Thursday, October 30, 2008

Teaching Your Child Solfege

Music Lesson: Solfege



(Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music)


What is solfege?
Solfege is an important part of learning to read music and is a technique used to teach sight-singing or sight reading. Each note in solfege is sung to a different syllable do, re, me, fa, so, la, ti, and each note has a corresponding hand sign (as seen in photo below).

To teach your child solfege do the following:

1. Sing do (doh) to the first pitch of any major scale (i.e. if you choose the major C scale, C would be your first note).

2. Now, sing and sign do with your hand (as seen in photo below).

3. Have your child sing and sign do. If needed, help mold your child's hand into the do shape until he or she can sign do his or herself.

4. Continue to teach your child every solfege sign and syllable.

5. Note: Solfege is a great way to introduce music to your baby!

Solfege Pronunciation:

Do = Doh (For the C scale you will sing C pitch)

Re = Ray (For the C scale you will sing D pitch)

Me = Mee (For the C scale you will sing E pitch)

Fa = Fah (For the C scale your will sing F pitch)

Sol = Soh (For the C scale you will sing G pitch)

La = Lah (For the C scale you will sing A pitch)

Ti = Tee (For the C scale you will sing B pitch)



9 comments:

MamaGeek @ Works For Us said...

Girl, you just overflow with talent.

Mandy said...

Oh, man, can't I just bring them to your house? :-)

I forgot to tell you, way to get on Motherhood for Dummies, she really deserved that time out!

Just Kidding! That cracked me up!

Dani said...

Can you believe that I actually learned that in grade school? Wow... I haven't seen that in FOREVER!!! When I look at the pictures it came back to me like I had never forgotten it!!! Good stuff!!!

Belinda said...

So interesting, I love your tips:)

Mandy said...

I have a ? for you. Nothing like last minute...

I have to do a class party and we will be doing hot potato/pumpkin however I can't find the song that goes with it. I can only find the Wiggles song, not what I am looking for.

Do you know where I can find it? IF so can you please email me the words. Thank you so much!!!

Anonymous said...

Very nice! Thanks for this! Enjoy your weekend!

Kaci said...

Awesome tips! We sign a lot around here. I grew up signing a lot with my partially deaf sister and almost became a signing teacher, etc. I love to sign.

Jannie Funster said...

What a wonderful site to stumble onto from your comment over at Discursively Happy.

My girl takes guitar once a week from Childbloom (loves it,) and just started piano once a week - the latter, the teacher comes right to our house - love it!! Kelly had some lessons on piano last year and I was so purprised to see pretty-much all the notes came back to her.

Get 'em while they're young, eh??

Nice to "meet" you!

mormonhermitmom said...

I had no clue that was there was such a thing as solfege? Did I spell it right? That's cool. Have you ever been a Primary chorister? You would rock!