For those interested in solfeggio

[maxim3]

For those interested in Solfege

I like the idea of being a good sight-singer. I'm not good yet, but I practice a little from time to time. After studying various systems of solfeggio off and on over the past few years, I decided to stick with 'fixed do.' But I was unsatisfied with all the proposed ways of handling accidentals. This was mainly due to my irritable and fastidious nature.

For example, one way of naming C# is Di: C C# D is thus Do, Di, Re. But that bugs me because Di sounds like D! See what I mean? And Si for G# is what Europeans say for B (instead of Ti), and besides, it sounds like C!

After experimenting with many solutions I have settled on the following syllables, which to ME at least are entirely unambiguous:


Natural      Sharp      Flat

Do      Thee (with voice)*   De

Re      Ri      Ra

Mi      Ma      Me
   
Fa      Fi      Fe

Sol      Zi (with voice)*   Se

La      Li      Le

Ti      Ta      Te


*With voice means, like thee or the, rather than think or thing, which are unvoiced. Same for zipper or zoo, as opposed to sipper or Sue.

F double sharp is Fuh, with the sound of the final vowel in sofa. This vowel actually exists in spoken English, but it is peculiar to pronounce it as though it had an independent value, so to speak. It is subtly, but unmistakably different from the sound of the vowel in the English words but, butt, club, from, mother, etc. (A little imagination and research leads to personally satisying syllables for the other common double sharps and flats.)

Very similar to this sound is the vowel in the French masculine singular article le. This would also work. The point is to make a sound that cannot possibly be confused with Fa. (I suppose you could say 'foo', unless you have an unfortunate propensity for giggling.)

Wikipedia has a good article on solfeggio, with various systems of syllables:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solf%C3%A8ge