Music Video Lesson: What is Solfeggio?

Hello, and welcome to VirtualSheetMusic.com and LivingPianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin, your host, with a great question today: what is solfeggio?

Solfeggio, sometimes called sight-singing, is the ability to read at sight music and sing it. Wow, what a great thing to be able to do. Why is this important? There's a myriad reasons why this is important to instrumentalists, singers, and yes, pianists. It's important to be able to hear the music you play just by looking at it.

How do you develop such a thing? Well, there are different systems, and each one has different values. So I'm going to explore them with you today so you can decide to yourself what's in it for you.

I grew up with what is called the movable do solfege. Now, solfeggio comes with the Latin syllables, [singing] do re me fa so la ti do. That is essentially what a solfege is, are those Latin syllables, where do is the tonic, the first note of the scale, going on up through the scale degrees. And there are also ways of accounting for the accidentals.

Movable do solfege, whatever key you are in, the tonic of that key, of that major key, is do. So if you're in C major, C is do. If you're in D major, D is do.

Now why would you want to do that? Because there's another type of solfege called fixed do solfeggio. Fixed do, C is always do, and re is D, and so on, and they never change. Well, there are benefits to each one. Let's explore this. I'm going to start with fixed do, and why that is important.

Fixed do is simply naming notes. Because if you see a C, or a C-sharp, or a C-flat, or a C-double sharp, it's always going to be do, no matter what key your piece is in.

Now, why is this useful? Well, it's incredibly important for conductors reading a score to be able to know the absolute pitch of all the notes that they see on that score. Because after all, the scores are transposed. There are different clefs. And being able to instantly know what the actual concert pitch of each note in the score, to communicate with the orchestra and understand themselves, is imperative.

So conductors, by and large, embrace fixed do solfege. So they have a sense of what they're looking at.

What is movable do good for, then? Why would you want to change the pitch of do? Why should it be in different places? Shouldn't it always be the same?

Well, not necessarily. The value of movable do solfege is that you get to hear music in the context of the key, thereby being able to know the notes you're hearing, once you know what key you are in. In other words, if you hear a pattern of notes, like [singing] do mi so, you know you've got a I chord, a major triad, whether it's in [playing piano] F major [playing piano] it's always the same do mi so. And so on with other patterns. It makes it possible to hear music and to quantify the pitches relative to one another. For people without perfect pitch, this is a great way to be able to transcribe music, to be able to understand the notes you are hearing.

Of course, you have to know what key you're in to know the absolute pitch. But, it's also a great aid in transposition. Because if you can put the syllables to what you're hearing in your head, then you can put it into any key quite easily.

Movable do solfege is what I grew up with, and it's how I hear music. And in fact, I not only use it for hearing when I'm listening to music, and to know what pitches and harmonies and chords, but I use it even when performing. Because, all music is essentially playing by ear, even if you take it off the score to begin with. And to be able to hear the music and to know where those pitches are going is tremendous help.

And what about the relative minor? How do you account for that? Well, there're two schools of thought on that.

The way I was trained is that the key signature determines where do is. So the relative minor, then begins on la. And this makes perfect sense, particularly with pieces that go back and forth between the major and the relative minor.

For example, a piece with no sharps or flats, that's in C major, and then goes to a minor, back and forth. It could become extremely confusing trying to put the minor on do, particularly when the key signature doesn't change.

More than that, modes. That is, a key signature where you might start in C major, with no sharps or flats. Maybe you'd have D dorian, no sharps or flats, with all the white keys. It's much easier just to call D re in that case, since there's no sharps or flats.

Others like to change the tonic and put do on each tonic of the modes, which is a very difficult thing. If any of you out there have mastered that, I'd love to hear from you.

The last thing that we haven't talked about is how to account for accidentals. As I mentioned earlier, in fixed do solfeggio, accidentals are not accounted for. Do, whether it's a C has got a sharp or a double sharp or a flat, it's just do.

But in movable do solfege, you account for the syllables in the following manner: [singing] do di re ri mi fa fi so si la li ti do ti te la le so se fa mi me re ra do. That's the way it works. And so all the pitches are quantified with precision this way.

Now, sometimes if you're sight-singing atonal music, fixed do makes a heck of a lot more sense, because, you know, how do you account for accidentals that are double sharps when there is no tonic? So there are definitely times when fixed do is the correct choice, and there is also tremendous value in movable do solfege.

And there are other systems that use numbers and set type notation. These are things we can explore in future videos for you.

Thanks so much for joining me. Robert Estrin here at VirtualSheetMusic.com and LivingPianos.com.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---