Tonic Solfa Lesson Pdf

[Barb Frison]

Thefollowing tutorial shows how to understand the guitar fretboard by applying the technique of 'tonic-solfa' or 'movable do solfege'. Once familiar with this technique, playing by ear and sightreading/sightsinging will become trivial tasks. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please read this page;

The following diagram shows the guitar fretboard with the notes on it. Sharps and flats are not shown but pretend they're there. For example between F and G is F#/Gb. This diagram should be printed and kept for reference until you can memorise it completely. The red C is middle C on a piano keyboard.

The next diagram is the most import and diagram you'll see as a guitarist. It represents the notes in any key as their 'solfege' or ' tonic - solfa' syllables. It is a looping diagram with no end (i.e. the far right hand side and the far left hand side join together), two sections have been shown for clarity, . It may seem corny at first but it lets you distinguish between notes in terms of their function - AND it will train your ear. This diagram should be thoroughly memorised (you probably already have memorised it in terms of dots, not syllables). The do's (pronounced dough) are coloured blue in order to show the pattern that exists between the octaves up the fretboard. This pattern occurs with all notes, not just the do's. There are 5 patterns and then they repeat.

Now, to play in any major key, simply take this diagram and superimpose it on the first diagram to line the do's up with the key you want. For example - to play in E major, line up all the do's with the E's on the fretboard. The following is the result;

In many songs, some notes played fall out of the key such as stairway to heaven. The 7 notes that fall in key are do re mi fa so la ti (the diatonic notes). There are 12 notes in total chromatic scale, so there is another 5 notes that are out of key and they are: di ri fi si and li.

You don't have to use do re me to identify the notes, you could use 1, 2 , 3. If you learn the major scale pattern only, it's damn near impossible to identify the notes in terms of function - which is the whole idea of using solfege.

This technique has been used in piano teaching for years and years. But in my opinion it suits the guitar even better because it establishes a direct connection between the ear and the guitar because of the 'relative' nature of the instrument.

When you are first starting out if you sing out loud your voice gets a tune up and it don't have to be loud just start to sing it-your voice and mind are so connected that I sing the notes and I remember easier and my ear picks up everything. Remember that you can sing a solo or bass notes better than you can play them at first no matter how hard the solo is on your instrument.-Tim:thu:

Later on, music teachers have used similar systems to teach children how to sing music notation! Tonic Solfa was taught to kids in England during the years that Charlotte Mason set up her PNEU schools. These children sang exercises in the same way that I will be introducing exercises to you! If your curious about the history of Tonic Solfa, the system that gained popularity in the United States and several other countries was through the work of a Hungarian teacher and composer named Zolton Kodaly. The system is similar in the introduction of hand signs with the solfa syllables, but the rhythm is vastly different. We will be using the Kodaly system of rhythm counting.

Traditional notation has a 5 line staff. In the next few lessons we will be working with a 3 line staff only. The reason we do a 3 line staff is to get used to watching how the notes move from line to line.

This relationship between the notes and their names stays the same, no matter what pitch we start the scale on. Instead of having to think about the names of the different notes in a scale, we can simply sing the scale by the solfa names, and this way we already know all major scales. We have learned it like a simple tune.

In music theory, we have a term, scale degree, which refers to the position of a note within a scale. The first note is the tonic, then they are called supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant, subtonic, and tonic again.

Moving down, that is adding flats to lower the pitch by a semitone, we have some options. It is good to pick one and stick to it, so after reading through this pick the version that you like best and use only that one.

When children are taught tonic solfa, they are also taught hand symbols for each note. It is not essential to learn them to be able to use the system, but for the sake of completeness, I include it here.

For someone with perfect pitch, whether we play a C or a D makes a big difference, because they can hear that these are totally different notes. For most people, however, transposing to a different key is more natural, and we can hear the melody of a scale before knowing the absolute frequency of its pitch.

Tonic solfa is a system for understanding the structure of scales and the relationship of the notes inside a scale based on hearing intervals between the notes. It helps learn different scales and key signatures, where the letter names can simply be confusing.

Sing Solfa lessons are purposefully brief, about 3-5 minutes each. Charlotte Mason taught solfa twice a week for 10-15 minutes each. We recommend parents introduce a new song each week and spend the rest of the time reviewing old songs.

When you look at a new sheet of music, can you immediately hear in your head how the notes would sound? This is particularly vital for singers who want to sight-read from score notation, but this kind of audiation from the score can benefit any musician. Solfa can let you know how those notes should sound and sight-sing from written music notation freely and confidently.

If you are new to solfa, begin by reading our series Starting Solfa and Solfa and the Score which explain what solfa (a.k.a. solfge, solfeggio) is, how it works, and helps you begin to practice with the solfa syllables for the notes of the major pentatonic scale.

To begin with our melodies will use only the first three notes of the major pentatonic scale: do, re and mi. We will keep the melodies short and each will start and end on the tonic note (do).

Remember our process: Identify the position of do on the staff, then work out the solfa syllable for each of the other notes. Sing the pentatonic scale from the given tonic (do), and then proceed to sing the melody!

Note: Each singer has their own range. If you find yourself struggling for notes which are too high or low in the melodies below, feel free to choose a different starting note. Your goal is to reproduce the correct melody, even if you need to start from a different note than is shown in the score.

Our process becomes: Identify the position of do on the staff, based on the key signature. Work out the solfa syllable for the starting note and each of the other notes. Sing the pentatonic scale from the given tonic (do), sing your starting note, and then proceed to sing the melody!

It is likely that many Pacific Island students,particularly those who are Protestant Christians, will be familiar withand able to interpret Solfege - Tonic Sol-fa Notation. The similaritybetween this system of notating music and Hindi notation (in common usein Fiji) is probably no accident. One historical commentary has it that Guido d'Arezzo'sideas for a notation in Europe which preceded contemporary solfege wasinspired by the Indian Sa Re Ga Ma. A superficial comparison of bothcertainly suggests a relationship. For example both notation systemshave 're' as their second pitch.

The intention of this lesson is to renew theunderstanding of students who have already worked with Solfege and tointroduce other students to the system. By the end of the lessonstudents should be able to read, and perform some relatively easy songswritten in solfege.

It assumes the music moves around a 'home' note of pitch, calledthe tonic. (hence the name 'tonic' sol-fa.)

The seven notes of any diatonic Western major scale, no matter what'key' are represented as (rising from the lowest pitch)

Share singing these short notated exercises withthe class (For the present, perform the rhythms are steady 'walking'beats (crotchets or quarter notes)

1. d r m m m r d d 2. m s l s m s l s 3. m r d r m m m m 4. d m s m d m s m

If the notated music goes above ti,or below low doh, a supertext or subtext 1 is used to show that thepitches are not within the normal scale.

Soti below doh is shown as t1 And high doh is shown asd1

The first and fifth notes (sa and pa) have only one variant. The other five notes (re, ga, ma, dha, and ni) have two variants each. The notes re, ga, dha, and ni have natural and flat variants, while ma has a natural and a sharp variant. All together, therefore, there are 12 distinct pitches (shruti) in an octave when variants are included.

The video below demonstrates the 12 notes in an octave using a keyboard, while showing the difference between the natural and flat/sharp variants of each note. In each case, the natural variant is sung first followed by the flat or sharp variant. I use C as my starting point (sa) and have color-coded the natural notes red, the flat notes pink, and the sharp note maroon.

The third column gives the Indian solfa syllables for the notes. Note that the same solfa syllable is used for both variants of a note, because they are simply considered to be variants of the same note. The full names of these seven notes (swara) are shadja, rishabha, gandhara, madhyama, panchama, dhaivata, and nishada.

The final sa in Table 1 belongs to the next octave and is notated S', with a quotation mark after it. I notate notes in octaves below or above my main octave with quotation marks before or after them to show which octave they belong to. Here is an illustration using C as sa.

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