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Ear with Solfa by Christopher Sutton | Aug 18, 2016 |
Playing By Ear | Playing music by ear can seem mysterious. Some
musicians can do it, most musicians can't. If you want to learn,
wouldn't it be great if there was actually a clear and logical process
to it, rather than seeming like a magic trick? The good news: there
is! Solfa is a system you can learn for quickly and reliably
identifying the notes in music, allowing you to play by ear on your
instrument. As powerful as solfa is, it is often
misunderstood. There are a variety of
different names for it, and actually some
quite different systems all referred to as
"solfa" or "solfège", some of which are
not very useful for playing by ear. If your goal is to play melodies by ear
using solfa, you want to make sure you
have a clear and reliable plan to follow
which will ensure that your solfa ear
training is leading you steadily towards
that goal in a fun, interesting and ultimately satisfying way. Playing
music by ear is a major focus at Musical U and since solfa is such an
effective framework for playing by ear it
comes as no surprise that they have a
dedicated "Roadmap" to show you the
way. Let's take a look at the 6 steps of
this roadmap and how they help you
learn to play by ear with solfa. Before we get into the details though,
let's clear up a few things. What is Solfa? Solfa , also known as
solfège or solfeggio, is a framework for relative pitch , which is
your ability to judge the distance in
pitch between notes. A well-trained sense of relative pitch is
what allows musicians to play by ear,
improvise and transcribe music easily, by
recognising the relationships between
the notes and chords they hear. There are two main approaches to
relative pitch ear training: 1. Intervals 2. Solfa You can learn about
the interval approach
in our Ultimate Guide to Interval Ear Training . It isn't "either/or"
– you can also combine intervals and solfa training
to learn faster. We refer to the solfa
approach as a
"framework" because
this is really what it
gives you: a clear
mental structure for music so that the notes you hear just "slot into place" in
your mind. You learn to hear the musical
role of each note of the scale, so that
when you hear those notes in action it's
easy to recognise them and so make
sense of the music. This makes it easy to then play the notes by ear on your
instrument, improvise your own music
that fits in, or write down the notes
you've heard. The solfa framework involves naming each note in the
scale, and you may have
heard of it by these names: "do", "re",
"mi", and so on. This makes it easier for
you to learn the musical role of each note,
associating it with the name and giving
that name a kind of "musical identity". Benefits of learning solfa
Learning solfa has many benefits for a
musician. In fact solfa can help you with
all these common musical activities: Playing melodies by ear , by
recognising the notes. Playing chords by ear , including common and
more unusual chord
progressions. Transcribing music (writing down music). Transposing
music (changing key). Sight-singing from notation, making it easy to
join choirs or learn new
repertoire. Singing confidently , due to accurate vocal control.
Improvising freely , knowing the notes you play are the ones you
intended. Composing and writing songs freely, bringing the music in
your head out
into the world. Making music theory enjoyable and exciting , because
it all has much more musical meaning to you. In this article we're
going to focus just on
the first one: playing melodies by ear . By "melody" we mean the "tune" of a
piece of music, a series of notes played
one at a time. And by "play by ear" we
mean you hear the music (or remember
it) and then you can play it back on your
instrument. Of course this is very closely related to improvisation
(playing by ear what you imagine in your head) and transcription
(writing the notes down instead of playing them on your
instrument). Solfa vs. Solfège vs. Solfeggio A quick clarification
before we continue.
You might have heard of solfa referred to
by two other names, solfège and
solfeggio. Is there a difference? The short answer is yes, but it's a bit
subtle. First up: " solfeggio " is simply the Italian equivalent of
the French world solfège. " Solfège " is a term which actually covers
two very different systems of note
naming: "Fixed Do" , in which each of the 12 notes in music has a set
name, always
the same. In the most common
system, "Do" is equivalent to the note
normally called "C", no matter what
key you are working in. The names
"do", "re", "mi" etc. can be seen as simple substitutes for the normal note
names "C", "D", "E", etc. The advantage
is that they are more easily singable! "Movable Do" , in which the
names of the notes are based on the scale/key.
In the most common system, "Tonic
Solfa", the "do" name is always used
for the tonic (first) note of the scale.
So in C Major, "do" would be "C". In F
Major, "do" would be F. This means that the names correspond to the
musical role of each note in a given
piece, as we discussed earlier. There are debates among music
educators over which system is best, but
movable do is more popular and most
musicians agree that it is the more
practical and useful system for tasks like
playing by ear or improvisation. At Easy Ear Training and Musical U we
focus on movable do, and for that reason
we tend to use the word "solfa".
Although this word is used
interchangeably with "solfège" and can
be ambiguous, it is normally associated with the system "tonia solfa" system
mentioned above. So "solfa" is roughly a shorthand of "movable do
solfège". All clear? Good! Let's dig in to how you
can learn solfa and use it to play melodies
by ear. How to use Solfa to play melodies by
ear To learn solfa, you use a combination of listening exercises and
singing exercises . Don't worry if you don't consider yourself a
singer! You can use
our free guide to learn to sing in tune and that's all you need to be
able to do. The goal is to learn to recognise and reproduce each of
the notes of the scale by their solfa names. You can begin simply, by
just learning the
first few notes, "do", "re" and "mi".
Listening exercises train your ears to spot
which of those three notes you've heard.
Singing exercises train you to reproduce
each of the three notes for a given "do". Gradually you build
up your knowledge
of the solfa for the
full major and minor
scales. At Musical U and in the SingTrue app we use the major pentatonic as
a stepping stone towards the full major
scale which provides an easy and
effective way to learn solfa gradually. Once you can reliably and
instinctively recognise and reproduce the solfa notes, you can apply
this skill to all of the benefits listed earlier, including playing
melodies by ear. In fact, you'll find you can't help doing it! When
you
hear music you will start to instinctively
know the identities of the notes, e.g. "Oh,
that tune went 'mi mi re re do'". What once would have seemed like some
kind of magic becomes easy and natural
because you've learned to recognise the
musical role of each note. Let's look at this process in more detail,
based on the Roadmap for playing
melodies by ear using solfa, from Musical
U. First though, what exactly do we mean
by "Roadmap"? What is a Roadmap? Roadmaps are designed to give you
clarity about your musical training. When
you start with a big goal like learning to
play melodies by ear it can be inspiring,
but you're then left to try to figure out all
the details of actually making it happen! AtMusical U you get access
to a fully flexible training system featuring dozens
of training modules which you can
perfectly combine to suit your needs. To
help you use it all effectively there is also
a set of Roadmaps, each for developing
an important musical skill. Each Roadmap is designed to answer
three questions: Where am I? Where do I want to go? How will I get
there? The Roadmap isn't itself a training plan
but after reading through it (including
just the free preview version linked
below) you should have a clear answer to
each of the questions above so that you
can then create your real training plan.