I was at a "come and sing" workshop thingy today (Rossini's Petite Messe, good fun) and one of the things we did in the warmup sessions was to sing a scale to numbers and then have to sing back a sequence of notes having just been given the numbers. (we did it to major and minor scales). I was wondering how well my husband and son would manage this as a step towards better sight-reading - I suppose that this is taking a solfa kind of approach, isn't it? I might try it out on them tomorrow, but I wondered if anyone had any advice here? Should I also ask in the "Teachers" forum?

Yes, it's the same principle as solfa although I (unsurprisingly!) don't like singing with numbers at all.

Incidentally, I started teaching two new groups last week who are students of a singing teacher who is doing the CT ABRSM course. They were a mixture of choral and solo singers of all ages and their response to solfa was great - after just one lesson I think they were really feeling and noticing the benefits.

Yes it did strike me that solfa names would perhaps have been easier than numbers - but at least the numbers sort of made sense. When he made us do sequences with the days of the week going forward and backward I got pretty stuck!

Think I will try both methods on DH and DSs and see how they do :-)

Now, I presume its one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one' for do, re, me, fa, so, la, te, do'.

That being the case, solfa has a system to name the in-between notes, what do you do for in-between notes in the number system? An amalgamation of one and two (woo), two and three (tree)?...

How would you get something between four and five ???????. Or six and seven ???

:-)
we were told in advance whether we were doing major or harmonic minor... Tried one random sequence on my son and he was accurate but SLOWWWWW

LOL Baz! Love the idea of the new name 'woo'. Can't help feeling that you might invent one called 'yay' soon...

I feel solfa is far superior to numbers because numbers can refer to so many other things whereas solfa names ONLY refer to their relative pitches. Also the deliberate combination of 'consonant-vowel' is much easier to sing and helps with intonation. Words like 'eight' tend to have dipthongs which isn't good for intonation and is also distinctly un-pretty to listen to.

'Seven' I'd think would cause problems, too...

While I agree that solfa is 'superior' , I do prefer numbers to animal names.

As in ' Cat cat Goose goose Ant ant Goose - Fish fish Egg egg Dog dog Cat' - perhaps because 'One' does have some feeling of finality/ home key while 'Cat' just doesn't do it for me. Also, with numbers one doesn't really have to think about the order, or the names. Using numbers is also useful for teaching intervals. But yes - for a musical homogenous sound, solfa wins every time.

I use numbers all the time when I'm thinking about / learning tunes, and in many jazz workshop type situations numbers are used all the time (saves having to keep transposing C / Bb / Eb) - it works well in this kind of scenario because it ties in with the way jazz chords are notated. The chromatic notes are dealt with either by specifying the scale first, or by using "flat 5", "minor 3rd? etc. I can appreciate that solfa syllables would make singing easier than using numbers though. At the moment I can readily convert notation or letter names to numbers and vice-versa without really having to think about it. I suppose ideally I'd be able to add solfa syllables in too.

The reason that numbers are used for this exercise in many cases rather than solfa is that for those people who have not benefitted from Kodaly training from an early age, most can count in the venacular, and this requires a similar amount of concentration.

It is a trade off between the familiar and teaching two things at once.

For a one off workshop unless it specifically is Kodaly based, then numbers tend to work better. If one is working with the same group of singers week in and week out then the advantages of teaching the solfege come into play.

It is a case of appreciating the aim of the workshop leader. Here their aim was to appeal to a mass, mainly adult market who came from all backgrounds rather than lead a Kodaly workshop. Fans of Kodaly can and do argue about the merits of his ideas, but this was not the stated aims of the workshop leader in this case. IMHO using solfege could have alienated certain members of the group whereas using numbers would not.

Playing devil's advocate here though, what happens in the number system when you get to the 'in between' notes?

For this exercise it really isn't a problem - but if you wanted to test the group you could always say "5 sharp"!!

....but if you are singing a tune with a given rhythm "5#" has two syllables; "si" (that's soh sharp - SNORT - sorry....restrains self...) only has one so tunes can be sung with accurate rhythm as well as pitch names.

Coincidentally I came to the K word VERY late in life. I went in with an open mind, thoroughly enjoyed the challenges and ended up being quite good at it all really. I have never believed there is only one way, but for many of my pupes, this is the best way to tackle certain musical challenges.

Oh-Soh-Sharp-Bag (with moveable yay...) x

OK OK!!! Most people don't have as much trouble converting a written rhythm to a sound as they do converting written pitches to a sound IME so "games" to help with pitching can be more about the pitch than the rhythm? perhaps? Pretty please? IANAT!