Intervals have distance and quality, so numbers alone are just as deficient as solfege if interval analysis is involved. 7 could mean many things.

I think we are agreeing, Jeffrey, especially the point that numbers alone do not give us any information about interval quality. My only point about the deficiency of solfege for interval analysis was that, to take your example, M3 exists in multiple solfege combinations. Simply calling it M3 is easier and more precise.

To sum up my thoughts on this thread:

1) Interval analysis is valuable for reading all kinds of music, tonal or not. If you can sing the distance between any two pitches, regardless of musical context, you can sing anything on the page. I believe this might be what Ian was trying to describe in his posts above.

2) Movable do is valuable for learning tonal music specifically because it captures more information than the interval content alone. Like all music, tonal music is just a big collection of intervals on the page, but I'd like to believe that it's more than that, too. Movable do helps us discover what "that thing" is by using our voices. On instruments without fixed pitches, including the voice, you might consider producing C-C# differently than C-Db because the harmonic contexts are different; the first interval is slightly wider than the second. This way of thinking is the bread and butter of singing/playing one-to-a-part with perfect intonation.

(Incidentally, 1 is normally how we teach general undergraduates to read. 2 is normally how we teach music majors to read.)

3) Fixed do has the potential to be valuable when studying modal music. If we take C as our reference point and rename it "do," it is interesting to follow where in each scale "do" lies. This information might be helpful for those who are unfamiliar with modal patterns, but the renaming just seems redundant to me. At some point we might as well call them boy, cat, dog, and house.

A good pedagogue keeps a lot of tools in the toolbox and must be able to explain the same phenomenon in several different ways.

Jeffrey Q., I'm not sure that what you are saying about the modes is any different than what I said.

Also, I don't disagree with your numerical analysis of the pitches, but I am not talking about an objective measure of intonation. When playing solo Bach, for example, good string players always raise localized leading tones and lower localized 4th scale degrees (in a major context, say). The end result is that m2 is narrower than A1. For whatever reason, this presents the aural illusion of "perfect" intonation even though it's objectively "out of tune." This technique works with multiple instruments as well, and in my own singing and playing I've found it helpful to "think" of raising leading tones and let it come out as it may. No one complains. I wouldn't, as you suggest with your numbers, dogmatically insist on "playing in tune with myself" if it ruined the overall soundscape. The way I see it, intonation is subjective, so YMMV. I've been doing it my way, and successfully, for a long time.

I wouldn't have put it in quite the same way, but I think Francis and I are seeing eye to eye on this (for once!).

Some points for clarification.

Jeffrey: an integer-based system is no more rooted in absolute pitch that solfege - it is relative to the pitching of 1.

Major / minor modifications are happily accomodated. Jazz and rock musicians will talk about flat x and sharp y. Classical musicians happily qualify the number in their own way: M3, m6, augmented 4th (the Maria interval) etc.

Whoever they are, they will label intervals numerically. Even those who use solfege when teaching people to sing a particular melody will tend to do this, because it's more direct to think of "a sixth" or "a major sixth" than "the interval between do and la". So why not start with integers in the first place (unless you're teaching people who only have experience of solfege)?

True, neither solfege nor integer-based labels give you exact pitch in the context of a particular individual or ensemble's approach to intonation in a given work or genre, but that's not their purpose, which is to provide a basic terminology for teaching and discussing tonal relationships. Beyond that it's a matter of musicianship and physics.

Adam is right... for once we agree... wow... what is happening to this forum Doug!? Solfege rules for singing.

@Ruth: not where I and many others learned to sight sing. Next month I will attend a Catholic music week where we sing a different mass setting every day of the week (mostly polyphony and chant), plus propers, on the basis of 40-60 minutes' rehearsal. That's in addition to rehearsing the main choral course works (Ludford's Missa Videte Miraculum & MacMillan's Seven Last Words this year), orchestra, ad-hoc ensembles, recitals, lectures, sung Compline and socialising (starts after Compline). Hardly a do-re-mi between us, because that's not how we were taught. The proof of the pudding ...

@Adam & Francis: if someone asks me to sing a flat 7 or an augmented 4th I will do so on any combination of vowels and consonants you care to mention (even the opening sentence of the current Gloria translation if I must). Likewise when I see the intervals on the stave before me, where the number matches the means of representation in a way that solfege doesn't without an extra layer of interpretation. What's the problem? There would be one if my only background were solfege, but to my benefit it isn't.

I'm not saying that solfege can't be used to help teach sight-reading, or that it doesn't make sense to build on it given singers whose only background is solfege. But even then, if you want them to have the opportunity to be proficient and gain an insight into harmony and counterpoint, you'll do them a favour by introducing the numbers at some point.

Ian

Who are the "you and many others"? To which school of thought might you be aluding?

Only in England could they prep a Mass in an hour. Here in the States, people generally don't read to that level (even when they're getting paid).

Come and join us, Jeffrey. It's a blast!

I would refer to my 1, 2, and 3 above for the potential value of the various options. :-)

I think part of the problem with professional musicians championing one method over another is...
I'm thinking most of the excellent sight singers here would have been excellent regardless of whether they used numbers or solfege or something else.
Likewise, I'm thinking musical culture in England would still produce excellent sight-signers if they sang "Do Re Mi," "1, 2, 3," or "Red, Orange, Yellow."


In any interventionist endeavor (like teaching), there are three groups:
1. Those will get it, no matter what you do.
2. Those who will never get it, no matter what you do.
3. Those who will get it or not, depending on what you do.

I would bet (though am not sure) that most people who grow up to be professional musicians are in group number 1.
It's group #3 that matters, though. But it's impossible to know, because you basically only get one shot at childhood.

Controlled experiments would help, but I'm not sure how you would manage that.

Beyond that there is gut feeling (very unreliable), logic (ditto), and anecdotal evidence (again).

But, since that's all we have:
My GUT FEELING is that solfege works better. This makes some amount of LOGICal sense because solfege syllables contain all necessary pitch information, whereas numbers require additional information. ANECDOTALLY, I can tell you that growing up with numbers did not make me a good sight reader, and that I got better when I started using solfege.

Not only that, Adam, but if you were to look at musical primers from ca. 1800--all solfege. These were designed for "the masses." (Groups 1, 2, and 3)

There is something obvious about MI and TI being halfsteps that seems lacking in Three and Seven.

It may have something to do with the upward chromatic scale vowel also being "I".

I was convinced that numbers had superiority because of Ward till I learned Ward uses Sol.

Here a funny little ditty that someone sang to me a couple of weeks ago. You enjoy it or hate it.

Do - I use to buy da beer.
Re - Who I buy the beer from
Me - I'm going to drink the beer
Fa - I hope its not to far
So - I think I'll have a beer
La - la, la, la, la, la, la
Ti - I'd rather have a beer
I guess I'll need more Do, do, do, do.