Hey Everyone

I had written a very long post about my need to improve my aural skills but I've now realised I had just stressed myself out and have answered a lot of the questions I had asked by myself

But I would still like information on solfege: is fixed or movable-do more useful? Is it something you can teach yourself or do you need a teacher?

Perhaps a moderator could change the title of this topic to solfege please?

Thanks

Sample of one: I have never had a use for movable-doh (otherwise known as "tonic solfa"). Fixed-doh is much the same as French note names (ut, re mi, fa, sol, la, si). I need to know the French names when playing the horn in French music, as this is how the transposition is indicated. E.g, "cor en sol" means "Horn in G", and I have to transpose up a tone.

Solf?ge,* as taught in France, teaches rhythm with a spoken notation and lots of drill.

For sight singing, or comparing what I hear with what I see, I know the sounds and appearances of the intervals (quickly enough nearly all the time).

* Why does this software turn both the extended ASCII and the HTML special symbol sequence for e grave into a question mark? It displays correctly in the preview. Site manager please note.

All I can say on the subject is it sounds as if Kodaly lessons might be beneficial as not only does it cover solfa but a whole lot of other things which will benefit your aural and all other aspects of musicianship. My personal experience has led me to the conclusion that this is not something I can teach myself.

Thanks for the relpies
I guess I'll have to find someone to work on these skills with me or ask my teacher for three lessons a week

Ignorant response here...son has had to take solfege lessons as part of university entrance prep. His teacher is primarily a singing teacher. It has been very interesting observing this from the sidelines...the lesson I've learned is that "aural skills" are incredibly diverse...so it's a pity to hear people condemn themselves for being "bad at aural" from the outset.

Having a teacher just for solfege has made a huge difference for my son...although he seems to have a good ear and a good memory for music, he didn't find "listen and sing/play back" tests easy at all in ABRSM exams until he was taught how to do them and given lots of practice.

It's not something that can be done in 5 minutes either...son loves to sing, and his solfege teacher knows that and often comments on his voice, but there is no time for them to work on singing rather than solfege during lessons.

A singer who teaches solfege naturally has a particular point of view - sharp comments are made about the pitch sensitivity of composers and pianists, for example! Meanwhile the composition teacher thinks that it's all right for singers to struggle with multi-voice melodic dictation, but simply not cool for composers!

My do is far from fixed, but as long as you can play your scales I don't think it really matters as long as you are using solfege to learn to recognize and sing intervals.

If one day your do is middle C and the next day it is E flat, you still adjust the interval in the same way to get to fah.

Don't see why you can't teach yourself if you have some of the exercises and a keyboard to hand to check you are on track.
I found it quite useful when I was teaching both for clapping rhythms and pitching intervals. I wrote out nursery rhymes in sol-fa and in rhythm and got the child to work out what it was.

Fixed doh is simply an alternative set of names, like ABCDEFG. It doesn't provide you with anything extra.

Moveable doh is much more useful, in my opinion:

as Mel2 wrote ...
If one day your do is middle C and the next day it is E flat, you still adjust the interval in the same way to get to fah.

Movable doh is an alternative set of names for the intervals relative to the tonic, with the disadvantage of not being open ended. The Wikipedia article on solfege shows the traditional seven names, and extensions to 17, 33 and 35. The last column, Pitch Class, maps the intervals onto those of a restricted dodecaphonic octave. It could equally plausibly be mapped onto tuning systems with a 19 or 31 note octave, but would run out of names at 53.