 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Clarinet333
Date: 2026-08-09 22:29
I have recently been told to use Solfege syllables to help memorise music, but have never been taught this. Can someone explain it, especially as clarinet is a transposing instrument?
For example, if I were to sing Mozart Clarinet Concerto using Solfege syllables, what would I sing? Written in A clarinet, it starts with the notes:
G, E, F, A, G, F, E, E
How would I sing this using do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti?
Thank you!
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Author: m1964
Date: 2026-08-09 23:39
Clarinet333 wrote:
> I have recently been told to use Solfege syllables to help
> memorise music, but have never been taught this. Can someone
> explain it, especially as clarinet is a transposing instrument?
>
> For example, if I were to sing Mozart Clarinet Concerto using
> Solfege syllables, what would I sing? Written in A clarinet, it
> starts with the notes:
> G, E, F, A, G, F, E, E
> How would I sing this using do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti?
> Thank you!
I'd think "do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti"
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Author: kdk
Date: 2026-08-10 04:03
I'm not sure how it would help people to memorize music, especially if the whole sol-fa system is new. Solfegge (the French word for solfeggio) is a way of naming notes, not really unlike using letter names, except that the pronunciation of letter names tends to be language-dependent, and players who speak different languages might not understand each other's note names. The solfegge syllables' pronunciation is, from my experience, pretty consistent across different languages. So, a German player singing "sol-mi-fa-la-sol-fa-mi-mi" at the beginning of the Mozart Concerto (using the written, untransposed notes) would be understood by American, English, French or probably Japanese musicians whose alphabets all sound different. Using concert pitch wouldn't change the usefulness of the syllables, although it would complicate things unless you use clefs instead of note-to-note transposition.
People thoroughly trained to use sol-fa syllables for reading music also learn over time to hear and recognize the pitch relationships among notes, which can aid in sight-reading. And then there's the whole area of fixed vs. moveable "do."
I don't see what any of this would have to do with memorizing, unless your memory for a series of disembodied syllables is a lot stronger than your melodic pitch memory. I guess I'd need to know who has told you this to be able to make more sense of it.
Karl
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Author: Clarinet333
Date: 2026-08-10 20:39
Thanks for your message! It was a French tutor who told me to learn this (I am English). I think he thought that singing music using solfegge would help with sight reading and memorisation, as I normally simply sing a melody, but having the symbols to sing along would help learn music... Also a lot of tutors in Europe use sofegge, so it can be confusing to know what they mean when I don't understand it.
Can I check, would you say C=Do, D=Re, E=Mi, F=Fa, G=Sol, A=La, B=Ti, no matter what clarinet you're playing or what the key signature is?
Thank you again!
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2026-08-10 21:53
I am currently working on singing THE NOTE that you see when you play the clarinet (you don't have to worry about the sounded note name unless you have perfect pitch or are dealing with transpositions). This would be known as "fixed Do" solfege. If you think about it, all the Italians and French are doing is saying (singing) the written note on the page.
In school, we did the number system which is ONE being tonic, FIVE is the dominant ...... etc. (which is also known as "movable Do"). To me, this is only adding another layer of complication. Because of that, I think of the relationship of notes in a piece of music I hear as numbers, then I have to figure out what the note is.......silly. Of course you have seven different letter names for notes and consequently seven different combinations of just one intervallic relationship, but I think in the long run it will be much less confusing to learn those. Then, you should (in theory) be able to "hear" whatever you look at on the written page.
............Paul Aviles
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Author: kdk
Date: 2026-08-11 00:01
Paul Aviles wrote:
> I am currently working on singing THE NOTE that you see when
> you play the clarinet (you don't have to worry about the
> sounded note name unless you have perfect pitch or are dealing
> with transpositions). This would be known as "fixed Do"
> solfege. If you think about it, all the Italians and French
> are doing is saying (singing) the written note on the page.
>
This gets us farther into the weeds than Clarinet333 was hoping for, but...
Fixed Do means that the name of each pitch is the same regardless of the key of the music - i.e. the note we in the U.S. call "C" is always "Do," whether it's the tonic pitch, supertonic, or any other "scale degree" of the current tonality and modality ("key").
Moveable "Do" means that the tonic note of the key is "Do" and the other names build from that (if in F Major, F is "do," G is "re," etc.).
In fixed "do" the names have nothing to do with the key. In moveable "do" the names are determined by the key, and if there's a modulation, the names change.
Whether you're working with written of sounding pitches has no direct bearing. Written C in fixed "do" is "do," but it's sounding pitch on an A clarinet would be "la." Fixed "do" is just another way of naming pitches in the diatonic Western scale. If you use it long enough, you can develop a sense of the sound of the intervals among the pitches, but that's really not different from developing an internal sense of the sound of the interval between "C" and "A" or, for that matter, between "F#" and "Eb."
> Because of that, I think of the relationship of
> notes in a piece of music I hear as numbers, then I have to
> figure out what the note is.......silly. Of course you have
> seven different letter names for notes and consequently seven
> different combinations of just one intervallic relationship,
Well, at least 12 if you consider the chromatic versions, more if you consider all the ways a chromatic can be expressed (sharp, flat just as a start)..
> but I think in the long run it will be much less confusing to
> learn those. Then, you should (in theory) be able to "hear"
> whatever you look at on the written page.
I found it was far easier to learn the sound of the tonic to the dominant of the key as "do" to "sol" or the third note (mediant) to 6 (submediant) of the key than to to memorize the sound of "re" (D) to "la" (A) with no reference to the tonal position of either note. Then, some musicians who use "fixed do" add variations for the chromatics (Fi=F#, "le" - pronounced "lay"=Ab), which complicates things further.
Which is more useful depends, IMO, entirely on your training and what you get used to using.
I stand by my original answer, though, that none of this has much if anything to do directly with memorizing music.
Karl
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Author: kdk
Date: 2026-08-11 00:26
Clarinet333 wrote:
> Thanks for your message! It was a French tutor who told me to
> learn this (I am English). I think he thought that singing
> music using solfegge would help with sight reading and
> memorisation, as I normally simply sing a melody, but having
> the symbols to sing along would help learn music... Also a lot
> of tutors in Europe use sofegge, so it can be confusing to know
> what they mean when I don't understand it.
In my experience, sol-fa syllables are the universal note-naming convention in Europe. And I suspect, apart from long tradition, it's for the reason I mentioned, that the letters all sound different from one language to another, while the Latin syllables used by Guido d'Arezzo are more or less universal in their pronunciation.
> Can I check, would you say C=Do, D=Re, E=Mi, F=Fa, G=Sol, A=La,
> B=Ti, no matter what clarinet you're playing or what the key
> signature is?
Yes, assuming you're simply reading the written notes, those names would be true with two exceptions:
D'Arezzo's original syllables use "Ut" instead of "Do" and many modern European musicians still use "Ut."
D'Arezzo's original system didn't, from what I've read, include a leading tone (B). Modern solfegge includes "ti" in some places (e.g. Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music) and "si" in others for our B. Which is why, if you've ever noticed, VanDoren labels its reeds for Bb clarinet as "Si b" rather than "Ti b"
Karl
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Author: brycon
Date: 2026-08-11 02:33
Quote:
D'Arezzo's original system didn't, from what I've read, include a leading tone (B).
Yes, it was a hexachordal system (which remained in use through the 18th century in Italy). A major scale, then, was solfeged: do, re, mi, fa, sol, re, mi, fa. Sol was a pivot, that is, both a sol and a do on the way up because the first four notes (C, D, E, F) and the next four (G, A, B, C) comprise the same whole-step, half-step relationships.
This system, scholars think, is why fugues express the tonic (do) as a subject and then the dominant (sol) as an answer: the answer could be sung with the same solfege as the subject and therefore was rather natural. It's also why scale-degree 3 going to 4 is harmonized the same way as scale-degree 7 going to 1 (in both cases, a 6/3 or a 6/5 resolving to a 5/3). They're both, as it were, mi-fas. At any rate, a British scholar Nicholas Baragwanath has an excellent book on historical solfege, if you're interested.
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