The complete-scale looks like this in solfege :

                C      D      E      F      G     A     B
                do     re     mi     fa     sol   la    ti

In other octaves – for example, an octave above or below – the solfege syllables stay the same. Which means that any C we sing is obviously sung on the syllable do – the same goes for the other notes and their syllables. That’s all there is to it!

There are two kinds of solfege systems: “fixed do” and “movable do&rdquo ;.In a movable-do system, the note to which assign the syllable do is the keynote, or “tonic,” of the main element and scale that we’re in. For example, when we were in D Major (instead of C major like before), D could be sung as do, with E being sung as re, F# being sung as mi, and so on. This system is most typical in the United States and Canada, although it can be found in conservatories in other countries as well.

Most frequent in Europe and Asia is “fixed do.” In fixed-do systems, every note has a solfege syllable associated with it constantly, whatever the key or scale. Each note’s solfege is pulled from the C Major scale, so they’re sung utilizing the syllables in the scale shown above. It doesn’t matter whether the melody is in F major, B minor, or any other key; C is obviously sung as do, F as fa, and B as ti. The initial solfege system was a fixed-do system, and many musicians still believe strongly it is a more efficient system compared to the movable-do alternative.