I realized a while ago that there aren't any good Solfege songs- we have songs about Solfege, and some of them are great- but we don't have any nice songs written specifically for Solfege syllables, so I decided to write one!
In working on the song and the video, I tried to make things simple enough that anyone could sing along, but I also wanted to capture these simple lines from as many angles as I could. One of the things I love about Solfege is how it connects to the deep relationships between the notes in the scale. We could just as easily sing "G E G, G A G"- but those letters would never help us realize that "A F# A, A B A" share the same relationship. It's because of this that I like to think of Solfege as "relationship" terms- similar to words like Mom, Dad, Brother, and Sister. Now, obviously it's not a direct correlation- there is no solfege equivalent to "Mom," but there is also no sort of friend or family relationship that's similar to what 'Re' and 'So' share- and once you get into how these notes are connected- that's a relationship worth remembering too!
So as you watch and sing along to this video- think about how these solfege characters relate to each other. Each Solfege note (Do Re Mi) has it's own personality. Each note has other notes that it likes, and some that it dislikes (those relationships are fun too). And each note has a moment and a context when it shines in the song. So watch with curiosity!
I'd also like to give a huge thanks to my Solfege teacher, Ms. Sarah Shafer, for singing for this video- I hope the rest of the world gets to experience at least a little of the solfege joy that you've brought to so many already!
*Special Note on the word "So"*
Traditional spelling of Solfege syllables spells the note 'So" as "Sol', but the L is silent and should not be sung. So rather than include the traditional spelling in this video, I have spelled it as "So" to better reflects how it should sound when singing. And for all those purists out there, I assure you that this is not the first change to happened to our Solfege sounds. Each one of our solfege syllables is well over 1,000 years old, and many of them have changed quite a lot in that thousand years.
