QUOTE (Larry F @ Apr 6 2013, 08:32 PM)
Here's a little testimonial. When I was younger, I was pretty good on guitar and did a lot of gigging. I eventually migrated to academia and became a professor of composition and theory. Along the way, I struggled with ear-training. In grad school, we had practicum exams to pass before we could defend our thesis: piano sight-reading, sight-singing, reading orchestral scores on the piano by sight, sight-reading old clefs in 4 parts, sight-reading figured bass realizations, dictation of Bach chorales. The sight-singing was tough, they were arias from operas of Wagner, usually, which meant changing key several times. We could sing la, la, la, or scale degree numbers,2, 3,1, 4, 3,etc. or use solfege. I poo-pooed solfege, because scale degree numbers were equivalent. Failing this a lot, I finally got help from one of my friends who insisted that I learn solfege: do re mi fa sol la ti do. That's the major scale for any key. Sharps and flats are also handled by different syllables. Europeans often learn the fixed do method, where do is C, re is D and so on. In the US, moveable do is usually taught. Here, do is the tonic of the key, re is scale degree 2, and so on. It was like magic. I sang solfege in the shower, walking to school, etc. I passed the sight-singing right away. It can be better than learning interval recognition is you are focused on staying in one key. The way we here is in relation to the key, not the relation of isolated intervals in the key, so goes the thinking. If you want to focus on isolated intervals, I think that is a more difficult thing to do, as we don't usually hear two notes in isolation and that's that. Instead, we hear melodic lines in a key. I would recommend starting with solfege in a major key, then minor, then start modulating to other keys. At some point in a modulation, you have to decide whether to change the new tonic to do, or keep the original syllable. There are well-defined guidelines for when you should start thinking in a new key. Kostka-Payne has been a very popular book for music theory classes in universities, and it will help you learn about modulations. It is, however, focused strictly on classical music repertoire.
Anyway, I just wanted to try to indoctrinate others into adopting the solfege system for sight-singing and ear-training.
Thanks for sharing this. I struggle with intervals also. It's always good to hear someone's struggle and how they got through it.
I should have a look at this.
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