Solfege Details, Meaning Solfege Article and Explanation Guide

Solfege Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

In music and sight singing solfege is a way of assigning syllables to degreess or steps of the diatonic scale. In order, they are: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, and Do (for the octave). The origin of Solfege was a pedagogical technique created by Guido of Arezzo. These names are still used for the notes in Latin countries while in Germanic countries the names of letters of the alphabet are used.

Table of contents

1 Etymology
2 Variations
3 Common scales
4 Other meanings
5 See Also
6 External Link

Etymology

"Sol-fege" came from French solfège in the 1910s. The French word in turn came from the Italian solfeggio, which is a combination of sol and fa. Its equivalent since Early Modern English is sol-fa.

The syllable names come from a formerly well-known medieval hymn, entitled Ut queant laxis, in which each successive verse starts on the next higher scale degree in the major scale; The first syllable in each verse corresponds to the solfege syllable, with the exception of the first, "Ut," which was changed to the more singable "Do."

Variations

There are two main types of solfege: moveable Do, in which each syllable corresponds with a scale degree, and fixed Do, in which the syllables correspond to fixed pitches. The advantage of moveable Do is that Do always corresponds to the tonic; the disadvantage is that the singer must do a harmonic analysis of the piece in order to sing the correct syllables. In fixed Do, the pitches are set: the tonic, Do, is C, Re is D, and so on; Fa is easy to remember, since it is F.

There are also other syllables corresponding to notes outside of the major scale. All the solfege syllables are listed in the table below; the syllables in the major scale are shown in bold.

Scale degree	Syllable	Pronunciation
Unison, Octave	Do	dough
Augmented unison	Di	Dee
Minor second	Ra	"Rah rah rah"
Major second	Re	ray
Augmented second	Ri	like reach
Minor third	Mé	May
Major third	Mi	like the word me
Perfect fourth	Fa	'a' as in father
Augmented fourth	Fi	like feet
Diminished fifth	Se	say
Perfect fifth	So (or Sol)	long 'o', like sold
Augmented fifth	Si	see
Minor sixth	Le	lay
Major sixth	La	'a' as in large (like Fa, above)
Augmented sixth	Li	like lean
Minor seventh	Te	like take
Major seventh	Ti*	tea
* In Continental Europe and East Asia, si is the seventh major, instead of ti.

Some variations of the syllables are (e.g. the major scale): Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, Do, and Fa, Sol, La, Fa, Sol, La, Mi, Fa. The first variation was common in English-speaking countries until John Curwen changed Si to Ti so each syllable would start with a different letter. The second variation uses four syllables and repeats three of them. This system always has a half step before the syllable "fa". It was once common in England, and, via England, in early America. It has survived in American shape note books such as the Sacred Harp and Southern Harmony. The article Shape note discusses assigning shaped noteheads to correspond with the solfege symbols. John Curwen developed the English Tonic Sol-fa system in the mid to late 1800s. Visual aids such as shape notes and tonic sol-fa remove the difficulty of singing the correct syllables in a moveable Do system.