I made a chart for this a while back, but of course good to do the process of making your own:
start and end points are arbitrary; column farthest to the left could be open string or first fret or second fret, whatever. A bit more than an octave on each string is shown, so it just loops around.
Interesting!
Iām familiar with it but havenāt dabbled much. What do you think the advantages are? I feel like it gets more awkward/vague when dealing with music that mixes modes.
Also interesting! I actually donāt teach ear training in the interval recognition way because I think recognizing the sound and feel of each pitch relative to key center is 1000x more useful than towards any kind of playing or writing goal than just intervals in the absolute.
However I do think itās useful to recognize intervals as part of the whole big picture. Why do you think it does harm?
Nice! I thought I was the only one who did this sort of shit!
I canāt speak for everyone, but like I said in the other thread, minor tonalities naturally fall on a la tonic for me. If Iām trying to figure out something that has an ambiguous tonality Iāll use fixed do instead.
Only because I see people told pretty much everywhere that identifying intervals is the best way to train your ear. This sets the student up for a long hard slog (lends itself to a lot of confusion imo), like you say - functional pitch recognition is 1000 times easier and will get the student to where they want to be far more quickly.
Agreed intervals have their applications, but learning how to play by ear/transcribe quickly is not one of them.
I use whatever I have clearly in mind to scaffold learning whatever feels tricky in mind. For example, if one sings ādo re mi fa so la ti doā easily, and wants to learn to nail phrygian, then sing past ādoā and back down to āmiā.
Once I have the sound clearly, then I will apply other syllable sets as appropriate. This is hinted at earlier in the threadā¦
So if I can hear/sing, āmi fa so la ti do re miā clearly (the relative view of the mode), Iām set to sing ādo ra me fa so le te do.ā
The downfall of traditional interval ear training is that the same intervals appear in wildly different contexts. I find itās imperative to allow oneās ear to hear a musical fragment composed of whatever intervals as existing in more than one tonal space. The easier way to explain the latter is to have someone work out a tune that begins on āsoā or āfaā, hence the extra challenge in what Nolte was asking for.
For us early education deprived mortals, the remedial work will require discipline, repetition of exploration, and patience, but above all, joy. It gets easier.
In my case, I donāt think its the learning of intervals, but the relatively inorganic way that theyāre commonly introduced that can set us back in our development of understanding of the same.
Hereās a post I wrote years ago, and had forgotten about. Hope itās helpful for someone. Happy to answer any questions you may have here, post away.
https://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/guitar/acapella-40/1887337-
Time warp to many years ago that doesnāt seem all that long ago. 
Generous post @BubbaMc! Do you still use the ā>ā and ā<ā notation to indicate direction? I prefer to use ā/ā and ā\ā but typically only when notating a skip or jump for clarity of interpretation. For example, resurrecting Jingle Bells from your Harmony Central post of yore:
Jingle bells: mi mi mi mi mi mi mi > so < do > re > mi > fa fa fa etc.
I would typically notate as follows, two ways, one for myself (known melody), and a second to show others perhaps not sure what they are looking at, or when logging a tune Iāve transcribed that I wonāt necessarily fully remember by name when looking back over my notes.
Jingle bells: mi mi mi, mi mi mi, mi so do re mi. fa fa fa etc.
Jingle bells: mi mi mi, mi mi mi, mi / so \ do re mi. fa fa fa etc.
Anyone else doing something different? Is there a standard in use anywhere? I keep an ear training/transcription notebook, so this regards daily use with a pen or pencil.
The other thing I want to say is, folks have to understand that the solfege arose to answer the need for singable note names. This seems lost on many as the folks that answered you reveal. The ear training work is in the application.
Choose your poison? Singā¦
F#
#11
Fi
The first one is limited to a particular pitch, the second comprises a mouthful of syllables with a plosive in the middle, instead of oneā¦ Feeeeeeeā¦ for days, right?
And since I brought it up, here is a practical example of fi:
do re mi fi so la ti la so fi mi re do
ā¦key agnostic expression of lydian. Iām hearing and singing the line in my head (audiation). We need a musical alphabet, and then all of the chunking and whatnot can kick in as we speak our music conversationally. Happy Friday everyone!
Clarification regarding:
More commonly I would notate this way, āmiā and āsoā together, so close and commonly sung togetherā¦
Jingle bells: mi mi mi, mi mi mi, mi so \ do re mi. fa fa fa etc.
So I guess the downward slash comes in with jumps more than skips per se.
You and I are probably the only ones doing it in the first place
Sad but likely.
I guess the question was really directed at what you are aware of.
āThe journey of a [Confirmation head], begins with a singleā¦ā
so / mi so!Likely 
Iām now considering some kind of solmisation but havenāt begun yet.
This thread will definitely be useful once I decide to dive into this training. Thanks for sharing your knowledge 
Much appreciated!
Not that anybody asked, but I think I have found the fundamental problem of my aural abilities: I canāt hum/sing the melody I have in mind.
I guess it may sound stupid but I have a vague idea how the melody should sound (perhaps merely an impression?) but I canāt recreate it with my voice nor with my instrument. (Well, I almost canāt. Itās just very hard.)
One reason of such situation might be that I was never a singer. I simply donāt sing. I can hum along some tune but once you take the external sound away, Iām unable to find those sounds. (I know, pathetic. Trust me, you wonāt be able to find harsher words than those I already think about myself.)
Anyway, so now I know the problem! 
It means I can work on it now and thatās how I currently do it:
Laugh all you can but even this simple exercise gives me some trouble. Luckily, I seem to improve.
After I can hum the sounds by myself, I try to find them on guitar (or GuitarPro since it plays a note whenever I enter it).
Perhaps (by a miracle) somebody else happens to be in a similarly embarrassing situation as I am and perhaps such person will find it encouraging that there is at least one more musician who is also struggling with such elementary steps. At least I would be encouraged if I knew that Iām not the one who has the absolutely worst aural skills 
Back to the topic of solfege/solmization: does everybody here uses do re mi solfege system? Has anyone found something you didnāt like about those syllables and/or tried to modify them somehow? (I checked the wiki page on solmization but there isnāt too much information. Well, perhaps there isnāt much to write about.)
Another question: the way I understand it, these syllables are only useful if I have the root in mind, correct? For example, letās take the good olā āHappy Birthdayā: it wonāt do much if I sing so, so, la, soā¦ but I donāt know that these are 5, 5, 6, 5 degrees of a major scale, correct? I kind of have to keep ringing the root in my mind so that I can āmeasure upā the sound as so/5th. If Iām correct, does anybody have any experience/thoughts about practicing solfege while a drone root rings in background?
ā¦fun fact. In russian musical theory āDo-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Siā are actual notes names. I mean, you use latin letters (C-D-E-F-G-A-B) while we use Guidos solmisation. So, our āDoā is always āCā ))
Anyway, as a man with relative picth if I hear some song and I have no instrument around I usually consider the songs root as āCā (if it has major quality) or āAā (if it has minor quality).
And yes, seems like singing is the key. Well, Iām not a good singer but I tried to sing scales, and it was funā¦ I often whistle instead of singing ))
All of the different ways of looking at music scaffold (hopefully) greater fluency. Not so much one thing leading to another so much as everything leading to something else.
If you canāt match pitches with your voice, you likely wonāt experience the āahaā of checking ones mental map with sung notes and having the degrees āpopā in oneās awareness, but thatās not the end of the world. You could just use numbers and syllables in your mind, but Iād encourage you to say the singable syllables as they are handy unsung too, especially for instrumentalists. I could imagine, say, āflat five,ā but I know what a flat five is, and āseā is a nice shorthand in one syllable.
Iād emphasize that I use a combination of moveable and fixed, chromatic solfege, and I choose starting references based on need. E.g. analyzing a whole tune versus learning to hear an altered note over a particular chord in isolation. Root notes in a progression (do, do, do, ā¦) are pretty dulling to awareness, but audiating individual chord scales may be enhanced by a root specific ādo.ā
The singing of intervals is tricky relative to singing chunked phrases. One doesnāt absolutely need a drone to practice, but having a pitch reference handy can be nice. If the goal is to hear the intervals in context, yes, but otherwise, I tend to practice with whatever ādoā feels comfortable, and Iāll audiate or sing up a scale to check pitches for accuracy. Julian Bradley speaks of āthe stepping stone method.ā Wasnāt sure Iād need it, but I find more and more that it solidifies my awareness of a key in context.
Not certain I answered your specific questions. There was a fair amount in the ask.
@Medium_Attempt have you ever played around with a piano keyboard? Iād suggest getting hold of a cheap one, pick out melodies and generally experiment.
Honestly, that doesnāt even matter too much. I get quite an amount of value from these posts anyway 
(But yeah, you did answer some things )
No, I havenāt touched keyboard much in my life. (Only minimaly while studying)
Anyway, I have heard similar advice but I donāt think it would bring me to some kind of enlightenment because I have worked quite a bit on single strings (which function like a piano. Well, at least as long as one plays only one note at a time). I have played scales and scalar patterns in such way as well as melodies so I have some experience at that 
Still, thanks for the help
@Medium_Attempt - Iād still consider one for a few reasons. The notes are right in front of you in black and white (excuse the pun), and the technique to play it is a no brainer, choose the note and press the key. This makes a big difference, allows your brain to focus on the sound instead of visualising the fretboard and coordinating the two hands. Playing fast is easy. You can come up with melodies that you wouldnāt normally think of on guitar. Also, if you stick to the white keys only youāre essentially locked into a key (eg C major/A minor) and experimenting with chords and melody is dead simple - much simpler than guitar.
Aaand, using MIDI and a computer you can play bass and drums on it
I really think it might lead to the enlightenment youāre looking for. If you donāt get anything out of it after playing around for a month you could sell it for what you paid.
edit: And you can hack your way through Mozard and Bach sonatas and teach yourself how to read sheet music (also very helpful to train your ear). The list of ways it can help your ear is endless. Ok Iāll stop now.
That said, Iāll understand if you donāt 
Mine hasnāt got much love lately, after writing that though Iāll do something about it.
How do you pick a syllable to start on when practicing solfege on nursery rhymes etc?
This ended on a do, so it worked out nicely, but did you know that before running through it? How?
If you start mapping from ādoā and find yourself requiring accidentals for notes not otherwise just used in passing, listen to the starting note for whether it sounds resolved or not, and revise your assumption. As you observe, a nursery rhyme will likely end on ādoā.
The notes in the melody will fit into whatever parent scale, akin to puzzle pieces. If something doesnāt fit, that may be a clue to what does.
Iām a fan of priming the engine, so to speak. Grab a book of melodies, write out the solfege. Sing the solfege and then alternate with singing the parent scale.
so - so la - so do ti ...
then
do re mi fa so la ti do, do ti la so fa mi re do
ā¦repeat as necessary. Accuracy in educated guesses increases with practice.