Solfege is really helping me but i have questions

Harmony & Theory
#58

Lol I am almost certain there is no program involved. I used to do this with random songs all the time. It is a great ear training exercise and more importantly, it has real world application. It allows you to totally transcribe anything by ear. Yes, the key may be wrong if you donā€™t have perfect pitch. But relatively the notes will be correct. IMO that will go much further in all around musicianship development than chasing perfect pitch.

I hope youā€™ll allow a constructive criticism @bradejensen that a lot of the things you post are these very abstract ā€œchallengesā€ or music theory brain teasers. If you enjoy them and think they are helpful, definitely keep doing them and ignore my suggestion :wink: My stance is with only 24 hours in a day, I have to be really choosy about what I spend my time on. Finding something with direct application to a real world scenario is always what I aim for.

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#59

hehe i know its just something fun to break the mold. i still practice my songs and improvising. sometimes i got to have a refresher behind the instrument, and take a break from grinding in certain zones. i also try to find theory stuff that might seem useful like ta ka gi na tom, all the other ones suck imo. but for some reason this one works for me, or it has helped me get a handle on 5s rhythm. i think it has to do with all the syllables are kinda unique.

definitely if this doesnt work for you donā€™t do it. it just helped me so i am sharing it in case it helps someone else.

#60

The graphic? Itā€™s google sheets. And thanks - I was trying to make a display that would show the notation a bit like piano roll.

I think he meant the graphic a few posts back, rather than the ability to decipher the notes

#61

Ah thanks for that. I normally use the forum on my laptop and you can see more context in a reply to a post. That never seems to work on my phone and that is what I used today.

#62

Right, that is all cool. I was just a little worried that for some of this stuff you may be going down a rabbit hole, getting so into various concepts that the end results of these things gets lost. If you have a good handle on it and you have a steady diet of the other hands on stuff (and most importantly) are enjoying yourself, by all means, continue :slight_smile:

#63

So maybe I should opt for the blue pill? :sweat_smile:

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#64

Its not my intent to step on toes, but I do disagree still. I feel that this retuning period of solfege to a new Do is just prohibiting absolute hearing. If we know that something has changed, and we are moving to a new anchor point, this feels like absolute pitch, but we are just neglecting to further our language acquisition by only learning Do instead of cementing it. When it seems easier to just shift things, since if we just change the key of a major scale we perceive it to be the same just higher or lower depending on which way you go sort of a curse of the way guitar has a kind of ā€œrelativeā€ fingering as opposed to piano where if you switch to a another major key the finger changes quite drastically, a more ā€œabsoluteā€ fingering. But it changed key, and since we shift utilizing a movable do approach we hear it as some sort of ascend or descend. Thatā€™s not wrong per say, but if we shift Do onto a new platform we are sidestepping something else entirely, hiding it away.

But this specific system really wasnt intended for fixed, it was first used as a movable system. Only later had that changed. But it does help to discover this other side of hearing things.

i think in order to kind of understand it you need to sing the solfege in different keys with fixed do in mind. Like Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do Ti La So Fa Mi Re Do Mi So Do So La Ti Do Re Mi Do Mi So Fi So Fi Mi Re Do Ti La So

And also I could be swapping in F# as Do because in the Key of F# or Gb major there is no C aka Do. Which is why I am thinking in my mind this has to be Do simply because Do is gone from this key. And if you look at all the other 5 scales with out C F# is in them. It is like the polar opposite of C natural after all it is the tritone of C.

I have this vision of taking this tonesavvy style game, but instead of piano use guitar distortion notes. lol

#65

Absolute pitch and relative pitch are different set of challenges with different applications.

If you come across a way with solfege to indicate specific shifts in key center, Iā€™d be interested, though as some unsolicited advice since youā€™re relatively new to the whole thing, Iā€™d recommend not worrying too much about modulations for your own personal study, just yet!

If you prefer to use absolute pitch/fixed do for anything that has any modulations then there are benefits to that, but imo you lose pretty much the whole point/glory of movable do.

Also whether something is a true modulation or just temporary borrowing or something plays a big role as well.

But again, this is all talking about hypothetical stuff with more advanced material - something worth revisiting once you get very comfortable with movable do for scales, modes, patterns, etc.

#66

But what do you use for minor scales la ti do re mi fa so la in movable do right?

#67

I still start with ā€œdoā€, just use the b3, b6 and b7 syllables where needed

So if A minor:

A  B    C    D  E     F      G    A
do re **me** fa sol **le** **te** do

Otherwise Iā€™d get mighty confused :slight_smile:

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#68

I think I might just take up checkers. :smiley:

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#69

In movable do, do is ā€œ1.ā€ La is major sixth.

There are 12 half steps per octave, solfege has a syllable for all 12, as you can see in most of my posts in this thread.

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#70

But isnt there going to be a point when you are going to at least be able to do it like with this game using one note as ā€˜Doā€™ in atonality? Because if you move ā€˜Doā€™ around that means you at least have to know them all in one way or another.

This is when you are going to experience the tritone shift effect that tries to thwart movable ā€˜Doā€™ off the map. Doesnt matter which tritone pair either, its going to happen. You can experience this in the game by just putting any major scale in with the tritone. If its a common one like C do another major scale until you find one with a tritone that throws off your movable ā€˜Doā€™. It is going to happen. This is probably why Guido only did hexachords because he knew the tritone would alter peoples senses that arent experienced enough in music.

And I dont mean leave out ā€˜Tiā€™, I mean put in ā€˜Fiā€™. Its like the second tritone really wonks out my brain. No matter how hard I try I cannot put ā€˜Doā€™ at C. It wants to be on F# in atonality. ROFL. I can almost thwart it by thinking of F and B as ā€˜Faā€™, but the problem here is then you have to sense the switching of two separate keys of Do Re Mi Fa So La. You can only do this for so long before the other tritone pairs begin to throw you off. And since I hear ā€˜Tiā€™ loud and clear, when F comes up it sounds like ā€˜Tiā€™ with this game.

And what I am thinking with this logic is that maybe everybodies Do is different and it has to do with where the highest point of the tritone pairs sounding ascending and descending lies across the frequency spectrum. Meaning that maybe it has more to do with a very specific frequency beyond A440hz as the tuning note standard used for Equal Temperament for each person.

#71

Iā€™m not sure what you are saying in your last comment, but itā€™s possible there might be a misunderstanding somewhere in our conversation regarding the definition of these terms:
key center
key change
modulation

#72

I am just saying if you try to put Do on every note in this game its not going to work. At least for myself it doesnt. I can put in the C major scale, and when I start adding more and more notes my senses get altered between two keys F#major and C major as Do. But I can get higher scores using F# as Do.

But what I mean is if its a movable Do system wont you need to at least hit all the syllables from one Do point? This imo would be even harder than absolute pitch. Haha! Or maybe this is absolute pitch. Being able to play this game with every note as Do.

Yeah it is hard to write out without errors so I can explain what I am experiencing. It is why I just use the syllables so we dont get confused on letters.

#73

I think there might be either a mental block or a misunderstanding thatā€™s preventing you from hearing other notes as ā€œdoā€. Iā€™d propose this as a solution:

take a major scale melody that is very familiar to you personally -Iā€™ll use ā€œFrere Jacquesā€ but maybe thereā€™s something similar thatā€™s even more memorable for you, it just has to be simple and be major-scale based. The link is nice because the different versions are in different keys.

Pick a key, any keyā€¦letā€™s say D.
On guitar or piano, play a one octave D major scale ascending, pause and hold the root, the descend back to the low root and sustain that note for a moment, then on the instrument play a I V7 I cadence (in this case, D A7 D)

Play Frere Jacques in the key of D on your guitar, then play it again singing the solfege syllables (for D=do) for each note. If you get tripped up, fine to write out the notes, tab, and syllables all together so you donā€™t have to do much cerebral work while youā€™re actually doing the activity.

Then repeat the exercise for all other keys, same steps - play the scale, play I V7 I for that key, play the melody in that key.

Once you finish, repeat the activity but after each time you play and sing the melody, try singing the melody in the key you were just in, using solfege, without playing it on the guitar.

If youā€™re not confident youā€™re singing it correctly, record yourself and try playing along on the guitar and see how close you were.

Even if you donā€™t sing the melody beautifully or even correctly, I canā€™t imagine having difficulty locking on to do=other notes after doing that activity.

#74

This is what I am trying to tell you I can do this, but once I go back to identifying tones in this game with every note in atonality F# will eventually shift as Do. Even if I put in D major first, and begin to add more and more notes. Like I could play the game for 30 minutes in D major notes only, but once I add 2 or more notes beyond the heptatonic D major notes is when its going to come crashing down.

And what I am telling you is if it is a movable Do system I should be able to do this as Do as note D after this test. But it doesnā€™t work for me.

As I am posting this I am playing the game in D major still havent recemented it completely yet, but its close. I can still hear the tones with F# as Do in atonality though lol its faint but there still. And if it hits specific intervals that I have heard alot to it can throw it off back into F# major even in heptatonic D major only notes. At that point I just have to face the fact that yup I just heard So even though it should be Ti.

But i have played this game more than you guys could comprehend. Like when I get G, Di/Ra, and A, Ri/Me mixed up I sometimes have to breath cause I want to break my phone. These are the remaining two that are preventing me from going 100%. And sure I can sing it to pick the right one, but I am trying to do it by memory, or internal thought of where G or A resides beside Re, G#/Ab.

This is like going back to my original plan, I will only do this for so long. But since I am so invested at F# as Do in atonality right now. I dont want to take it to far in D major just yet until I feel more competent at F# Do in atonality first. I just hope I dont plateau into never getting 100%. I am not really worried about knowing all the notes like when I start again after a long break, and a note that just isnt a strong note comes up. I have a few, but when I begin it takes about 5 notes and i can ramp up to 80 to 90% accuracy, especially right when I wake up. It is just those notes I was explaining, G and A, that throw it all off sometimes, not all the time.

#75

I canā€™t say I fully understand what youā€™re saying, but I think I might be getting a little closer. Maybe clarify just two things for me:

  1. Is your aim to improve your skills with movable do or fixed do? If fixed do, why? If movable do, on to #2:

  2. You say the exercise I described in my previous post is doable/not challenging. Good. Question: Say instead of ā€œfrere jacquesā€ you were doing ā€œsmoke on the water.ā€ (Do me fa, do me se fa, do me fa, me do. ) That melody uses notes outside of the major scale. If you tried the exact same exercise but just used Smoke on the water instead of ā€œfrere jacquesā€ would it also be easy/doable?

If so, Iā€™m not seeing what the problem is.

If youā€™re not able to, in your mind, modulate to a new key without the help of an instrument, donā€™t worry. Thatā€™s a more advanced skill that can come later. Itā€™s a lot harder, but it is very much doable.

Itā€™s fine if you need some ā€˜external assistanceā€™ to actually change keys for now.

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#76

Yes I think you have nailed it. The only key my ear knows is F# from playing this game so much. But knowing this can help move it around it just takes a minute to retune my bearings. But I feel like if I can 100% this game after the first few wrong answers if my brain doesnt recognize the first note, which some of them it doesnt quite know from memory, I should be able to shift it around in an almost perfect relative pitch fashion at least in monophonic. At least I hope it can, but I dont know if my brain will allow another note as Do in atonality yet anyways. ROFL!

#77

Do you know of any ear training software that uses real instrument samples? Or am I going to have to start chopping up samples where the instrument is isolated in the mix to create my own ear training stuff using other instruments. Cause I feel like I am stagnating here only doing piano. When I switch over to my classical guitar note trainer app it is getting better, the transfer stays a bit longer, but it still fades.

It isnā€™t my aim it is just how we hear. Not a matter of why, but maybe how come we arenā€™t trying to learn and comprehend both since this is how we sense music anyways. Whether one realizes it or not. If you realize you are playing a tune a 1/2 step down and it doesnā€™t sound right that right there shows we all have an ability to sense pitch inside of us. We are just using the other one, and not learning to compose our own songs to reinforce every pitchā€™s absolute frequency. I would even go as far to say if you do movable Do in one key for awhile say you learn a song over a few weeks, the longer you do this you are going to subconsciously be learning the notes in an absolute fashion regardless if you go moving Do around into another anchor point. This goes beyond syllables, like just basically burning the song into your mind through audiation, and trying to decipher the song aurally. You create deep seated memories of the absolute pitch of probably dang near every note of the song, depending on how far you go to trying to understand the song theoretical wise. You might not realize it, but if you have been doing this awhile I imagine you can pick out certain notes, and you just know the note, am I right? You might have to slow all music down to a very slow tempo, breaking the relative pitch sense, so that you are capable of comprehending the absolute, but it is very much possible. And yes if one is stronger than the other that can create a huge overlap to drown out the other into not believing one has the ability. However you kind of have to stick to one tuning standard, and the instrument needs to remain very consistently in tune which is probably why pianos/synths/digital keyboards work nicely for absolute, even the fingerings are absolute so this helps as well for when you are doing the audiation part if one tries to think of the fingering to get to the sound this can bring in the absolute.