- Hi.
I'm Gareth, and in this video,
I'm going to talk about sol fa,
or tonic sol fa as it's sometimes known,
and I'm going to explain how to use the hand signs
that belong to the system.
Now this was quite a big deal during the 19th century,
and it was really devised as a means of helping people
to read music and to kind of audiate what's going on.
Now, you might say,
"Do I need to do sol fa?
"Because, y'know, I know the names of the notes,
"and I can read them as they are."
Absolutely fine.
But sol fa has its place,
and it's quite interesting that it lives on,
and is used in many different environments.
So it's often used as part
of a solfege aural training system.
It's often used by choirs,
sometimes with people who don't read music terribly fluently
but actually can learn something very quickly,
or can relate something through the use of sol fa.
The great thing is about sol fa is that it has something
called "a moveable do".
And I'll say a bit more about that in a moment.
But first of all,
let's just get hold of the names of each degree
of the scale in sol fa.
So the first degree of the scale is called "do."
So in other words, if I'm in the key of C Major,
then C is do.
If I'm in the key of F Major, F is do.
If I'm in the key of A Major, A is do.
Okay, so that's what we mean by the moveable do.
Whichever key you're in,
the first degree of that scale is do.
So the great advantage of this, of course,
is that we don't have to be stuck in one key.
If music moves from one key to another,
we just shift our do into the new key.
So let's go through each degree of the scale.
I'm working with C Major just to keep it nice and simple.
But the first degree of the scale is do,
so in the case C Major, that's C.
The second degree of the scale is "re",
so that's D in the scale of C Major.
The third degree of the scale is "mi",
so here it is,
it's E, the third note on the scale of C Major.
The fourth note is "fa",
so that's F in the scale of C Major.
The fifth note is "so",
so that's G in the scale of C Major.
The sixth note is "la",
so that's A in the scale of C Major.
The seventh note is "ti",
so that's B in the scale of C Major.
And of course when we get to the eighth note,
that's kind of going back
to the first note.
C in C Major.
So that's a do, and this is a do.
They're just C in the lower octave, C in the upper octave.
And of course,
if you wanted to carry on into the next octave,
you'd carry on with D as re, E as mi, and so on.
And as I say,
if you want to move into a different key,
well, you just know which key you're in,
and you move do to the first degree of the scale.
So that's how it works,
and if you see it written anywhere in music,
this is how it's abbreviated.
So we just take the first letter:
do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do.
And it's possible to get pieces of music
that are written entirely in tonic sol fa,
you haven't got any notes at all.
Even four-part harmony and things.
I've got a book of hymns at home all written in sol fa.
So it's a system that many people started to use
from the 19th century,
and found it a helpful way of doing it,
because you don't have to worry too much
about all these different notes,
and the names of notes, and all the rest of it.
You just have to know,
well, do is the first degree of the scale,
mi is the third degree of the scale,
so is the fifth degree of the scale,
and then you can learn tunes very quickly by fixing your do,
and then moving from one note of the scale,
one degree of the scale,
to another through a system that works in any key.
So whereas you might find it a little bit difficult to think
if I read a tune that goes C, D, F,
can I find those notes out of my head?
You might actually recognise the sound of do, re, fa,
and be able to locate that more accurately.
This was some of the thinking that lay behind tonic sol fa.
Now, as I said a moment ago,
there are also hand signs that belong to this.
So, for example, a choir director might teach a choir
or a section of the choir,
how a line goes simply by giving hand signs
that the choir members can then put into sound.
Because once you've learnt your scale,
Do, re, mi, fa,
so, la, ti, do,
and you've got used to kind of mixing it up,
do, mi, so, fa,
re, la, mi, ti, do.
With a bit of practise,
you can get around the scale quite easily
just by knowing what those sounds are in relation
to the degrees of the scale.
But with the hand signs,
the choir director, for example,
can give you the hand sign,
you know immediately what it is,
and you just find that degree of the scale.
So, what are the hand signs?
Let's see if we can learn them.
Okay, so here is the sign for do.
So it's just a kind of sort of fist like this.
It looks if I'm going to punch somebody.
Hopefully, that's not going to happen.
But that's the sign for do.
Okay, so that's the first degree, do.
Here's the sign for re, all right?
So I've got this raised hand,
sort of at 45 degrees,
that's re.
Now, soon as I put that on a level,
then that is mi.
So, so far we've got do,
then we've got re,
and then we've got mi.
So it's quite good to learn these a few at a time.
Do,
re,
mi.
And it's quite handy to start associating this with sound.
So if we're C Major,
and that's do,
you see how you can follow this.
♪ Do ♪
♪ Re ♪
♪ Mi ♪
And then you can mix it up.
♪ Do ♪
♪ Mi ♪
♪ Re ♪
♪ Mi ♪
♪ Do ♪
So you see how this might work
in a sort of choir environment,
where the conductor,
the leader, can be doing the hand signs,
and people just know these sounds,
they recognise the signs,
they get to know how the thing goes.
And it's so much more reliable for many people
than actually reading the notes.
Okay, do,
re,
mi.
Let's add on the next one.
Fa.
See how I'm doing that?
So I've got my fingers tucked in here,
my thumb pointing down.
That is fa.
And so is this.
So I've got my fingers together,
my thumb sort of pointing up.
That is so.
Okay.
♪ Do ♪
♪ Re ♪
♪ Mi ♪
♪ Fa ♪
♪ So ♪
Can you do that going down?
♪ So ♪
♪ Fa ♪
♪ Mi ♪
♪ Re ♪
♪ Do ♪
Can you mix it up?
♪ Do ♪
♪ Mi ♪
♪ So ♪
♪ Fa ♪
♪ Re ♪
♪ Mi ♪
♪ Do ♪
So as soon as you get familiar with these hand signs,
you begin to see,
actually, they're quite useful, aren't they?
Okay, let's go a bit further.
So we've had do,
we've done re, we've done mi,
we've done fa, we've done so,
here's la.
It's a kind of sort of drooping hand,
so that's la.
And ti is just the index finger pointing up
with the other fingers tucked back.
Okay, so la,
ti, and ti is pointing you to do at the top,
so we've gone back to do again.
So you see how this works?
♪ Do ♪
♪ Re ♪
♪ Mi ♪
♪ Fa ♪
♪ So ♪
♪ La ♪
♪ Ti ♪
♪ Do ♪
And you hold your hand higher for that upper do,
and you hold it lower for the lower do.
And again, you can mix up all of those notes.
And then, you see you can get around all the notes
within that octave quite happily,
or you could carry on into the next octave,
or you could go down below this do,
because the next note, B, would be ti.
And because of this movable do,
you can transfer this into any key that you want to.
So, you might find this a helpful thing just to engage with.
There are lots of things that one can do with this
in the long term,
because if you're trying to do aural dictation, for example.
Some people find it very difficult to hear a melody,
or a chord, and think,
"What are the names of those notes?"
But if you can think in sol fa,
you might think,
"Oh, actually, that goes from do to fa.
"I can hear that relationship."
Might be easier to do that than to think,
"Well, if the first note's C,
"how do I know that the second note's F?"
If you can recognise this,
♪ Do ♪
♪ Fa ♪
you can relate it to the tonic sol fa.
So, a great system,
and as I say, had its heyday in the 19th century,
but is still very much alive and kicking.
And it's another musical resource
that you might find helpful to work with.
So, give it a go,
let us know how you get on by putting a comment
in the box below.