Circle of fifths, enharmonics?

[ASTN]

Nah. Just remeber main notes on your fretboard: A,B,C,D,E,F,G that’s actually all you need actually. From what I know it’s ebough to play any piece of music you want (since you know that flat is just one fret left and sharp is one fret right).
I play usual tuning guitar, C-tuning guitar, and sometimes use “open-G” tuning. When playing in speed I often don’t actually know what notes I’m playing since all that tunings are mixed up in my head. But because a lot of practice my fingers know where to land. So once I have at least one reference note (open E for example) it’s not a problem to play any music from a sheet.

It’s not like you see C# in your sheet and then press C# on a guitar because you know your fretboard. It would be too long. It’s more like you see that it’s a typical descending 6-notes minor run down to a root note, and because you practiced scales enough your finger automatically choose what you need. Same for arpeggios and other different passages.

[RockStarJazzCat]

If you look at the solfege wiki, there are multiple lists of different names, some of them don’t have words for A flat for example.

You should search the forum. We’ve gone into detail.

[RockStarJazzCat]

I’d suggest to forget about chromatic scale for a time. First of all, it’s not considered as a normal regular scale (unless you write serial music etc). It’s more a bunch of accidentals around diatonic notes of a usual major/minor.

Your generalizations are killing me. I’m speaking from the perspective of a jazz guitarist that sings lines in solfege, uses chromaticism all of the time, rarely listens to Yngwie, and uses the Harmonic Minor daily.

[ASTN]

Don’t confuse ‘chromaticism’ (as an appearance of non-diatonic notes in tonal piece of music) with ‘chromatic scale’ (where all scale notes considered as full-functional and quite autonomous)
There’re not so many examples of using chromatic scale in music (serial music is an example that comes in my mind).

Anyway, jazz theory is another story in general. There’re nuances which is a forever topic for arguments between classics and jazzists )

[WhammyStarScream]

Search the forum is a good way to kill the forum. It was a very simple question. Of which I’m seemingly getting some attitude for

And if you have issue with ASTN making genuine attempt at helping perhaps you can explain How the sharps n flats shift in a chromatic scale. Seems to me They don’t, it’s literally just replace what were sharps ascending with flats descending?

[Brendan]

Search the forum is a good way to kill the forum.

Huh? I really don’t know what this supposed to mean. I think it’s totally reasonable to expect people to search the forum for topics being discussed before posting, to glean as much context as possible and avoid repetition.

You may not have intended, but your question about what purpose there is for solfege does read to me as rather dismissive in tone. It’s not a topic I personally know much about, but these discussions seem worth reading if you want to learn more:

Aural skills, voice, and permutation study a la Bergonzi

In Inside Improvisation Vol. 1: Melodic Structures, Jerry Bergonzi starts off presenting four note cells that work over major/dominant chords and minor chords, respectively. Maj scalar degrees: 1 2 3 5 Min scalar degrees: 1 3 4 5 These cells relate to what Coltrane explored on the famous album, Giant Steps, and are very closely related to the pentatonic scales we’re all familiar with. He starts there and explores many other cells composed of other scale degrees throughout the book, explorin…

THE (Super Ultra Hyper Mega Meta) Ear Training Post

This is the place to share your tips, tricks and, hopefully, very serious, deep and battle tested strategies to develop your ears in music. Let me begin by introducing Chromatic Solfege, a concept that helps us all make sense of things by ear. It’s the good old Do Re Mi stuff, but now transposed to the new key, using only one syllable relative to the key instead of absolute note/pitch names (In F, Do = F = 1, In C Do = C = 1). Every key is the same Do = 1 Re = 2 Mi (Mee) = 3 Fa = 4 So = …

[RockStarJazzCat]

Doesn’t have to be an argument at all, I assure you. I’m out.

[ASTN]

How the sharps n flats shift in a chromatic scale.

Just a qustion of context and historical reasons. Lets say you write a song in C-major. It means you have C,D,E,F,G,A,B as your ‘main’ notes. They say that in that case you have 5 so called relative tonalities: d-moll, e-moll, F-dur, G-dur, a-moll.

Now you want to insert some chromatic notes. Ok.

In ascending motion your chromatic note is treated as leading note to one of that relative tonalities. Say you have movement from C to D through one chromatic note (C#? Db?). Lets call it X for now ) So we have a passage C-X-D
Since you’re moving to a D note, it is considered as a movement to d-moll tonality. Traditional movement is: from leading note (7th) to a tonic (1st). In d-moll 7th note is C. But we have it raised so it’s C# actually. So we have a passage: C-C#-D.

[ASTN]

I don’t mind some discussion. It’s like that chitchating after a repetion when musicians talk about different stuff while packing their instruments. It’s always fun )

[WhammyStarScream]

If one were to just search without posting a question you have little posters. I appreciate the links though I’ll check em out

I am dismissing it as I don’t want to use it, I understand it’s use and context, and if my non willingness to integrate it offends people… That’s just weird. I’d rather use the note names, it’s a far more direct and efficient approach.

[ASTN]

Actually main goals of solfege are to be able to analyse music you hear, and to hear written music in your head. It may be done without note names at all, just by operating degrees (like I-III-V-VI arpeggio over a T, and then V-IV-III-II-I run over S,D and T)

[WhammyStarScream]

And the do re mi can be replaced with anything. I already know the note names so best to use them.

[JakeEstner]

I am dismissing it as I don’t want to use it, I understand it’s use and context, and if my non willingness to integrate it offends people… That’s just weird. I’d rather use the note names, it’s a far more direct and efficient approach.

The thing that’s frustrating is that, to be somewhat blunt, if you’re just wrapping your head around note names you simply don’t know enough yet about music, harmony, etc to know its use. You have very little ability to say whether something is direct or efficient because A. you’re at a very early stage in understanding all this stuff and B. you haven’t clearly defined your endpoints.

You may know your feelings or reaction to a concept but both of those are based on a very limited amount of information compared to what’s out there.

Edited to add: again, my point isn’t about how solfege is what you need - my points are that A. you haven’t clearly defined what your goals are so the whole discussion is much less useful and B. it’s definitely off-putting for someone to be dismissive/resistant to a new concept when they’re also asking for help on very fundamental topics. I don’t mean for this to get personal, but it might help you better understand the bit of rift that’s going on here.

[ASTN]

Problem is that do-re-mi are universal. You can use not knowing the key of current song. Note named suppose that you know the key, the tonality. Without context note names mean nothing. The same note could be G or Fx or Abb.
So, when you say that you want to know all these chromatic notes on your fretboard… well, it’s impossible. Since one and the same note could be named differently in different scale. Theoretically speaking any pitch could have infinite number of names. That’s life

[WhammyStarScream]

Then tell me, besides sounding out the notes, what else does solfege do?
I told you my goal, to understand music theory better, I’m asking seeming low level questions to solidify this stuff.

It’s not that new, I’m the one who brought it up in the first place lol
The naming convention confused me but it’s alright I got it, the simple answer to what I asked about 5 times is it includes the octave as a flat. So Ab G Gb F… etc. That’s what was confusing. So as far as I see this would be considered Ab chromatic scale And the ascending would be A# chromatic scale?

I appreciate all the help, I’m not dismissing the basic concept of solfege like some child that should be self evident, I just don’t want to memorise a whole new bunch of names, I already have the notes down in a solid form. I can sing it all just adding S or F to the end.

[ASTN]

Then tell me, besides sounding out the notes, what else does solfege do?

From a practical point of view it’s just a training to hear (and to sing) patterns. Intervals, scales, arpeggios. Nothing more.

After hours of singing that stuff you just hear these elements without any note names, without even do-re-mi.
Just - Boom! - ok, it was major phrygian run, then - Bang! - ok, it was chromatic movement from D up to T. Then - tin-tin-tin -… I’m not sure, but it was like running through the wholetone scale with some grace notes.

[JakeEstner]

Then tell me, besides sounding out the notes, what else does solfege do?
I told you my goal, to understand music theory better, I’m asking seeming low level questions to solidify this stuff.

It’s not that new, I’m the one who brought it up in the first place lol
The naming convention confused me but it’s alright I got it, the simple answer to what I asked about 5 times is it includes the octave as a flat. So Ab G Gb F… etc. That’s what was confusing.

I appreciate all the help, I’m not dismissing the basic concept of solfege like some child that should be self evident, I just don’t want to memorise a whole new bunch of names, I already have the notes down in a solid form. I can sing it all just adding S or F to the end.

It’s a bit off topic for me to get into the benefits of solfege, but those other threads get into them. Solfege may or may not be relevant to the discussion - I was only commenting on your reaction to it.

I wrote before, ‘music theory’ is very broad. What do you want to do with it? What is the end goal?

Regarding the spelling of the chromatic scale, it’s not consequential and as far as I know doesn’t have any significance. For ease of writing and reading I would use sharps ascending and flats descending.

[WhammyStarScream]

Chord progressions, scale construction, chord construction. The construction of music. I’m not to bothered about sight reading atm, rather don’t have the time.

[JakeEstner]

Chord progressions, scale construction, chord construction. The construction of music. I’m not to bothered about sight reading atm, rather don’t have the time.

Ok, now we’re getting somewhere!!!

So, what do you want to do with knowledge of those topics?

Write music? Improvise with others? Play with backing tracks? Be able to figure out music faster?

Are there particular genres you’re more interested in than others? Different styles of music require different levels of understanding of harmony.

[WhammyStarScream]

I’m up for it all. I like all music if it’s well made, I’m not really looking at stopping, it’s an on going thing. I’ve no formal music education it’s all sporadic picking up things over the years with a greater push recently.